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The reign of King Charles the Second was signalized by many other untoward and disastrous events besides those which we have enumerated. There were unfortunate wars, great defeats in naval battles, unlucky negotiations abroad, and plots and conspiracies, dangerous and disgraceful, at home. The king, however, took all these things very good naturedly, and allowed them to interfere very little with his own personal pleasures. Whatever troubles or embarrassments affected the state, he left the anxiety and care which pertained to them to his ministers and his council, banishing all solicitude from his own mind, and enjoying himself all the time with his experiments, his ladies, his dogs, and his perpetual fun.

~Drying and Igniting.~--Precipitates, as a rule, require drying before being ignited. With small precipitates the filter-paper may be opened out, and placed on a warm asbestos slab till dry; or the funnel and the filter with the precipitate is placed in a warm place, and supported by any convenient means. The heat must never be sufficient to char the paper. Some precipitates must be dried at a temperature not higher than 100° C. These are placed in the water-oven (fig. 20), and, when apparently dry, they are taken from the funnel, placed between glasses, and then left in the oven till they cease to lose weight. Such precipitates are collected on tared filters. Those precipitates which will stand a higher temperature are dried in the hot-air oven at a temperature of from 120° to 150°. The drying is continued until they appear to be free from moisture, and until the precipitate ceases to adhere to the filter. In drying sulphides the heat must not be raised to the melting point of sulphur, since, if there is any free sulphur present, it fuses and filters through.

And now I leave my subject, not without misgiving that I shall have disappointed you. But for the great attention which is being paid to the work from which I have quoted above, I should not have thought it well to insist on points with which you are, I doubt not, as fully impressed as I am: but that book weakens the sanctions of natural religion, and minimises the comfort which it affords us, while it does more to undermine than to support the foundations of what is commonly called belief. Therefore I was glad to embrace this opportunity of protesting. Otherwise I should not have been so serious on a matter that transcends all seriousness. Lord Beaconsfield cut it shorter with more effect. When asked to give a rule of life for the son of a friend he said, "Do not let him try and find out who wrote the letters of Junius." Pressed for further counsel he added, "Nor yet who was the man in the iron mask"--and he would say no more. Don't bore people. And yet I am by no means sure that a good many people do not think themselves ill-used unless he who addresses them has thoroughly well bored them--especially if they have paid any money for hearing him. My great namesake said, "Surely the pleasure is as great of being cheated as to cheat," and great as the pleasure both of cheating and boring undoubtedly is, I believe he was right. So I remember a poem which came out some thirty years ago in Punch, about a young lady who went forth in quest to "Some burden make or burden bear, but which she did not greatly care, oh Miserie." So, again, all the holy men and women who in the Middle Ages professed to have discovered how to make the best of life took care that being bored, if not cheated, should have a large place in their programme. Still there are limits, and I close not without fear that I may have exceeded them.

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