Transcriber's Note:
Underscores "_" before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
in the original text.
Equal signs "=" before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold=
in the original text.
The carat character "^", designates a superscript.
Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
Old or antiquated spellings have been preserved.
Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations
in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered.
Footnotes have been moved to the end of the article in which
they occur.
[Illustration: Eng^d. by J. T. Gage, New York. THE LESSON.]
THE ECLECTIC MAGAZINE OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
OLD SERIES COMPLETE IN LXIII. VOLS.
JANUARY, 1844, TO DECEMBER, 1864.
NEW SERIES, VOL. XLI.
JANUARY TO JUNE, 1885.
NEW YORK:
E. R. PELTON, PUBLISHER, 25 BOND STREET.
1885.
INDEX TO VOLUME XLI.
FRONTISPIECE: THE LESSON.
PAGE.
AGNOSTICISM AND THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY, LAST WORDS ABOUT.
By Herbert Spencer _Nineteenth Century_ 127
AMERICA, A WORD MORE ABOUT. By Matthew Arnold
_Nineteenth Century_ 433
AMERICAN AUDIENCE, THE. By Henry Irving
_Fortnightly Review_ 475
ANCIENT ORGANS OF PUBLIC OPINION. By Prof. R. C. Jebb.
_Fortnightly Review_ 107
ARNOLD’S LAY SERMON, MR. _Spectator_ 259
ART, A FEW NOTES ON PERSIAN. _Chambers’s Journal_ 396
AUTHORS AS SUPPRESSORS OF THEIR BOOKS.
By W. H. Olding, LL.B. _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 262
AUTOMATIC WRITING, OR THE RATIONALE OF PLANCHETTE.
By Frederick W. H. Myers _Contemporary Review_ 547
BANK OF ENGLAND, THE. By Henry May
_Fortnightly Review_ 679
BEHIND THE SCENES. By F. C. Burnand
_Fortnightly Review_ 408
BIG ANIMALS _Cornhill Magazine_ 778
BISMARCK’S CHARACTER, PRINCE _Temple Bar_ 386
BLACKSTONE. By G. P. Macdonell
_Macmillan’s Magazine_ 703
BYGONE CELEBRITIES AND LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS.
By Charles Mackay _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 29
BYGONE CELEBRITIES AND LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS.
By Charles Mackay, LL.D. _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 165
CAMORRA, THE. _Saturday Review_ 381
COLERIDGE AS A SPIRITUAL THINKER.
By Principal Tulloch. _Fortnightly Review_ 305
COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GHOST STORIES, THE.
By Andrew Lang _Nineteenth Century_ 805
COMMENT ON CHRISTMAS, A. By Matthew Arnold
_Contemporary Review_ 836
CONCERNING EYES. By William H. Hudson
_Gentleman’s Magazine_ 772
CORNEILLE, LE BONHOMME. By Henry M. Trollope
_Gentleman’s Magazine_ 359
CURIOSITIES OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND
_Chambers’s Journal_ 245
DAY OF STORM, A _The Spectator_ 786
DE BANANA _Cornhill Magazine_ 529
DELLA CRUSCA AND ANNA MATILDA: AN EPISODE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
By Armine T. Kent _National Review_ 336
DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN AMERICA, THE.
By William Henry Hurlburt _Nineteenth Century_ 183
DICKENS AT HOME, CHARLES. WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO HIS
RELATIONS WITH CHILDREN. By his eldest daughter
_Cornhill Magazine_ 362
DRESS, HOW SHOULD WE? THE NEW GERMAN THEORIES ON CLOTHING.
By Dora de Blaquière _Good Words_ 273
DUELLING, FRENCH. By H. R. Haweis _Belgravia_ 222
ECONOMIC EFFECT OF WAR. _Spectator_ 846
ELECTRICITY AND GAS, THE FUTURE OF _Chambers’s Journal_ 81
ELLIOT, THE LIFE OF GEORGE. By John Morley
_Macmillan’s Magazine_ 506
EMILE DE LAVELEYE _Contemporary Review_ 205
ENGLISHMEN AND FOREIGNERS _Cornhill Magazine_ 215
EXPLORATION IN A NEW DIRECTION _The Spectator_ 689
FAITHLESS WORLD, A. By Frances Power Cobbe
_Contemporary Review_ 145
FOLK-LORE FOR SWEETHEARTS. By Rev. M. G. Watkins, M. A.
_Belgravia_ 491
FOOD AND FEEDING _Cornhill Magazine_ 155
FOREIGN LITERATURE NOTES 143, 284, 426, 571, 717
FRENCH DRAMA UPON ABELARD, A. By a Conceptualist
_National Review_ 633
GENERAL GORDON AND THE SLAVE TRADE _Contemporary Review_ 92
GERMAN ABROAD, THE. By C. E. Dawkins _National Review_ 811
GOETHE. By Prof. J. R. Seeley _Contemporary Review_ 16
GO TO THE ANT. _Cornhill Magazine_ 416
HITTITES, THE. By Isaac Taylor _British Quarterly Review_ 545
HOW INSECTS BREATHE. By Theodore Wood _Good Words_ 401
IN THE NORWEGIAN MOUNTAINS.
By Oscar Frederik, King of Sweden and Norway _Temple Bar_ 521
INTERESTING WORDS, SOME. _Chambers’s Journal_ 826
IRISH HUMOR, THE DECAY OF. _The Spectator_ 383
JEWS, THE HEALTH AND LONGEVITY OF THE.
By P. Kirkpatrick Picard, M.D., M.R.C.S. _Leisure Hour_ 540
JOHNSON, SAMUEL. By Edmund Gosse _Fortnightly Review_ 178
LAUREL. _All the Year Round_ 804
LITERARY NOTICES:
The Correspondence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker,
136—The Story of My Life, 139—Our Great Benefactors,
141—Life of Mary Woolstonecraft, 141—Principles of
Political Economy, 142—A Review of the Holy Bible,
142—The Young Folks’ Josephus, 142. True, and Other
Stories, 281—Noble Blood, 281—Prince Saroni’s Wife and
the Pearl-shell Necklace, 281—Dr. Grattan, 281—The
Old-Fashioned Fairy Book, 281—Katherine, 281—White
Feathers, 281—Egypt and Babylon, from Sacred and Profane
Sources, 282—The Hundred Greatest Men: Portraits of the
Hundred Greatest Men in History, 283—Eve’s Daughters; or,
Common-Sense for Maid, Wife and Mother, 283—A Review of
the Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, 283—
The Elements of Moral Science, Theoretical and Practical,
284—Episodes of My Second Life, 423—A Historical Reference
Book, 424—Bermuda: An Idyll of the Summer Islands, 425—
Elements of Zoology, 425—The Reality of Religion, 425—
The Enchiridion of Wit: The Best Specimens of English
Conversational Wit, 426—The Dictionary of English History,
568—Personal Traits of British Authors, 569—Italy from the
Fall of Napoleon I. in 1815, to the Death of Victor Emanuel
in 1878, 569—Harriet Martineau (Famous Women Series), 570—
Weird Tales by E. T. W. Hoffman, 571—Jelly-Fish, Star-Fish
and Sea Urchins, 712—Origin of Cultivated Plants, 713—The
Adventures of Timias Terrystone, 714—The Secret of Death,
716—Greater London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People,
and Its Places, 717—Russia Under the Tzars, 851—The French
Revolution, 853—Louis Pasteur: His Life and Labors, 855—At
Grammar of the English Language in a Series of Letters,
the Sign of the Lyre, 856—Working People and their Employers,
856.
M. JULES FERRY AND HIS FRIENDS _Temple Bar_ 753
MACPHERSON’S LOVE STORY.
By C. H. D. Stocker _Leisure Hour_ 790
MAN IN BLUE, THE. By R. Davey _Merry England_ 277
MASTER, A VERY OLD _Cornhill Magazine_ 601
MASTER IN ISLAM ON THE PRESENT CRISIS,
A. INTERVIEW WITH SHEIKH DJAMAL-UD-DIN AL HUSSEINY AL AFGHANY.
_Pall Mall Gazette_ 849
MISCELLANY:
Heligoland as a Strategical Island How the Coldstreams
got their Motto Women as Cashiers The House of Lords: Can
it be Reformed? A Revolving Library A Child’s Metaphors
Has England a School of Musical Composition? Booty in War
Sir Henry Bessemer Some Personal Recollections of George
Sand The American Senate Shakespeare and Balzac The Dread
of Old Age A True Critic An Aerial Ride The Condition of
Schleswig Chinese Notions of Immortality An Approaching
Star Germans and Russians in Persia Learning to Ride A
Tragic Barring-Out Intelligence in Cats The Migration of
Birds, 858 Oriental Flower Lore What’s in a Name? Historic
Finance The Three Unities A Sunday-school Scholar A Mahdi
of the Last Century
MONTAGU, MRS _Temple Bar_ 85
MOUNTAIN OBSERVATORIES _Edinburgh Review_ 1
MYTHOLOGY IN NEW APPAREL, OLD. By J. Theodore Bent
_Macmillan’s Magazine_ 662
NEW ENGLAND VILLAGE, THREE GLIMPSES OF A
_Blackwood’s Magazine_ 120
NIHILIST, A FEMALE. By Stepniak _Cornhill Magazine_ 38
ODD QUARTERS. By Frederick Boyle _Belgravia_ 648
ORGANIC NATURE’S RIDDLE. By St. George Mivart
_Fortnightly Review_ 591
ORGANIC NATURE’S RIDDLE. By St. George Mivart
_Fortnightly Review_ 763
ORGANIZATION OF DEMOCRACY, THE. By Goldwin Smith
_Contemporary Magazine_ 609
OUTWITTED: A TALE OF THE ABRUZZI _Belgravia_ 667
PEKING, THE SUMMER PALACE. By C. F. Gordon Cumming.
_Belgravia_ 373
PIERRE’S MOTTO: A CHACUN SELON SON TRAVAIL. A TALK IN A
PARISIAN WORKSHOP ABOUT THE UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
_Leisure Hour_ 405
POETRY:
BEYOND THE HAZE. A WINTER RAMBLE REVERIE.
_Cornhill Magazine_ 84
LORD TENNYSON. By Paul H. Hayne 520
ON AN OLD SONG. By W. E. H. Lecky _Macmillan’s Magazine_ 474
RONSARD: ON THE CHOICE OF HIS TOMB. By J. P. M.
_Blackwood’s Magazine_ 202
POETRY OF TENNYSON, THE. By Roden Noel
_Contemporary Review_ 459
POLITICAL SITUATION OF EUROPE, THE.
By F. Nobili-Vitelleschi, Senator of Italy
_Nineteenth Century_ 577
POPULAR ENGLISH, NOTES ON. By the late Isaac Todhunter.
_Macmillan’s Magazine_ 561
PORTRAIT, THE. A Story of the Seen and the Unseen.
_Blackwood’s Magazine_ 315
QUANDONG’S SECRET, THE _Chambers’s Journal_ 525
REBELLION OF 1798, AN ACTOR IN THE. Letitia McClintock.
_Belgravia_ 173
REVIEW OF THE YEAR. By Frederic Harrison
_Fortnightly Review_ 445
ROMANCE OF A GREEK STATUE, A. By J. Theodore Bent
_Gentleman’s Magazine_ 499
“ROMEO AND JULIET,” THE LOCAL COLOR OF. By William Archer
_Gentleman’s Magazine_ 67
RUSSIAN ADVANCE IN CENTRAL ASIA, THE.
By Major-General Sir Henry Rawlinson, K.C.B
_Nineteenth Century_ 721
RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHER ON ENGLISH POLITICS, A
_Blackwood’s Magazine_ 692
RYE HOUSE PLOT, THE. By Alexander Charles Ewald
_Gentleman’s Magazine_ 249
SAND, GEORGE _Temple Bar_ 817
SAVAGE, THE. By Prof. F. Max Müller _Nineteenth Century_ 243
SIBERIA TO SWITZERLAND, FROM. The Story of an Escape.
By William Westfall _Contemporary Review_ 289
SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS. By William Lant Carpenter
_Gentleman’s Magazine_ 621
SIR TRISTRAM DE LYONESSE. By E. M. Smith _Merry England_ 656
SMITH, WILLIAM AND SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM _Saturday Review_ 70
SOME SICILIAN CUSTOMS. By E. Lynn Linton _Temple Bar_ 73
SOCIAL SCIENCE ON THE STAGE. By H. Sutherland Edwards
_Fortnightly Review_ 830
STATE _versus_ THE MAN, THE. By Emile de Laveleye
_Contemporary Review_ 732
STIMULANTS AND NARCOTICS. By Percy Greg
_Contemporary Review_ 479
THUNDERBOLTS _Cornhill Magazine_ 58
TRAPPISTS, AMONG THE. A GLIMPSE OF LIFE AT LE PORT DU SALUT.
By Surgeon-General H. L. Cowen _Good Words_ 53
TRUE STORY OF WAT TYLER, THE. By S. G. G. 748
TURKISH PROVERBS, SOME _The Spectator_ 787
TURNING AIR INTO WATER _All the Year Round_ 536
UNITY OF THE EMPIRE, THE. By the Marquis of Lorne
_Nineteenth Century_ 643
VIVISECTION, SCIENTIFIC VERSUS BUCOLIC. By James Cotter Morison
_Fortnightly Review_ 558
WHEN SHALL WE LOSE OUR POLE-STAR? _Chambers’s Journal_ 802
WÜRZBURG AND VIENNA. SCRAPS FROM A DIARY. By Emile De Laveleye
_Contemporary Review_ 95
WÜRZBURG AND VIENNA. SCRAPS FROM A DIARY.
By John Wycliffe: His Life and Work _Blackwood’s Magazine_ 224
[Illustration]
ECLECTIC MAGAZINE OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
New Series. JANUARY, 1885. Old Series complete
Vol. XLI., No. 1. in 63 vols.
MOUNTAIN OBSERVATORIES.
On October 1st, 1876, one of the millionaires of the New World died at
San Francisco. Although owning a no more euphonious name than James
Lick, he had contrived to secure a future for it. He had founded and
endowed the first great astronomical establishment planted on the
heights, between the stars and the sea. How he came by his love of
science we have no means of knowing. Born obscurely at Fredericksburg,
in Pennsylvania, August 25th, 1796, he amassed some 30,000 dollars by
commerce in South America, and in 1847 transferred them and himself to
a village which had just exchanged its name of Yerba Buena for that
of San Francisco, situate on a long, sandy strip of land between the
Pacific and a great bay. In the hillocks and gullies of that wind-blown
barrier he invested his dollars, and never did virgin soil yield a
richer harvest. The gold-fever broke out in the spring of 1848. The
unremembered cluster of wooden houses, with no trouble or tumult of
population in their midst, nestling round a tranquil creek under a
climate which, but for a touch of sea-fog, might rival that of the
Garden of the Hesperides, became all at once a centre of attraction
to the outcast and adventurous from every part of the world. Wealth
poured in; trade sprang up; a population of six hundred increased to
a quarter of a million; hotels, villas, public edifices, places of
business spread, mile after mile, along the bay; building-ground rose
to a fabulous price, and James Lick found himself one of the richest
men in the United States.
Thus he got his money; we have now to see how he spent it. Already the
munificent benefactor of the learned institutions of California, he
in 1874 formally set aside a sum of two million dollars for various
public purposes, philanthropic, patriotic, and scientific. Of these
two millions 700,000 were appropriated to the erection of a telescope
“superior to, and more powerful than any ever yet made.” But this, he
felt instinctively, was not enough. Even in astronomy, although most
likely unable to distinguish the Pole-star from the Dog-star, this
“pioneer citizen” could read the signs of the times. It was no longer
instruments that were wanted; it was the opportunity of employing them.
Telescopes of vast power and exquisite perfection had ceased to be a
rarity; but their use seemed all but hopelessly impeded by the very
conditions of existence on the surface of the earth.
The air we breathe is in truth the worst enemy of the astronomer’s
observations. It is their enemy in two ways. Part of the sight which
brings its wonderful, evanescent messages across inconceivable depths
of space, it stops; and what it does not stop, it shatters. And this
even when it is most transparent and seemingly still; when mist-veils
are withdrawn, and no clouds curtain the sky. Moreover, the evil grows
with the power of the instrument. Atmospheric troubles are magnified
neither more nor less than the objects viewed across them. Thus, Lord
Rosse’s giant reflector possesses—_nominally_—a magnifying power of
6,000; that is to say, it can reduce the _apparent_ distances of the
heavenly bodies to 1/6000 their _actual_ amount. The moon, for example,
which is in reality separated from the earth’s surface by an interval
of about 234,000 miles, is shown as if removed only thirty-nine miles.
Unfortunately, however, in theory only. Professor Newcomb compares the
sight obtained under such circumstances to a glimpse through several
yards of running water, and doubts whether our satellite has ever been
seen to such advantage as it would be if brought—substantially, not
merely optically—within 500 miles of the unassisted eye.[1]
Must, then, all the growing triumphs of the optician’s skill be
counteracted by this plague of moving air? Can nothing be done to get
rid of, or render it less obnoxious? Or is this an ultimate barrier,
set up by Nature herself, to stop the way of astronomical progress?
Much depends upon the answer—more than can, in a few words, be easily
made to appear; but there is fortunately reason to believe that it
will, on the whole, prove favorable to human ingenuity, and the rapid
advance of human knowledge on the noblest subject with which it is or
ever can be conversant.
The one obvious way of meeting atmospheric impediments is to leave part
of the impeding atmosphere behind; and this the rugged shell of our
planet offers ample means of doing. Whether the advantages derived from
increased altitudes will outweigh the practical difficulties attending
such a system of observation when conducted on a great scale, has
yet to be decided. The experiment, however, is now about to be tried
simultaneously in several parts of the globe.
By far the most considerable of these experiments is that of the
“Lick Observatory.” Its founder was from the first determined that
the powers of his great telescope should, as little as possible, be
fettered by the hostility of the elements. The choice of its local
habitation was, accordingly, a matter of grave deliberation to him for
some time previous to his death. Although close upon his eightieth
year, he himself spent a night upon the summit of Mount St. Helena with
a view to testing its astronomical capabilities, and a site already
secured in the Sierra Nevada was abandoned on the ground of climatic
disqualifications. Finally, one of the culminating peaks of the Coast
Range, elevated 4,440 feet above the sea, was fixed upon. Situated
about fifty miles south-east of San Francisco, Mount Hamilton lies far
enough inland to escape the sea-fog, which only on the rarest occasions
drifts upward to its triple crest. All through the summer the sky above
it is limpid and cloudless; and though winter storms are frequent,
their raging is not without highly available lucid intervals. As to the
essential point—the quality of telescopic vision—the testimony of Mr.
S. W. Burnham is in the highest degree encouraging. This well-known
observer spent two months on the mountain in the autumn of 1879, and
concluded, as the result of his experience during that time—with the
full concurrence of Professor Newcomb—that, “it is the finest observing
location in the United States.” Out of sixty nights he found forty-two
as nearly perfect as nights can well be, seven of medium quality, and
only eleven cloudy or foggy;[2] his stay, nevertheless, embraced the
first half of October, by no means considered to belong to the choice
part of the season. Nor was his trip barren of discovery. A list of
forty-two new double stars gave an earnest of what may be expected from
systematic work in such an unrivalled situation. Most of these are
objects which never rise high enough in the sky to be examined with any
profit through the grosser atmosphere of the plains east of the Rocky
Mountains; some are well-known stars, not before seen clearly enough
for the discernment of their composite character; yet Mr. Burnham used
the lesser of two telescopes—a 6-inch and an 18-inch achromatic—with
which he had been accustomed to observe at Chicago.
The largest refracting telescope as yet actually completed has a
light-gathering surface 27 inches in diameter. This is the great Vienna
equatorial, admirably turned out by Mr. Grubb, of Dublin, in 1880,
but still awaiting the commencement of its exploring career. It will,
however, soon be surpassed by the Pulkowa telescope, ordered more than
four years ago on behalf of the Russian Government from Alvan Clark
and Sons, of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. Still further will it be
surpassed by the coming “Lick Refractor.” It is safe to predict that
the optical championship of the world is, at least for the next few
years, secured to this gigantic instrument, the completion of which may
be looked for in the immediate future. It will have a clear aperture of
_three feet_. A disc of flint-glass for the object-lens, 38·18 inches
across, and 170 kilogrammes in weight, was cast at the establishment of
M. Feil, in Paris, early in 1882. Four days were spent and eight tons
of coal consumed in the casting of this vast mass of flawless crystal;
it took a calendar month to cool, and cost 2,000_l._[3] It may be
regarded as the highest triumph so far achieved in the art of optical
glass-making.
A refracting telescope three feet in aperture collects rather more
light than a speculum of four feet.[4] In this quality, then, the
Lick instrument will have—besides the Rosse leviathan, which, for
many reasons, may be considered to be out of the running—but one
rival. And over this rival—the 48-inch reflector of the Melbourne
observatory—it will have all the advantages of agility and robustness
(so to speak) which its system of construction affords; while the
exquisite definition for which Alvan Clark is famous will, presumably,
not be absent.
Already preparations are being made for its reception at Mount
Hamilton. The scabrous summit of “Observatory Peak” has been smoothed
down to a suitable equality of surface by the removal of 40,000 tons
of hard trap rock. Preliminary operations for the erection of a dome,
75 feet in diameter, to serve as its shelter, are in progress. The
water-supply has been provided for by the excavation of great cisterns.
Buildings are rapidly being pushed forward from designs prepared by
Professors Holden and Newcomb. Most of the subsidiary instruments
have for some time been in their places, constituting in themselves
an equipment of no mean order. With their aid Professor Holden and
Mr. Burnham observed the transit of Mercury of November 7th, 1881,
and Professor Todd obtained, December 6th, 1882, a series of 147
photographs (of which seventy-one were of the highest excellence)
recording the progress of Venus across the face of the sun.
We are informed that a great hotel will eventually add the inducement
of material well-being to those of astronomical interest and enchanting
scenery. No more delightful summer resort can well be imagined. The
road to the summit, of which the construction formed the subject of a
species of treaty between Mr. Lick and the county of Santa Clara in
1875, traverses from San José a distance, as a bird flies, of less
than thirteen miles, but doubled by the windings necessary in order to
secure moderate gradients. So successfully has this been accomplished,
that a horse drawing a light waggon can reach the observatory buildings
without breaking his trot.[5] As the ascending track draws its coils
closer and closer round the mountain, the view becomes at every turn
more varied and more extensive. On one side the tumultuous coast
ranges, stooping gradually to the shore, magnificently clad with
forests of pine and red cedar; the island-studded bay of San Francisco,
and, farther south, a shining glimpse of the Pacific; on the other,
the thronging pinnacles of the Sierras—granite needles, lava-topped
bastions—fire-rent, water-worn; right underneath, the rich valleys of
Santa Clara and San Joaquim, and, 175 miles away to the north (when the
sapphire of the sky is purest), the snowy cone of Mount Shasta.
Thus, there seems some reason to apprehend that Mount Hamilton, with
its monster telescope, may become one of the show places of the New
World. _Absit omen!_ Such a desecration would effectually mar one of
the fairest prospects opened in our time before astronomy. The true
votaries of Urania will then be driven to seek sanctuary in some less
accessible and less inviting spot. Indeed, the present needs of science
are by no means met by an elevation above the sea of four thousand and
odd feet, even under the most translucent sky in the world. Already
observing stations are recommended at four times that altitude, and
the ambition of the new species of climbing astronomers seems unlikely
to be satisfied until he can no longer find wherewith to fill his
lungs (for even an astronomer must breathe), or whereon to plant his
instruments.
This ambition is no casual caprice. It has grown out of the growing
exigencies of celestial observation.
From the time that Lord Rosse’s great reflector was pointed to the sky
in February, 1845, it began to be distinctly felt that instrumental
power had outrun its opportunities. To the sounding of further depths
of space it came to be understood that Atlantic mists and tremulous
light formed an obstacle far more serious than any mere optical or
mechanical difficulties. The late Mr. Lassell was the first to act on
this new idea. Towards the close of 1852 he transported his beautiful
24-inch Newtonian to Malta, and, in 1859-60, constructed, for service
there, one of four times its light capacity. Yet the chief results
of several years’ continuous observation under rarely favorable
conditions were, in his own words, “rather negative than positive.”[6]
He dispelled the “ghosts” of four Uranian moons which had, by glimpses,
haunted the usually unerring vision of the elder Herschel, and showed
that our acquaintance with the satellite families of Saturn, Uranus,
and Neptune must, for the present at any rate, be regarded as complete;
but the discoveries by which his name is chiefly remembered were made
in the murky air of Lancashire.
The celebrated expedition to the Peak of Teneriffe, carried out in
the summer of 1856 by the present Astronomer Royal for Scotland, was
an experiment made with the express object of ascertaining “how much
astronomical observation can be benefited by eliminating the lower
third or fourth part of the atmosphere.”[7] So striking were the
advantages of which it seemed to hold out the promise, that we count
with surprise the many years suffered to elapse before any adequate
attempt was made to realize them.[8] Professor Piazzi Smyth made his
principal station at Guajara, 8,903 feet above the sea, close to the
rim of the ancient crater from which the actual peak rises to a further
height of more than 3,000 feet. There he found that his equatorial
(five feet in focal length) showed stars fainter by _four magnitudes_
than at Edinburgh. On the Calton Hill the companion of Alpha Lyræ
(eleventh magnitude) could never, under any circumstances, be made out.
At Guajara it was an easy object twenty-five degrees from the zenith;
and stars of the fourteenth magnitude were discernible. Now, according
to the usual estimate, a step downwards from one magnitude to
another means a decrease of lustre in the proportion of two to five.
A star of the fourteenth order of brightness sends us accordingly
only 1/39th as much light as an average one of the tenth order. So
that, in Professor Smyth’s judgment, the grasp of his instrument was
virtually _multiplied thirty-nine times_ by getting rid of the lowest
quarter of the atmosphere.[9] In other words (since light falls off
in intensity as the square of the distance of its source increases),
the range of vision was more than sextupled, further depths of space
being penetrated to an extent probably to be measured by thousands of
billions of miles!
This vast augmentation of telescopic compass was due as much to the
increased tranquillity as to the increased transparency of the air.
The stars hardly seemed to twinkle at all. Their rays, instead of
being broken and scattered by continual changes of refractive power
in the atmospheric layers through which their path lay, travelled
with relatively little disturbance, and thus produced a far more
vivid and concentrated impression upon the eye. Their images in the
telescope, with a magnifying power of 150, showed no longer the
“amorphous figures” seen at Edinburgh, but such minute, sharply-defined
discs as gladden the eyes of an astronomer, and seem, in Professor
Smyth’s phrase, to “provoke” (as the “cocked-hat” appearance surely
baffles) “the application of a wire-micrometer” for the purposes of
measurement.[10]
The lustre of the milky way and zodiacal light at this elevated station
was indescribable, and Jupiter shone with extraordinary splendor.
Nevertheless, not even the most fugitive glimpse of any of his
satellites was to be had without optical aid.[11] This was possibly
attributable to the prevalent “dust-haze”, which must have caused
a diffusion of light in the neighborhood of the planet more than
sufficient to blot from sight such faint objects. The same cause
completely neutralized the darkening of the sky usually attendant
upon ascents into the more ethereal regions, and surrounded the sun
with an intense glare of reflected light. For reasons presently to be
explained, this circumstance alone would render the Peak of Teneriffe
wholly unfit to be the site of a modern observatory.
Within the last thirty years a remarkable change, long in
preparation,[12] has conspicuously affected the methods and aims of
astronomy; or, rather, beside the old astronomy—the astronomy of
Laplace, of Bessel, of Airy, Adams, and Leverrier—has grown up a
younger science, vigorous, inspiring, seductive, revolutionary,
walking with hurried or halting footsteps along paths far removed
from the staid courses of its predecessor. This new science concerns
itself with the _nature_ of the heavenly bodies; the elder regarded
exclusively their _movements_. The aim of the one is _description_,
of the other _prediction_. This younger science inquires what sun,
moon, stars, and nebulæ are made of, what stores of heat they possess,
what changes are in progress within their substance, what vicissitudes
they have undergone or are likely to undergo. The elder has attained
its object when the theory of celestial motions shows no discrepancy
with fact—when the calculus can be brought to agree perfectly with
the telescope—when the coursers of the heavens come strictly up to
time, and their observed places square to a hair’s-breadth with their
predicted places.
It is evident that very different modes of investigation must be
employed to further such different objects; in fact, the invention
of novel modes of investigation has had a prime share in bringing
about the change in question. Geometrical astronomy, or the astronomy
of position, seeks above all to measure with exactness, and is thus
more fundamentally interested in the accurate division and accurate
centering of circles than in the development of optical appliances.
Descriptive astronomy, on the other hand, seeks as the first condition
of its existence to _see_ clearly and fully. It has no “method of
least squares” for making the best of bad observations—no process for
eliminating errors by their multiplication in opposite directions;
it is wholly dependent for its data on the quantity and quality of
the rays focussed by its telescopes, sifted by its spectroscopes,
or printed in its photographic cameras. Therefore, the loss and
disturbance suffered by those rays in traversing our atmosphere
constitute an obstacle to progress far more serious now than when the
exact determination of places was the primary and all-important task
of an astronomical observer. This obstacle, which no ingenuity can
avail to remove, may be reduced to less formidable dimensions. It may
be diminished or partially evaded by anticipating the most detrimental
part of the atmospheric transit—by carrying our instruments upwards
into a finer air—by meeting the light upon the mountains.
The study of the sun’s composition, and of the nature of the stupendous
processes by which his ample outflow of light and heat is kept up and
diffused through surrounding space, has in our time separated, it
might be said, into a science apart. Its pursuit is, at any rate, far
too arduous to be conducted with less than a man’s whole energies;
while the questions which it has addressed itself to answer are
the fundamental problems of the new physical astronomy. There is,
however, but one opinion as to the expediency of carrying on solar
investigations at higher altitudes than have hitherto been more than
temporarily available.
The spectroscope and the camera are now the chief engines of solar
research. Mere telescopic observation, though always an indispensable
adjunct, may be considered to have sunk into a secondary position.
But the spectroscope and the camera, still more than the telescope,
lie at the mercy of atmospheric vapors and undulations. The late
Professor Henry Draper, of New York, an adept in the art of celestial
photography, stated in 1877 that two years, during which he had
photographed the moon at his observatory on the Hudson on every
moonlit night, yielded _only three_ when the air was still enough
to give good results, nor even then without some unsteadiness; and
Bond, of Cambridge (U. S.) informed him that he had watched in vain,
through no less than seventeen years for a faultless condition of our
troublesome environing medium.[13] Tranquillity is the first requisite
for a successful astronomical photograph. The hour generally chosen for
employing the sun as his own limner is, for this reason, in the early
morning, before the newly emerged beams have had time to set the air in
commotion, and so blur the marvellous details of his surface-structure.
By this means a better definition is secured but at the expense of
transparency. Both are, at the sea-level, hardly ever combined. A
certain amount of haziness is the price usually paid for exceptional
stillness, so that it not unfrequently happens that astronomers see
best in a fog, as on the night of November 15th, 1850, when the elder
Bond discovered the “dusky ring” of Saturn, although at the time no
star below the fourth magnitude could be made out with the naked eye.
Now on well-chosen mountain stations, a union of these unhappy divorced
conditions is at certain times to be met with, opportunities being
thus afforded with tolerable certainty and no great rarity, which an
astronomer on the plains might think himself fortunate in securing once
or twice in a lifetime.
For spectroscopic observations at the edge of the sun, on the contrary,
the _sine quâ non_ is translucency. During the great “Indian eclipse”
of August 18th, 1868, the variously colored lines were, by the aid
of prismatic analysis, first described, which reveal the chemical
constitution of the flamelike “prominences,” forming an ever-varying,
but rarely absent, feature of the solar surroundings. Immediately
afterwards, M. Janssen, at Guntoor, and Mr. Norman Lockyer, in England,
independently realised a method of bringing them into view without
the co-operation of the eclipsing moon. This was done by _fanning
out_ with a powerfully dispersive spectroscope the diffused radiance
near the sun, until it became sufficiently attenuated to permit the
delicate flame-lines to appear upon its rainbow-tinted background. This
mischievous radiance—which it is the chief merit of a solar eclipse
to abolish during some brief moments—is due to the action of the
atmosphere, and chiefly of the watery vapors contained in it. Were our
earth stripped of its “cloud of all-sustaining air,” and presented,
like its satellite, bare to space, the sky would appear perfectly black
up to the very rim of the sun’s disc—a state of things of all others
(vital necessities apart) the most desirable to spectroscopists. The
best approach to its attainment is made by mounting a few thousand feet
above the earth’s surface. In the drier and purer air of the mountains,
“glare” notably diminishes, and the tell-tale prominence-lines are thus
more easily disengaged from the effacing lustre in which they hang, as
it were suspended.
The Peak of Teneriffe, as we have seen, offers a marked exception to
this rule, the impalpable dust diffused through the air giving, even at
its summit, precisely the same kind of detailed reflection as aqueous
vapors at lower levels. It is accordingly destitute of one of the chief
qualifications for serving as a point of vantage to observers of the
new type.
The changes in the spectra of chromosphere and prominences (for they
are parts of a single appendage) present a subject of unsurpassed
interest to the student of solar physics. There, if anywhere, will be
found the key to the secret to the sun’s internal economy; in them, if
at all, the real condition of matter in the unimaginable abysses of
heat covered up by the relatively cool photosphere, whose radiations
could, nevertheless, vivify 2,300,000,000 globes like ours, will reveal
itself; revealing, at the same time, something more than we know of the
nature of the so-called “elementary” substances, hitherto tortured,
with little result, in terrestrial laboratories.
The chromosphere and prominences might be figuratively described as an
ocean and clouds of tranquil incandescence, agitated and intermingled
with waterspouts, tornadoes, and geysers of raging fire. Certain
kinds of light are at all times emitted by them, showing that certain
kinds of matter (as, for instance, hydrogen and “helium”[14]) form
invariable constituents of their substance. Of these unfailing lines
Professor Young counts eleven.[15] But a vastly greater number appear
only occasionally, and, it would seem, capriciously, under the stress
of eruptive action from the interior. And precisely this it is which
lends them such significance; for of what is going on there, they have
doubtless much to tell, were their message only legible by us. It has
not as yet proved so; but the characters in which it is written are
being earnestly scrutinised and compared, with a view to their eventual
decipherment. The prodigious advantages afforded by high altitudes
for this kind of work were illustrated by the brilliant results of
Professor Young’s observations in the Rocky Mountains during the summer
of 1872. By the diligent labor of several years he had, at that time,
constructed a list of one hundred and three distinct lines occasionally
visible in the spectrum of the chromosphere. In seventy-two days, at
Sherman (8,335 feet above the sea), it was extended to 273. Yet the
weather was exceptionally cloudy, and the spot (a station on the Union
Pacific Railway, in the Territory of Wyoming) not perhaps the best that
might have been chosen for an “astronomical reconnaissance.”[16]
A totally different kind of solar research is that in aid of which
the Mount Whitney expedition was organized in 1881. Professor S. P.
Langley, director of the Alleghany observatory in Pennsylvania, has
long been engaged in the detailed study of the radiations emitted
by the sun; inventing, for the purpose of its prosecution, the
“bolometer,”[17] an instrument twenty times as sensitive to changes
of temperature as the thermopile. But the solar spectrum as it is
exhibited at the surface of the earth, is a very different thing from
the solar spectrum as it would appear could it be formed of sunbeams,
so to speak, _fresh from space_, unmodified by atmospheric action.
For not only does our air deprive each ray of a considerable share of
its energy (the total loss may be taken at 20 to 25 per cent. when
the sky is clear and the sun in the zenith), but it deals unequally
with them, robbing some more than others, and thus materially altering
their relative importance. Now it was Professor Langley’s object to
reconstruct the original state of things, and he saw that this could
be done most effectually by means of simultaneous observations at the
summit and base of a high mountain. For the effect upon each separate
ray of transmission through a known proportion of the atmosphere
being (with the aid of the bolometer) once ascertained, a very simple
calculation would suffice to eliminate the remaining effects, and thus
virtually secure an extra-atmospheric post of observation.
The honor of rendering this important service to science was adjudged
to the highest summit in the United States. The Sierra Nevada
culminates in a granite pile, rising, somewhat in the form of a
gigantic helmet, fronting eastwards, to a height of 14,887 feet.
Mount Whitney is thus entitled to rank as the Mount Blanc of its own
continent. In order to reach it, a railway journey of 3,400 miles,
from Pittsburg to San Francisco, and from San Francisco to Caliente,
was a brief and easy preliminary. The real difficulty began with
a march of 120 miles across the arid and glaring Inyo desert, the
thermometer standing at 110° in the shade (if shade there were to be
found.) Towards the end of July 1881, the party reached the settlement
of Lone Pine at the foot of the Sierras, where a camp for low-level
observations was pitched (at a height, it is true, of close upon 4,000
feet), and the needful instruments were unpacked and adjusted. Close
overhead, as it appeared, but in reality sixteen miles distant, towered
the gaunt, and rifted, and seemingly inaccessible pinnacle which was
the ultimate goal of their long journey. The illusion of nearness
produced by the extraordinary transparency of the air was dispelled
when, on examination with a telescope, what had worn the aspect of
patches of moss, proved to be extensive forests.
The ascent of such a mountain with a train of mules bearing a delicate
and precious freight of scientific apparatus, was a perhaps unexampled
enterprise. It was, however, accomplished without the occurrence,
though at the frequent and imminent risk, of disaster, after a
toilsome climb of seven or eight days through an unexplored and, to
less resolute adventurers, impassable waste of rocks, gullies, and
precipices. Finally a site was chosen for the upper station on a swampy
ledge, 13,000 feet above the sea; and there, notwithstanding extreme
discomforts from bitter cold, fierce sunshine, high winds, and, worst
of all, “mountain sickness,” with its intolerable attendant debility,
observations were determinedly carried on, in combination with those at
Lone Pine, and others daily made on the highest crest of the mountain,
until September 11. They were well worth the cost. By their means a
real extension was given to knowledge, and a satisfactory definiteness
introduced into subjects previously involved in very wide uncertainty.
Contrary to the received opinion, it now appeared that the weight
of atmospheric absorption falls upon the upper or blue end of the
spectrum, and that the obstacles to the transmission of light waves
through the air diminish as their length increases, and their
refrangibility consequently diminishes. A yellow tinge is thus imparted
to the solar rays by the imperfectly transparent medium through which
we see them. And, since the sun possesses an atmosphere of its own,
exercising an unequal or “selective” absorption of the same character,
it follows that, if both these dusky-red veils were withdrawn, the true
color of the photosphere would show as a very distinct _blue_[18]—not
merely _bluish_, but a real azure just tinted with green, like the hue
of a mountain lake fed with a glacier stream. Moreover, the further
consequence ensues, that the sun is hotter than had been supposed. For
the higher the temperature of a glowing body, the more copiously it
emits rays from the violet end of the spectrum. The blueness of its
light is, in fact, a measure of the intensity of its incandescence.
Professor Langley has not yet ventured (that we are aware of) on an
estimate of what is called the “effective temperature” of the sun—the
temperature, that is, which it would be necessary to attribute to the
surface of the radiating power of lamp-black to enable it to send us
just the quantity of heat that the sun does actually send us. Indeed,
the present state of knowledge still leaves an important hiatus—only
to be filled by more or less probable guessing in the reasoning by
which inferences on this subject must be formed; while the startling
discrepancies between the figures adopted by different, and equally
respectable, authorities sufficiently show that none are entitled to
any confidence. The amount of heat received in a given interval of
time by the earth from the sun is, however, another matter, and one
falling well within the scope of observation. This Professor Langley’s
experiments (when completely worked out) will, by their unequalled
precision, enable him to determine with some approach to finality.
Pouillet valued the “solar constant” at 1·7 “calories”; in other works,
had calculated that, our atmosphere being supposed removed, vertical
sunbeams would have power to heat in each minute of time, by one
degree centigrade, 1·7 gramme of water for each square centimetre of
the earth’s surface. This estimate was raised by Crova to 2·3, and
by Violle in 1877 to 2·5;[19] Professor Langley’s new data bring it
up (approximately as yet) to three calories per square centimetre
per minute. This result alone would, by its supreme importance to
meteorology, amply repay the labors of the Mount Whitney expedition.
Still more unexpected is the answer supplied to the question: Were
the earth wholly denuded of its aëriform covering, what would be the
temperature of its surface? We are informed in reply that it would
be _at the outside_ 50 degrees of Fahrenheit below zero, or 82 of
frost. So that mercury would remain solid even when exposed to the
rays—undiminished by atmospheric absorption—of a tropical sun at
noon.[20] The paradoxical aspect of this conclusion—a perfectly
legitimate and reliable one—disappears when it is remembered that
under the imagined circumstances there would be absolutely nothing to
hinder radiation into the frigid depths of space, and that the solar
rays would, consequently, find abundant employment in maintaining a
difference of 189 degrees[21] between the temperature of the mercury and
that of its environment. What we may with perfect accuracy call the
_clothing function_ of our atmosphere is thus vividly brought home to
us; for it protects the teeming surface of our planet against the cold
of space exactly in the same way as, and much more effectually than,
a lady’s sealskin mantle keeps her warm in frosty weather. That is to
say, it impedes radiation. Or, again, to borrow another comparison, the
gaseous envelope we breathe in (and chiefly the watery part of it) may
be literally described as a “trap for sunbeams.” It permits their
entrance (exacting, it is true, a heavy toll), but almost totally bars
their exit. It is now easy to understand why it is that on the airless
moon no vapors rise to soften the hard shadow-outlines of craters or
ridges throughout the fierce blaze of the long lunar day. In immediate
contact with space (if we may be allowed the expression) water, should
such a substance exist on our enigmatical satellite, must remain
frozen, though exposed for endless æons of time to direct sunshine.
Amongst the most noteworthy results of Professor Langley’s observations
in the Sierra Nevada was the enormous extension given by them to the
solar spectrum in the invisible region below the red. The first to make
any detailed acquaintance with their obscure beams was Captain Abney,
whose success in obtaining a substance—the so-called “blue bromide”
of silver—sensitive to their chemical action, enabled him to derive
photographic impressions from rays possessing the relatively great
wave-length of 1,200 millionths of a millimetre. This, be it noted,
approaches very closely to the theoretical limit set by Cauchy to that
end of the spectrum. The information was accordingly received with no
small surprise that the bolometer showed entirely unmistakable heating
effects from vibrations of the wave-length 2,800. The “dark continent”
of the solar spectrum was thus demonstrated to cover an expanse nearly
eight times that of the bright or visible part.[22] And in this newly
discovered region lie three-fifths of the entire energy received from
the sun—three-fifths of the vital force imparted to our planet for
keeping its atmosphere and ocean in circulation, its streams rippling
and running, its forests growing, its grain ripening. Throughout
this wide range of vibrations the modifying power of our atmosphere
is little felt. It is, indeed, interrupted by great gaps produced by
absorption _somewhere_; but since they show no signs of diminution at
high altitudes, they are obviously due to an extra-terrestrial cause.
Here a tempting field of inquiry lies open to scientific explorers.