alkaline ley. A little wax or paraffin is added to prevent crystallization. Sperm candles have a high illuminating power, and notwithstanding their costliness, a considerable trade is done in them. Thic well-known composite candles are made of a mixture of palm-acid and the stearine of cocoa- nut oil in various proportions. Belmont sperm is made of hot-pressed distilled palm-acid ; Belmont wax of the same mineral tinged with gamboge. Night lights are short thick cylinders of fat, with a very thin wick, calculated usually to burn from six to ten hours. In making them, the melted fat is poured into shallow moulds having movable bottoms, with a projecting wire which moulds a narrow tube for the wick. By pressing up the bottom the cylinders of fat are ejected ; a wax-covered wick supported on a small piece of tin is afterwards inserted, and is cemented at the bottom part by pressing the night light on a warm porcelain slab. Child s niyht lights are made in paper cases of the nature of pill boxes, having a hole in the bottom through which the tin-supported and waxed wick has been
inserted.A candle is a simple but ingenious contrivance for sup plying a flame with as much melted material as it can con sume without smoking. If the thickness of the candle be properly adapted to that of the wick, the fatty matter immediately below the flame is melted, so that a cup-like reservoir is produced, always properly filled for feeding the flame. The fibres of the wick act as a congeries of capillary tubes which convey the fluid fat into the flame, where, being exposed to a high temperature and sheltered from the air by the outer shell of flame, it becomes sub jected to a dry distillation. The inflammable vapour thus produced rises, and by constant combustion diminishes in quantity and consequently in diameter, until at length it entirely disappears in a point. A current of air from below is produced by the heat of the flame ; the oxygen of the air, aided by the high temperature, decomposes the inflam mable vapour of the f#t into hydrogen and carbon, and unites with these to form water and carbonic acid.
The interior dark part of a candle or other flame contains unignited inflammable vapour which will not of itself sup port combustion ; it may be drawn off with a glass tube and ignited at a distance. According to Frankland, the luminosity of an ordinary candle, lamp, or gas flame is due, not, as commonly supposed, to the separation of solid particles of carbon, but to that of very dense hydrocar bons, which produce the same effect as the vapours of arsenic and phosphorus in their respective flames.
The excise duty of ^d. per Ib. on tallow candles, and 3Jd. per Ib. on wax and spermaceti candles, was repealed in 1832.
(a. b. m.)
CANDLEMAS, a church festival, held on the 2d of February, which has in Scotland been chosen as one of the four term-days. The festival commemorates the purifica tion of the Virgin ; and the observances to which it owes its name, viz., the lighting of candles, and, in the Roman Catholic Church, the consecration of the candles which are to be used during the year for ecclesiastical purposes, are said to have an emblematical reference to the prophecy of Simeon that the child Jesus should become " a light to lighten the Gentiles." The institution of this feast dates probably from the reign of Justinian, and the year 542 is sometimes fixed upon as that of its first celebration. It is supposed to have grown out of the heathen festivals held in this month, a view which is supported by the following considerations : (1), The word February (con nected with februare) denotes purification ; (2), in this month the purification of the people took place ; (3), the rites of the Lupercalia, which were celebrated on the 15th, included the lighting of candles, in allusion to those used by Ceres in her search for Proserpine; and (4), the origin of other Christian feasts appears to have been similar.
CANDLESTICK, in the earlier meaning of the word, was the name applied to any form of support on which lights, whether candles or lamps, were fixed; and so it happens that what would now be called a candelabrum is still some times spoken of from tradition as a candlestick, e.g., as when Moses was commanded to make a candlestick for the tabernacle, of hammered gold, a talent in weight, and con sisting of a base with a shaft rising out of it and six arms, and with seven lamps supported on the summits of the six arms and central shaft. When Solomon built the temple, he placed in it ten golden candlesticks, five on the north and five on the south side of the Holy Place ; but after the Babylonish captivity, the golden candlestick was again placed in the temple, as it had been before in the tabernacle by Moses. On the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, it was carried with other spoils to Rome. Representations of the seven-branched candlestick, as it is called, occur on the arch of Titus at Rome, and on antiquities found in the Catacombs at Rome. The primitive form of candle stick was a torch made of slips of bark, vine tendrils, or wood, dipped in wax or tallow, tied together and held in the hand by the lower end, such as are frequently figured on ancient painted vases. The next step was to attach to them a cup (discus) to catch the dripping wax or tallow. See Candelabrum.
CANDLISH, Robert Smith, D.D. (1806-1873), an eminent Scottish clergyman, was born at Edinburgh on the 23d March 1806. His father, who was a teacher of medicine, having died a few weeks after his birth, the widow and family removed to Glasgow, where young Candlish was brought up and educated. In 1818 he entered the University of Glasgow, and after a curriculum of five sessions, during which he carried off many honours, he duly graduated M.A. Entering immediately on his professional studies, he passed during the years 1823-26 through the prescribed course at the divinity hall, then presided over by Dr Stevenson MacGill. While carrying on his studies he had been largely occupied, according to the common Scotch practice, with private teaching, and on leaving the divinity hall he accompanied a pupil us private tutor to Eton. On the termination of this engage ment in 1829, he entered upon his own proper work, having been licensed to preach during the summer vacation of the previous year. He was employed for two years as assistant to the minister of the parish of St Andrews, Glasgow, and he subsequently occupied a similar situation for about the same period in the parish of Bonhill, Dum bartonshire. In each case the entire duties of the charge devolved upon him, and he fulfilled them with characteristic energy and zeal. It was not until 1834, after he had offered himself for service in Canada, in the belief that he was not to find a sphere of labour at home, that he obtained a settled charge as minister of the important parish of St George s, Edinburgh. Here he at once took the place he so long held as one of the ablest preachers in Scotland. Destitute of natural oratorical gifts, and somewhat ungainly in his manner, he attracted and even rivetted the attention of his audience by a rare combination of intellectual keenness, emotional fervour, spiritual insight, and power of dramatic representation of character and life. His theology was that of the Scottish Calvinistic school, but he combined with the narrowness that springs from strong conviction the breadth that springs from tender sympathy. With such qualities it was natural that he should gather round him one of the largest and most intelligent congregations in the Scottish metropolis.
