character of sensible reality is imparted to the frame and to the
surroundings of the picture, to all the theater where these actors
played their parts. Of this truth no one of our teachers, when I was a
collegian, seemed to have a suspicion. There was not an illustration
in the cold and dry compendiums which were placed in our hands. I can
almost ask myself if, when I studied Greek and Roman history, I was
really convinced that Sparta and Athens, Rome and Carthage had
actually existed. I certainly did not know how or where to place them
in space, what idea to have of their situation, or of the outlines
made by the ridges of their walls, their houses, and their temples.
All these cities were to me vague shadows, floating between heaven and
earth. No one of them answered to a distinct and defined form.
"If this be the case with classical antiquity, in spite of the color
and splendor of the narratives of its writers, how much more difficult
is it to know and understand France of the middle ages when condemned
to study it in its literary work alone! The literature of the period
is partly in debased Latin, partly in early French. The French of the
day was not the language of the thinkers. The deep thought of the age
is not to be found in minstrelsy and ballads. It must be asked of the
learned, of philosophers, of theologians, and of sacred writers. But
to follow them in the subtle analyses and in the excessive
complications of symbolism, in which they delight, requires mental
efforts which are made all the more laborious by the artificial
character of the church Latin, which no longer continued to renew
itself at the source of popular speech. It is impossible to see how
such works, in spite of their value to erudition, can be called to
take part in the education of the young. It is for this reason that
lately, by a judicious innovation, a discreet place has been made in
the curriculum for histories and poems written in the common language,
for the Chanson de Roland, and for the works of Villehardouin and
Joinville. But the student can only read these in translations, or in
those adaptations which so modernize the language as to leave but a
little of its original flavor, and which therefore make but an
imperfect contact between the original work and the mind of the
reader. But supposing the scholar capable of mastering the original
text: can its formless and superabundant prose, or the tiresome
monotone of its flowing dissonances, give him emotions which have the
vivacity of those which a page of Tacitus or a song of Virgil gives to
those who know even a modicum of Latin? Can they have the power to
excite the imagination in the same degree as any strong and concise
sentence of the historian, any sonorous and glowing verse of the Roman
poet?
"It is only exceptionally and as by flashes that the writings of the
middle ages give the impression of true beauty. The conceptions are
often grand, but the expression is always weak and dragging. On the
other hand, Roman or Gothic churches are not less beautiful after
their manner than Greek temples. Their beauty is of another fashion,
but many souls are touched more deeply. They manifest no less clearly
the power of the religious faith which constructed them. The
particular character of Christian faith is shown with singular
clearness in their majesty, in the elevation of their vaults, in the
half lights which flood them, and in the thousands of figures which
populate and animate every surface. As in Greece, the sculptor
co-operates intelligently and docilely with the architect and has
occupied no less happily the allotted fields. As Phidias and Alcamenes
represented on the pediments and friezes of Doric temples the great
gods of Greece and the local myths of Athens and Olympia, so anonymous
masters, called to decorate the cathedrals of the middle ages, have
placed impressive statues on the sides and in the _voussoirs_ of the
portals, in the open galleries which run along the façades, on the top
of the pinnacles which throng the roof--in fact, everywhere where
space is offered. These statues, distributed in an order regulated by
doctrine and tradition, show forth the Saviour, the Virgin, saints and
angels, prophets and apostles, and hosts of personages and scenes
suggested by Holy Writ or by local and popular legends. Among these
images there are many at Bourges, Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, and Nôtre
Dame de Paris, which are marvels of severe elegance, of chaste and
haughty grace, and of lofty moral nobility. This wonderful statuary
has but lately been investigated, exposed, and studied, but already it
would be difficult to find a connoisseur unwilling to compare with the
most boasted statues of antiquity that admirable image of the teaching
Christ of the west portal of Amiens, to which the popular surname has
been attached of _le Beau Dieu d'Amiens_.
"For evident reasons, French sculpture of the thirteenth century did
not, as did Greek sculpture, devote itself to the study and
reproduction of the nude. It denied itself this attraction. All
figures are clad; but beneath the drapery, which is in fine masses
with large folds, the outline and the movement of form are indicated
with precision. The principal interest and the rare originality,
however, of this sculpture is that it is perhaps the most expressive
that has ever existed. This expressiveness appears in the general
effect of the pose, in the disposition of the drapery, but especially
in the character which the artist has succeeded in giving to the
features of the face.
"The august mysteries of the Christian dogma, the poetry of the Old
and of the New Testament, the triumphant deaths of martyrs, the
miracles of saints and their infinite charity--these things which the
middle ages failed to put into clear and intelligible words are fully
rendered in sculpture. The work of the chisel is large and firm.
Difficulties are not sought, nor are they feared. Whatever be the
material, the form is sure. To understand how superior the plastic is
to the literary work, and to measure the distance, compare the Amiens
statue with the portraits the authors of the Mysteries endeavor to
draw of the Son of God. 'What can be more flat than these poor verses,
which are nevertheless of the sixteenth century? The authors had good
intentions and an apprehension of what should be done, but they were
betrayed by the language in which they wrote. The sculptors of the
thirteenth century, on the contrary, who possessed fully the grammar
of their art, expressed all they felt, and have left us the most
divine images of Jesus Christ in existence.'[18]
[Footnote 18: E. Mâle. Revue Universitaire, Third Année, l. i, p.
15.]
"Italy of the Renaissance is quite unintelligible to any one who has
not measured the place held by art in the preoccupations not only of
artists who practice it, but of all men of all conditions--of princes,
nobles, tradesmen, and of citizens of most humble occupations. No one
in any rank is without a passionate love for plastic beauty. This love
was Italy's life and Italy's death. She died of it, because all her
sap was consumed in satisfying it. It made her indifferent to her
dismemberment, to the hard yoke of her tyrants, to the loss of her
political liberties, and of her independence. But, at the same time,
it constituted the intensity of her life which was exhausted and
renewed again in the ardor with which she pursued her ideal and in her
endeavors to realize it under all its aspects. Let him who would wish
to obtain an exact idea of this condition reside for a while in
Mantua, in Parma, in Sienna, in Florence, or in any other less-known
city which nevertheless had its local school of art, its architects,
its sculptors, its painters, some of whom, though they only worked for
their native city, were not far from manifesting genius.[19]
[Footnote 19: Raphael's Madonnas save the reputation of the papal
see of the sixteenth century, for pontiffs who cherished such pure
and gentle representations could not have been so corrupt as
Luther's partisans assert.]
"The written history of the seventeenth century and its rich
literature can not alone give an idea of the situation occupied by
Louis XIV in Europe when he was admired, imitated, or rather servilely
copied, as pre-eminently the type of the modern king even by those who
hated him the most. After two centuries, have we not seen his
wonderful prestige still potent in dominating the sickly mind of Louis
II of Bavaria? In his desire to copy his chosen model Louis ruined
himself in building palaces. In this folly he showed discrimination.
Louis XIV, when dying, may have accused himself of having indulged too
great a love for building; but his edifices, with their majestic
grandeur and the opulence of their decoration, gave that royal life a
frame which had much to do with the dazzling which all Europe
experienced when in the presence of _le Roi Soleil_. In order to
recognize and experience, though but for a moment, a little of the
impression felt by all contemporaries, Versailles must be visited; the
apartments of the palace, the terraces, and the alleys of the park
must be traversed. Thus will be thrown upon this historic figure a
light far more brilliant and true than could possibly be the result of
learning by heart accounts of all the campaigns of Turenne or Condé,
or all the clauses of the treaties of Nimègue and Ryswick.
"The same may be said of the eighteenth century, of which only an
incomplete idea can be had without a knowledge of its art. This
century, to which Voltaire gave the note, seems to have had no
sentiment of poetry. Down to the time of André Chenier everything
called poetry was no more than rhymed prose. The imagination, however,
did not lose its rights. Like a stream which changes its bed, it
withdrew from literature to flow into the arts of design. There it
gives evidence of invention and of light and spontaneous grace.
Architects adopt plans of happy arrangement. They employ forms of rare
elegance both in the elements of construction and in the ornaments
which decorate them. Such sculptors as Capperi and Houdon give to
portraiture a marvelous intensity of life, while the terra cottas of
Clodion, with their fantastic and voluptuous charm, recall the clay
modelers of antiquity. Such painters as Greuze, Lancret, and Boucher
spread before the eyes living idyls, while Watteau and Frangonard
conjure dreams of ideal Cytheras, of a chimerical paradise where reign
eternal youth and eternal desire. The politics of our kings and of our
ministers of the period is but a succession of faults and weaknesses.
The best concerted plans come to naught. The most brilliant victory
produces no useful results. If France, in spite of so many reverses,
still held her supremacy in Europe, she owed it to her writers and to
her artists."
Perrot's arguments might be used with even greater force in reference
to those notions which have had no Comines, no Joinville, no
Froissart, no Villehardouin, but the history of whose civilization may
be traced in monuments along the Rhine and the Danube, the Ems and the
Elbe. In the last part of the article Perrot considers the best
methods of giving the desired instruction. However interesting and
valuable his suggestions may be in communities where the instruction
has already been established, it is evident that there must first be a
conviction of the value and necessity of such studies and the
determination to have them started. Methods are not difficult to
devise, and will vary with national and individual tastes. That
American colleges of thirty, forty, or fifty years ago should have
objected to the introduction of the history of the fine arts into
their curricula is easily understood. Art in any form was regarded by
the New England mind as an emanation of the devil, and the New England
mind controlled American colleges. Why the repugnance continues to
exist is harder to understand. It may subsist from ignorance, from
prejudice, or from conservatism. Conservatism may still regard all
information to be derived from art as objectionable. Prejudice may
still be strongly fixed in the notion that written and spoken words
are the only vehicles of instruction, and that the arts are useless
and idle vanities, while ignorance may be awaiting demonstration which
will have to be strong and conclusive to awake it from self-satisfied
apathy. May the good words of Perrot help on the cause and accelerate
the time when the best and the fullest education will be offered by
the American university!
HOW STANDARD TIME IS OBTAINED.
BY T. B. WILLSON, M. A.
Almost everybody knows that observatories are the places from which
standard time is sent out and corrected daily or hourly. But
comparatively few have more than the vaguest idea of the means used at
the observatories for obtaining it.
Probably the majority of people suppose that the observatories obtain
the correct time from the sun. When the average man wishes to give his
watch the highest praise he says, "It regulates the sun," not being
aware that a watch which would keep with the sun around the year would
have to be nearly as bad as Sam Weller's. The farmer may safely decide
when to go in to dinner by the sun, but if the mariner was as
confident that the sun marked always the correct time as the farmer is
he would be sure to be at times two or three hundred miles from where
he thought he was. In other words, the sun--that is, a sundial--is
only correct on a few days in each year, and during the intervening
times gets as far as a whole quarter hour fast or slow.
These variations of the sun from uniform time caused no end of trouble
between the astronomers and the fine clockmakers before it was
discovered that sun time is subject to such irregularities. The better
the clock, the worse it often seemed to go.
But as the variations in sun time are now accurately known, correct
time might be obtained from the sun by making proper allowance, were
it not for the difficulty of observing its position, with sufficient
exactness. The large disk of the sun can not be located so perfectly
as can the single point which a star makes. For this reason
astronomers depend almost wholly upon the stars for obtaining accurate
time. It is the method of doing this which we propose to describe.
There are several hundred stars whose positions have been established
with the greatest accuracy by the most careful observations at a
number of the principal observatories of the world. If a star's exact
position is known, it can readily be calculated when it will pass the
meridian of any given place--that is, the instant it will cross a
north-and-south line through the place. The data regarding these stars
are all published in the nautical almanacs, which are got out by
several different observatories for the use of navigators and all
others who have uses for them. These stars are known as "clock stars."
Every observatory is provided with at least one, or, better, several
clocks that are very accurate indeed. Every appliance and precaution
which science can suggest is resorted to to make these clocks
accurate. The workmanship is, of course, very fine. What is known as
the "retaining click" prevents their losing a single beat while being
wound. The small variations in the length of the pendulum which
changes of temperature would cause are offset by compensation. The
rise of the mercury in the pendulum bob, if the weather grows warmer,
shortens the pendulum precisely as much as the expansion of its rod
lengthens it, and conversely if it becomes colder. Such clocks, too,
are set on stone piers built up from below the surface of the ground
and wholly independent of the building itself. Often the clocks are
made with air-tight cases, and sometimes are placed in tightly closed
chambers, only to be entered when absolutely necessary. Some fine
clocks even have appliances for offsetting barometric changes, but
these affect such clocks less than other influences or imperfections
which can not be accounted for, and thus they are seldom provided
against.
The astronomer's principal clock--the one he uses in all his
calculations--marks what is known as sidereal, not ordinary, time. The
revolution of the earth in its orbit sets the sun back in its place
in the heavens at the rate of about four minutes a day, or one whole
day in a year, so that this clock, indicating star time, gains this
amount and is only with ordinary clocks once a year. After it is once
adjusted, no attempt is made to regulate it exactly, as the astronomer
would better calculate its differences than disturb its regulation,
always provided its rate is very uniform and accurately known.
One or more of the other clocks, however, are made to show ordinary
time, and corrected by observations taken every few days. It is from
this clock that the standard time is sent out.
It is possible to connect any of these clocks telegraphically with an
instrument in the observatory, known as a chronograph. It consists of
a cylinder with a sheet of paper around it, on which rests a pen
connected with the telegraphic instrument which follows the beats of
the clock. The cylinder is turned slowly by clockwork, and the pen,
carried slowly along by a screw, describes a spiral on the paper with
jogs or teeth in it about a quarter of an inch apart, caused by the
beats of the clock. In this way the astronomer secures a visible
record of the beating of his clock, or rather of the movements of his
telegraphic recorder. Thus, if he has another key on the same circuit
with the clock, connected with his chronograph recorder, and should
touch it between the beats of his clock, it would put in an extra jog
or tooth on his record, and it will show, what he could not have told
in any other way, in just what part of the second he touched this key,
whether in the first or last part of the second, and precisely how far
from either end--that is, he can determine fractions of a second with
great nicety.
[Illustration: A SHORT SECTION FROM THE PAPER BAND OF THE CHRONOGRAPH
CYLINDER, SHOWING TRACINGS OF PEN CONNECTED WITH CLOCKS: 1, seconds of
sidereal clock; 2, both sidereal and common clocks; 3-10, the tracings
of the mean-time clock fall steadily behind the other; 11, sidereal
only; 12, connected with observer's key. The extra teeth show when a
star passed each of the five spider lines. At the extreme right is a
"rattle," put in to show where the observation is on the cylinder.]
As a matter of fact, he has such a key at the telescope which he uses
to make his observations in taking time, so that when he wishes to
record the precise instant in which anything takes place which he is
viewing through his telescope he has but to press the key in his hand
and an extra tooth will be put into the record which the clock is
making, somewhere among the regular teeth put in by the beating of the
clock. Later, when he takes out the sheet he can see just where the
tooth came, and so at what instant it was. If, now, he knows exactly
what the instant was according to the true time as given in his
almanacs--that is, what his clock ought to have shown at that
instant--he can tell how nearly right his clock is. Once knowing how
this clock is, it is a simple calculation to find how the clock which
sends the signals is running, and to alter it if needed in a manner we
shall describe later.
The observations the astronomer makes use of to determine these
instants of time are upon the "clock stars." He uses a rather small
telescope, known as a transit. It is placed with the nicest accuracy
in a north-and-south line. It can turn over vertically, but can not
move sideways out of its line. Its alignment is kept perfect by
occasionally sighting some small mark a few rods from the observatory,
either north or south.
If the astronomer points this transit, say, halfway up the southern
heavens and sees a star pass across the center of its field he knows
that that instant gives, as it were, the "noon mark" of that star. If
it is one of the "clock stars," he knows by his tables what that
instant of time is--should be--by his clock.
We have seen what his means are of comparing his clock and his
observations. But observe, now, how much pains he takes to get the
most exact observations.
To begin with, he must have calculated to a nicety his location. The
director of an observatory always knows where he is located in a sense
that few other men do. The accuracy of a large part of his
observations of any kind depends on his first having determined the
latitude and longitude of his observatory within a very few feet. Then
the data given by his tables are all modified, and adapted to conform
to his locality.
There are stretched across in the eyepiece of his transit five spider
lines. The central one is on the central line of the field of his
instrument. In observing a star for time the astronomer watches it as
it is carried by the rotation of the earth past each of these spider
lines, and presses his key--that is, makes a record--as it crosses
each line. Taking the average of these five observations, he makes
the possible error very small. But, in addition to this, he also
usually makes observations on at least four clock stars, which gives
him twenty observations to average up and determine by. As he inspects
the record of these observations which has gone upon the chronograph
sheet along with the clock beats he is able to determine, after proper
calculations, how his clock stands.
Such observations are made every three or four evenings, and thus the
clocks are not given time to get far out of the way. It is not usual
for a good clock to show a variation of more than half a second. If
the astronomer finds that his clock which is sending the time is
running a fraction of a second slow, he goes to it and lays on the top
of the pendulum bob a minute clipping of metal, which is equivalent to
shortening the pendulum an infinitesimal amount. When he takes his
next observation he discovers how his clock has been affected, and
again treats it accordingly. Thus the time that is sent out
automatically by the clock is kept always correct within a small
fraction of a second. Those who receive the time sometimes arrange
electro-magnets near the pendulums of their clocks, which act with the
beats of the observatory clock, and their attraction is enough to hold
or accelerate the pendulums as needed to make them synchronize with
the observatory clock.
It will be seen that the means of obtaining exact time involve a very
considerable outlay, and that the services of highly trained men are
needed. The public is thus greatly indebted to the railroads,
telephone companies, and other corporations which usually bear the
expense of securing standard time. It is probable, however, that from
motives of scientific pride no observatory would undertake to charge
for this anything like what would be exacted for such rare service in
any department of the commercial world.
It is worth while to note that even with such perfect clocks and
favorable conditions it is still impossible to secure perfect
timekeeping. Add to this the fact that it is not usual for those who
send out the time, after it has been received from the observatory, to
pay much heed to variations, even of several seconds, in their master
clocks, and we see why it is a disheartening task to keep the best
watch as near the second as the owner would fain have it. In the first
place, the watch could hardly be made to keep such time if kept still
in an unchanging temperature; secondly, it is still less capable of it
when subjected to the jolting and changes of temperature it encounters
when carried; and, thirdly, the means of obtaining time with
sufficient exactitude are rarely available to the general public.
AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.
BY W. E. DE RIEMER, M. A.
The recent death, at the closing of the year 1898, of the lamented
Senator Justin S. Morrill, who, as being the author of the Land-Grant
College Act, is justly styled the father of agricultural education in
the United States, seems to suggest the desirability of taking a
survey of agricultural education as it at present exists in other
countries than our own.