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unity that should characterize our small family of planets, and that tends to confuse our ideas in relation to the sublime sequences which, most assuredly, bind in one harmonious whole all the operations of the Creator.

If the luminous atmosphere that is said to surround the sun, or the gases that are alleged to be in a constant and violent state of combustion within the vast circumference of that atmosphere, are the immediate and only source of light and heat to the individual planets within the sphere of solar attraction, then, as already intimated, Mercury must, in the absence of modifying circumstances, be on fire, to the very core, so to speak, while Neptune should, on the other hand, be little better than a solid ball of ice. But, supposing we venture to imagine that a positive expression of light and heat is evolved within the atmospheres of the various planets only: then, might we not begin to discern the road a little more clearly before us, even though it should still be encumbered with some difficulties?

It is said that an impulse given by the sun to the ether, at a point 95,000,000 miles from us, reaches the earth in something like eight minutes. But, as light or heat seems to have no mission to perform save in the immediate vicinity of the planets, the evolve. ment of either at any vast distance from these bodies would apparently serve no good purpose, but would, on the contrary, seem to indicate a waste of power and a want of design. We should, however, be able to relieve ourselves here if we entertained the proposition that this mysterious impulse, which causes the ether, so sensitive and sublimated is the latter, to vibrate many hundred billions of times in a second, does not express itself in any appreciable degree while traversing the vast, impalpable ocean that fills the uniTerse of space, but manifests its existence only when it encounters a dense or foreign body like our atmosphere, where it might be presumed to express itself in a manner widely different from that which characterized its unimpeded course down through what might be termed the silent and mysterious realms of nothingness.

The existence of different media and forces seems indispensable to the production of phenomena of any description. The aërolite Sweeps through space in coldness and darkDess until it enters our atmosphere, when it becomes a centre of light and heat so intense that it is frequently consumed before it reaches the earth. Every condition of being seems to express itself through a conflict of forces, how harmonious soever the antagonism may be. Perfect homogeneity is but another name for non-existence. So that this mighty, allpervading ocean of ether, which is sensitive and attenuated beyond the human comprehension, were absolute nothingness but for the forces that antagonize with it. Had it no shores to break upon while vibrating to the apalpable impulse already mentioned - no element differing in nature or density from

to disturb its equilibrium-then were the mighty womb of space empty indeed; for the heavens should virtually be robbed of every radiant point that now studs their azure ex

Danse.

Perhaps it may not be difficult to prove that even directly beneath a noontide, tropical sun, the higher we mount through the regions of our atmosphere the colder and darker it becomes. From this, one might be inclined to argue that our earth, with all the other planets, may be regarded as a vast daguerreotype-plate, coated with the atmosphere, as with chemicals, upon the face of which we find kindled into life and light some of the occult forces brought to bear upon it by our great centre, the sun. Possibly the first feeble impressions of the hosts of heaven, as lumininous bodies, are photographed faintly upon the outer limits of our atmosphere, and probably these impressions become more powerful and clearly defined as that medium becomes more dense, until, at the surface of the earth, they are reflected, as it were, with a maximum intensity of light and heat. Nor does this idea appear less incomprehensible than the fact that neither latitude nor the directness of the sun's rays is the truest measure of cold, or light, or heat. The truth of this latter assertion will scarcely be disputed when, at the equator, and consequently on the self-same degree of latitude, we find, within a radius of five or six miles, regions differing widely from each other in fauna and flora, and exhibiting every degree of heat and cold peculiar to the various zones. For example, let us take any point in the very heart of the tropics, where the mountains sweep up from the level of the sea to a height of twenty thousand feet, and we shall meet, at their base, valleys of endless bloom, teeming with life; while but six or seven thousand yards from those passionate vales, up the mountain-side, after encountering almost every variety of climate, we find ourselves in the midst of regions the most desolate, without a solitary vestige of animal or vegetable life, and buried beneath a savage waste of eternal snow; so that latitude is not the true measure of climate or of heat and cold, inasmuch as we see it exhibiting directly under the line the very same characteristics which distinguish it at the poles. We must, therefore, seek for some other standard to which we can appeal with more certainty, and this it appears is to be found in our atmosphere only, where the gradations of heat and cold, if not of light also, are as to the difference in density of the various strata that compose it-the measure being true at any given point, and not affected by local influences.

For the sake of illustration, let us, in imagination, project a line perpendicular to the equator for a distance of twenty thousand feet in the direction of the mid-day sun; and let us assume that this line is identical with the course of a single impulse sped through space from that luminary to the earth, in relation to which impulse, or ray of light, if you will, the angle of incidence and of reflection shall coincide. Let us now, while the vertical sun rests on the top of this line, as it were, philosophize upon some of the strata of atmosphere through which it passes, always remembering that the atmosphere is densest at the level of the sea, and that it becomes gradually attenuated as we ascend through the regions of space. Now, it has

been ascertained, beyond peradventure, that at the lower end of this line a man may be dying from the effects of extreme heat the self-same moment that, at the upper end, which is nearer the sun, another man may be dying from the effects of extreme cold-the one being broiled and the other being frozen to death. Nor is this all; for midway between these two victims, or at a height of eight or nine thousand feet, we find a third person enjoying himself in the open air to the top of his bent.

At no point of the earth's surface are the regions, or rather the extremes, of heat and cold defined so sharply as under the line. This is, doubtless, owing to the fact that the angle of incidence, and that of reflection, are coincident on the part of the solar beams. As we recede from the equator this angle becomes greater and greater, with a corresponding diminution of light and heat, until we reach the poles, where it falls into one horizontal line, as it were. And perhaps this gradual diminution of light and heat is not so much owing to the alleged fact that as we recede from the line any given number of rays of light are made to cover a greater space, as to the obvious one that the angle of incidence and that of reflection become more obtuse at each successive step. Pencils of what we call light are of infinitesimal proportions. Let us, then, project one of the smallest within the compass of an experiment upon a reflecting surface in a dark room, and perhaps we shall be able to discover that the secondary ray performs a more important mission in the concentration of light and heat than is usually accredited to it; for it is obvious that, the smaller the angle here, the more light and heat are expressed within it; while it appears to be equally true, also, that the gradual shading off of climate, from intense heat to intense cold between the equator and the poles, is owing perhaps more clearly to the gradual augmentation of this combined angle than to any other circumstance. Still, at any intervening point, the vertical admeasurement, through the atmosphere, holds relatively good—that is, the more attenuated any of the strata, the colder and, doubtless, the darker it is.

From these few speculations, it may pos sibly appear to some that the nearness of a planet to the sun, or the remoteness of one from that mighty orb, has not, after all, so much to do with the degree of light and heat experienced by these bodies. Graduated atmospheres, from Mercury to Neptune, would seem to secure something like an equal distribution of light and heat among all the members of our system. A highly-attenuated atmosphere for Mercury, and one correspondingly dense for Neptune, would place both these planets in a more comfortable position, in our imagination, than they have occupied heretofore. JAMES MCCARROLL.

In our recent illustrated description of M. de la Bastie's process for toughening glass, we bade our readers prepare for an early return to the subject, since at that time attention was mainly directed to the process rather than its results. These results or evidences of the character of the discovery were forci

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bly presented by Mr. Nursey, in certain recent experiments before the Society of Arts: "In the course of Mr. Nursey's experiments," says the Popular Science Review, some glass dessert-plates were dropped from a height of between four and five feet to the ground without fracture, one of them rebounding over a table. Subsequently one of the audience dropped a plate from a height of four feet on to an iron grating, and it rebounded to the height of a foot without injury. Grease-catchers, to put on candles, were thrown with some force from the same height with similar result, except when four were thrown together, and then one of them broke into innumerable fragments, without the sharp, cutting edges which are so characteristic of the fracture of glass not so toughened. A piece of plateglass about six inches square and a quarterinch thick was next put into a frame of wood, so as to raise the under surface of the glass half an inch from the floor. A brass fourounce weight was then dropped several times from a height of ten feet fairly on to the centre of the piece of glass with perfect impunity. Next an eight-ounce weight was tried with the same result.

Then a piece of one-eighthinch plate was substituted, and the lecturer, a man approaching twelve stone in weight, put his heel in the centre and spun round on it. Next the eight-ounce weight was dropped on it, and, as in the case of the thicker piece, without the slightest damage. A piece of the same quarter-inch plate-glass, which had not been toughened, was broken with the usual star fracture by dropping the four-ounce weight from a height of two feet. At last, as it seemed impossible to break the plates of glass in any other way, a hammer was brought, and a smart blow being given to one of the quarter-inch-thick plates, it shivered into a great number of very small pieces, and with the peculiarity of the edges of the pieces being rounded, as if partially fused after fracture."

It is only by these and kindred ocular demonstrations that the remarkable siguificance and practical value of this discovery may be understood; and in view of these facts we feel justified in emphasizing our former statement that the discovery of De la Bastie's is one of the most important ever made in the department of industrial art.

IN continuation of this subject, we are prompted to refer to the value of toughened glass in optics. One of the earliest and most forcible objections to the toughened glass was that its extreme hardness rendered it difficult of treatment in the construction of lenses, etc., it being also uncertain as to whether the treatment it had undergone might not so have altered its physical structure as to render it unfit for use in optical instruments. In a recent letter to Nature, Mr. H. Pocklington reviews these objections in detail, and gives an extended account of his and other experiments in this direction. The general interest which the subject excites, and the importance of all these practical discussions, induce us to give extended space to these records of experiments in the several departments. The writer above noticed states as follows: "Immediately after the publication of M. de la Bastie's specification I prepared specimens of the glass. I submitted them to careful optical examination by polarized light. Perhaps the best experiments are those made by means of short cylinders and small cubes and parallelopipeds carefully 'hardened.' A small cube with half-inch sides thus prepared has its sides ground plain

and polished. The operation of polishing may be dispensed with if a small microscopical thin cover be cemented on the ground surface with Canada balsam. The cube is then mounted between strips of blackened cork, and examined in the usual way by means of Nicol's prisms, glass plates, or other appropriate polariscope. The beautiful chromatic phenomena thus brought out at once indicate that, among the causes which operate to produce the hardness of the glass, powerful compression of the interior by the contracting exterior must be one. The phenomena are, in fact, essentially those of compressed glass, and the curves of color, or black and yellow, seen when the glass is examined by white or monochromatic light, indicate successive curves of tension and balance or no-tension. In a carefully-prepared glass rod of half-inch length these curves are rings traversed by a well-marked black cross. In an oval the rings assume the character of those seen in biaxile crystals. When plates are examined, the light being transmitted from back to front, they appear to act essentially as bi-refracting plates, but with the crosses and bands somewhat ir

regularly distributed, and capable of being referred to the angles of the plates or to centres of unequal heating. My experiments on the mechanical properties of the glass have chiefly been confined to testing its hardness and the possibility of grinding it. So far as I have gone at present, I make it to be nearly twice as hard as ordinary glass, which it scratches with ease. It can be cut with a good file well moistened with turpentine, and can be ground on a stone with sand without fracturing, if great care be taken and the glass be well prepared. One piece which manifested when under the polariscope evidences of illbalanced tension, the neutral line lying near one surface, submitted to transverse grooving, but disintegrated on being ground on one surface as soon as the outer surface had been ground away to near the neutral line. There appears to be an easily-reached limit beyond which the surfaces must not be unequally removed; but, as my friend Mr. Thomas Fairley, F. R. S. E., has been good enough to show me, there is practically no limit beyond which both surfaces may not be simultaneously removed. This result, foretold by me from polariscopical analysis, Mr. Fairley has shown by dissolving the opposing surfaces away by hydrofluoric acid. The least hard portions dissolved much more readily than the thoroughly hardened, and the etched surfaces show wavy lines closely following the tension lines shown by the polariscope. There is, further, this remarkable feature, that the inner portion of the glass proves to be essentially common glass, which fractures in the ordinary way. Further experiments are necessary for the complete elucidation of the subject, and are in progress, but the preceding may be useful to fellow-workers on the subject."

THE fact that tinned surfaces often contain lead as an adulteration in sufficient quantities to act injuriously upon acid solutions of vegetables, fruits, etc., which are brought in contact with them, is well known, and certain wise counselors do not hesitate to protest against the general use of all these canned fruits, which are put up in tin instead of glass cans. Since, however, nothing less than an astounding wholesale catastrophe is likely to induce a public abandonment of this class of luxuries, it may be of service to name a simple method by which the presence of acid can be detected, and thus the manufacturer compelled to furnish a purer material. Having

cleaned the suspected surface thoroughly, place upon it a drop or thin coating of nitric acid. Through the chemical reaction thus induced, stannic oxide is formed, and nitrate of lead, if this metal be present. After a few moments the acid should be expelled by means of gentle heating; the pulverulent spot produced by the acid should then be treated with a solution composed of five parts of iodide of potassium in one hundred parts of water. Should lead be present, this treatment will result in the formation of yellow iodide of lead, which may be readily detected by its characteristic color, since the iodide has no action upon the pure oxide of tin.

CERTAIN interesting facts, and of an order suggestive of further inquiry, were recently presented by Dr. G. L. Phipson. They relate to the interesting phenomena of intermittent ebullition, and of the instances cited was the following: When water strongly acidified with hydrochloric acid and containing a small quantity of benzole was heated, was found to enter into violent ebullition every sixty seconds. After a while this action ceased alto

gether, and then recommenced, the intervals then being only thirty seconds, which intervals in turn were again reduced first to twenty, then ten, and finally eight seconds. The temperature of the vapor in the flask remained constant at 101° C., and that of the liquld at 103.5° C.

THE Photographic News notices at length the experiments recently made at Trieste to determine the relative intensity of various colored lights. These tests were of a practical character, and were conducted with a view to establish the relative value of colored lights in light-houses. The first place was given to the white light, then came red and green. At half a league's distance the dark-blue lantern was invisible, and the deep-blue nearly so; and it was observed that at a certain distance it was easy to confuse the green with the white: hence, the authorities at Trieste recommend that this colored lantern be only used in the vicinity of the red and white.

In his lecture on light, delivered before the Royal Institute during May last, Professor Cornu stated that, as the result of five hundred and eight experiments, conducted with a view to determine the velocity of light, the average gave one hundred and eighty-six thousand six hundred and sixty miles per second.

Miscellany:

NOTEWORTHY THINGS GLEANED HERE

FROM

AND THERE.

ROM Mrs. Burton's "Inner Life of Syria" we derive the following in regard to Arab women:

The woman of the settled Arab, in all classes of life, as a rule, lives thus: The husband rises in the morning, she brings his soap and water, and he washes his hands and face. She gives him his breakfast and nargile, and then he goes out. If he is good he will look after his fields, his vineyards, his silk-worms, his shop, or whatever he has. If he is not a steady man he will lounge in the bath and smoke with his friends, neglecting his business. She cleans her house, prepares the evening meal. On his return she must bring him water to wash his hands and face, and she will

sit on the floor and wash his feet. She gives him his coffee, sherbet, and nargile. Then she brings his dinner, and while he eats she stands and waits upon him, with arms crossed over the breast, and eyes humbly cast down. She dares not speak unless he speaks to her, and does every thing to please him. She then gives him his coffee and pipe, and leaves him to spend the evening as he pleases. This sounds cruel, but, when the pressure of the master's presence is taken off the Eastern woman, she is not half so nice in the common classes. Then she sits in a corner of the room on the floor, and takes the remainder of the dinner with her children, and most probably she sleeps with them. Besides all this, the poorer orders must not only do the whole house-work-lighting fires, boiling water, and cooking dinner-but clean the house, attend to the children, wait on the husband, draw and carry water on her head, break the wood for three or four hours, milk the cows, feed the sheep and goats, drive them to drink, dig the fields, cut the corn, make and bake bread -in fact, all the hard drudgery of both man and woman.

The higher classes of large towns who have grown sufficiently rich, and scraped up a European idea or two, pride themselves on doing nothing but dress, paint, lounge on divans, with nargiles and coffee, sweets, scents, and gossip, and spend several hours in the Turkish bath; they grow fat and yellow, waddling and unwieldy. There is much of this in grand Syrian life. They only see the men of their family, just like the rest, unless they love en cachette, and then, if they find an opportunity, may converse with uncovered face; but woe betide the lovers if the police or the relatives get wind of it, through a servant or an enemy! If a husband comes back to a home made un

At dinner her father knew he had rice on his beard, and that the girl was ashamed. "What is it, O my daughter?"

"My father, the gazelles are feeding in a valley full of grass!"

He understood, and wiped his beard.
"Wake us early, O my daughter!"
"Yes, my father."

She called him: "My father, the light is at hand."

"How dost thou know, O my daughter?" "The anklets are cold to my feet; I smell the flowers on the river-bank, and the sunbird is singing."

Thence they went to the fellah's village. It was now his turn.

Fellah. "My daughter!"

Girl. "What do you want, father?" "Take our horses and picket them." The ground being hard, she hammered uselessly, and, losing her temper, threw down the stone, crying:

"I have knocked it so hard, and it won't go in."

"Change it then, girl."

At dinner he purposely dropped some rice on his beard. She pointed at him, began to laugh, and said, "Wipe your chin, my father."

On going to bed he said, "Wake us early, my daughter."

Yes, father," she replied. "Father," she called at dawn, "get up; it is daylight!"

"How do you know, my daughter?" "My stomach is empty, I want to eat." The fellah was obliged to acknowledge the superiority of a Bedouin household over his

own.

FROM Mr. Hamerton's paper, in the Portcomfortable by a careless, foolish wife, he will folio, on the painter Etty, we select a passage

apply the stick to her without remorse, but not brutally or injuriously, and, if she answers or uses foul language, he will pick off his shoe and strike her on the mouth. But do not be squeamish, my British readers-read our own police-reports, and think the Syrian husband an angel. There are no gouged-out eyes, no ribs broken by "running kicks," and no smashing with the hammer and the poker. This is simply a neglected man asserting his rights with a few stripes in the privacy of his house -not a shameful street-brawl under the influence of drink.

The Bedouins pride themselves on having much more intelligence and refinement, romance and poetry, than the settled Arab races; they have an especial contempt for the fellahin. One day a Bedouin threw this in the face of a Christian fellah. They had some high words about it, upon which the Bedouin said, "Well, thou shalt come to our tents. I will ask my daughter but three questions, we will note her answers. I will accompany thee to thy village, and thou shalt ask thy daughter the same three questions, and we will compare her language with my daughter's. Both are unedueated. My daughter knows naught but Nature's language. Thine may have seen something of towns or villages, and passers-by, and have some advantage over mine."

They first went to the camp. Bedouin father. "O my daughter!" Girl. "Here I am, O my father!" Father. "Take our horses and picket them." The ground was stony, and she hammered at the peg.

Girl. "My father, I knocked the iron against the stone, but the ground will not open to receive her visitor."

"Change it, O my daughter!"

descriptive of his sojourn abroad, in which we have some amusing instances of the artist's eccentric characteristics:

In 1816 Etty goes abroad. The story of his travels seems to us of this generation like a fragment of ancient history. He crosses from Brighton to Dieppe, is twenty-four hours at sea, much of the time in a narrow berth, and finally lands in an adventurous, unforeseen manner by moonlight. However brief may be this biography, however simple the scheme of it, we cannot omit the artist's teapot, his constant friend and companion. He loves tea much too well to trust Continental grocers or tea-makers, but carries his own materials and apparatus; tea for twelve months, sugar, two kettles, in case of accident to one of them, and the rest. Of course, such supplies and apparatus are a stumbling-block to the minds of Continental custom-house officers, who will never understand how one man can need them all for his own use. Etty's troubles begin at Dieppe, where one of the tea-kettles is confiscated as superfluous, but restored afterward. Etty goes to Rouen in the diligence, and sees the cathedral, which he naturally thinks inferior to York; and we may be sure that he will never meet with any ecclesiastical building in Europe which, to him, will appear equal to the great Minster. He arrives at Paris, enters by what, in his barbarous French, he calls the "Barrier d'Neuilly," then lands at le bureau de diligence. He does not like Paris very much, and soon leaves for Switzerland. He crosses the Jura, "passing through ravines such as Salvator Rosa would have delighted to paint," the stock allusion to Salvator Rosa being still, at that time, unexhausted. He is not happy in the country

inns, and becomes especially indignant about custom-house people on the frontier of Switzerland, because they make him pay duty on his stock of sugar. Continental habits put him out he wants his English breakfast, and does not approve of the déjeuner à la fourchette, with "sour wine." He complains that he can get "no milk, no tea, nor any thing genial." We should have thought that the great canister in the portmanteau ought to have lasted into Switzerland; perhaps it was packed up and inaccessible for the present. The bright teapot is kept out, however, and Etty characteristically refuses the substantial French déjeuner to go and make himself patriotic cups of tea and slices of bread-and-butter in the kitchen of the road-side inns, where the diligence halts. After a brief astonishment at the majesty of Switzerland he crosses the Simplon, and finds himself in Italy, where the vineyards delight him " with grapes dropping in clusters, rich, black, and luxuriant, creeping fantastically over alleys of trelliswork, forming a cool and delicious walk beneath." He comes to Florence with the intention of staying and studying there; but finds himself in a state of extreme mental depression, which has a bad effect upon his health. This depression is due to two different causes. He left England in love-anxiously, rather than hopefully, in love; and this disturbs his peace: but it is evident, also, that he was too intensely national in his habits and feelings to enjoy a residence on the Continent. A man who cannot stop at an auberge without producing an English teapot, who thinks that vin ordinaire is sour, and who prefers bread-and-butter to a substantial déjeuner, ought to remain in some English home. At Florence he "feels unequal to the task of going to Rome or Naples," and decidedly says, "I am certain it is not in my power to reside abroad." He says that Florence has a character of gloom about it that he cannot bear. "I am sick to death," he adds, "of traveling in a country where the accommodations are such as no Englishman can have any idea of." He stays just four days at Florence, then leaves it in disgust, and turns back homeward by Pisa, Leghorn, Genoa, Turin, the Mont Cenis, Chambery, Lyons, and Paris-homesick all the time, and doing little or nothing but getting as quickly as possible over the long leagues which separate Italy from England. At Paris he determines to work in Régnault's atelier, but finds the students a rude set, and the place a perfect bear-garden-which, from similar experiences, we can well believe. Being "very uncomfortable" in Régnault's atelier, he stays there only three days, and very soon gets to Calais, crossing the Channel as quickly as possible in a French vessel, and traveling to London in a Deal coach, with sentiments of love and affection for every brick in the English metropolis.

THERE is a movement in London for the erection of a statue to Lord Byron. A recent meeting of a committee for the purpose was held, which was presided over by Mr. Disraeli. We select from the London Daily News the following, elicited by the occasion:

"Byron was born," said Mr. Disraeli, yesterday, "in an age of contracted sympathies and restricted thought;" and it is not very easy to agree with Mr. Disraeli here. Probably at no time have the widest sympathies and thought the most absolutely untrammeled ever influenced the practical conduct of Englishmen of genius so much as in the age of

Godwin and of Shelley. The sentimental sympathies of the French Revolution-the unrestricted thought of that age of reasonreally did affect the conduct of Godwin and of Shelley, and nearly brought even Coleridge into practical contact with pantisocracy. Ideas not less unrestricted than those which came from France to England in the beginning of this century are current enough now, but they do not seem to have their old active effect on the persons who profess them in drawingroom conversation. They were more fresh and vigorous in Byron's day, and one of the reasons why Mr. Disraeli had to apologize for Byron's private life, and Lord Rosslyn had to admit that there "were reprehensible details in Byron's life," is that these ideas did not satisfy Byron. There was too much of the English spirit in his genius for him to be the dupe of gorgeous dreams about universal freedom, love, and equality. Perhaps the same thing might be stated more fairly in the assertion that he was not so intoxicated with the revolutionary spirit as to believe that the Revolutionary Utopia was near its fulfillment, and even at the doors. Like Achilles in Homer, he knew instinctively that his life was to be brief, and he determined that the "something unearthly" in his nature should work itself out in securing for him at once fame and pleas

ure.

The consequences of the fact that Byron was touched by the revolutionary spirit, and that he could not accept the revolutionary dreams, are manifold. One of them is the fact that there is not a public monument in England to the poet who "is the greatest elementary force in her modern literature." Byron alone, of English poets, shared with Goethe. the glory of being honored in other countries than his own, of being read in every language, and filling all men's mouths. Scott tasted something of the same wide popularity, but Scott won his fame as a novelist rather than as a poet. He at least has been honored enough in his own country, and the names he used in his tales meet the traveler in every village of his native land. Byron has not only missed this popular acceptance, but he is without so much as a monument in England. "It is not," as Mr. Disraeli said, "till half a century has elapsed that Englishmen have met for the first time in public meeting to devise some means of a national expression of admiration and gratitude to qualities so transcendent." The reason is that Byron, in his fiery strength, in his license unrestrained by any doctrine of duty, new or old, and imbittered by a lingering dread that the faith taught him in his childhood might be true, threw himself into enjoyment of his life with the energy of some natural force rather than with the zest of a mere libertine. Mr. Matthew Arnold, in a poem of deep feeling, has described Heine as a living embodiment of the ironical smile of the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the time. Byron was in the same way an incarnation of its passionate delight in freedom, and in the memory of the ancient liberty of Greece and Rome. The habitual mockery with which he laughed at the compromises and half-measures of his own age of shaky reformations became sincere with eloquent passion when he turned in thought to the memory of the old republics. "Through him," as Lord Lovelace truly said, "and through the fire and energy of his appeal to the natives of the two peninsulas, have those nations, after long centuries of oppression and subjection, emerged into that freedom and regained that liberty of which he was the precursor among them." This was the practical result of Byron's work, and this re-¦

sult was almost the last side of his influence to strike men in England. Byron's powerful appeal had its share in the birth of that romantic school of literature in Italy which fostered the movement that inspired Mazzini. In Greece, Byron's practical influence has already been recognized by the erection of a statue at Missolonghi. In the minds of Greeks and Italians Byron was Childe Harold, but Childe Harold with a definite purpose-namely, the purpose of awakening the nations of the South to the memory of their old freedom, and to efforts to regain it. In the eyes of Englishmen, Byron has too often seemed the vulgar Don Juan of his letters to Moore. Unlike the poet spoken of by Mr. Tennyson, he did not give us of his best alone, but of all that was in him to give. His revolt against society, his disbelief, his recklessness and bitterness, have been too well remembered, while the essence of his poetic genius, his individuality and strength, have been forgotten after the first flush of his popularity passed away. The years have brought his figure into the proper perspective: we can see him as a poet possessed by the strange fervor of his time, and not to be judged too severely in an age more patient, contemplative, and resigned.

beautiful stranger has enchanted all eyes, the king comes into the kitchen to talk over the entertainment with the queen, whom he addresses as "sacred majesty mamma." And he goes into ecstasies about the loveliness and splendor of the unknown princess. Cinderella, hearing all this, mutters over and over again, as quickly as she can utter the words,

Giera-mi, giera-mi" (“'Twas I, 'twas I"). "What's the matter with you," says the king, "that you mutter and mumble and jabber, and no one can make out a word you say? Mind the hearth, and hold your tongue, do!" After the second ball, the same thing happens. But this time Cinderella speaks a little more distinctly; and, when the king describes the marvelous beauty and brilliancy of the unknown lady, she says, Giera-mi, giera-mi!”

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so as to be heard and understood.

"What's the matter with you now, you ugly scarecrow?" said the king, and he took up the tongs and gave her a rap on the pate. But she went on saying, "'Twas I, 'twas I ! yes, yes, 'twas I!" "Well," said the king, "I sha'n't argue any more with this ugly fright, for, if I did, I feel that I should kill her outright."

The slipper plays but a small part in the Venetian" Cinderella." It is not made of glass, but of diamonds; and Cinderella does AN article on "Venetian Popular Lenot lose it after the ball, but throws it to the gends," in Cornhill, derived from a collecservants whom the king sets to watch her and tion of fairy and other folk tales made by a discover whither she goes, in order that, while they are scrambling for it, she may get clear native Venetian gentleman named Beroni, off. His majesty falls sick of love and disapcontains, among other examples, the sub-pointment, takes to his bed, and refuses food. joined very much altered version of one of. For several days he will eat nothing, but at the most popular of our fairy-stories :

The Venetian version of "Cinderella" differs from ours chiefly in the circumstance that the heroine is a cinder-wench in the palace of the young king whom she eventually marries. And this young gentleman, occasionally coming into the kitchen to talk to the queen, his mother (who was a model housewife, if one may judge from her constant presence in those regions), seas the dirty, sordidlooking cinder-wench, and takes a violent disgust to her; so much so, indeed, that the first time he beholds her at her duties about the hearth where the cooking is going on, he exclaims, with more frankness than politeness: "Mind you touch nothing, d'ye hear? Because it turns my stomach to look at you!" The first morning after the ball in which the

length he calls his "sacred majesty mamma," and says that, if she will make him a breadsoup, he thinks he can eat it. But she must prepare it with her own hands, and let no one else touch it. Above all, she is to take care that the cinder-wench does not come near the soup. Sacred majesty mamma promises to do as he desires. She makes the soup, and cooks it over the fire, watching all the while that the scarecrow of a cinder-wench does not touch it. But for one moment her majesty looks away from the saucepan, and in that moment Cinderella drops into the soup a diamond ring which the king had put on her finger at the last ball. This, of course, leads to the discovery of the whole story, and the missing diamond slipper is fitted on to Cinderella's foot as an additional corroboration of her identity with the beautiful stranger.

Notices.

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APPLETONS' JOURNAL is published weekly, price 10 cents per number, or $4.00 per annum, in advance (postage prepaid by the publishers). The design of the publishers and editors is to furnish a periodical of a high class, one which shall embrace a wide scope of topics, and afford the reader, in addition to an abundance of entertaining popular literature, a thorough survey of the progress of thought, the advance of the arts, and the doings in all branches of intellectual effort. Travel, adventure, exploration, natural history, social themes, the arts, fiction, literary reviews, current topics, will each have large place in its plan. The Journal is also issued in MONTHLY PARTS; subscription price, $4.50 per annum, with postage prepaid. D. APPLETON & Co., Publishers, New York.

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