Hearing how youth and manhood wearied | Had led him to the mighty organ, where He left him in a mood half trance, half past With one long dream, whose waking came at last. In a lone valley up in Cumberland, Teacher at school, head of the village choir, Tilling his little plot with patient hand, That slept in Härlem's giant organ keys. came, Nor how he gained the knowledge that he had, prayer. And for an hour, he said, the rolling waves Of thunder music, over roofs and floors, Through massive columns, over storied graves, And through the great cathedral's open doors, Had flowed, in grand, majestic harmony, O'er listening earth, up to the listening sky. Then sank to silence, utter and profound. No lingering cadence floated on the air; Down the long aisles died no sweet sighing sound, As, vaguely startled, we two entered there, But the strong yearning, thrilling all his Treading with awestruck footsteps, strangeframe, ly soft, Linked to the rush of wind or song of The winding staircase to the organ loft. stream The rolling voices of his waking dream. Seemed of its thrilling trumpet peals to tell; And the poor music flute and fiddle woke In his grey church, of Härlem's glories spoke. And all the while, in silent, steadfast hope, He saved and spared, denying to himself All simple joys within his narrow scope, Until the hidden hoard upon his shelf Sufficed his purpose; but ere that was won His hair was white, his days were well-nigh done. Crimson, and gold, and blue, the noonday light Through storied panes fell on the yellow keys, Tier upon tier; and on them, still and white, Lay the old man's thin fingers, as at ease; While, through the painted clerestory windows shed, A golden glow lay on the hoary head Leant on the oaken back of his high seat. A radiant smile was on the quiet face; Such smile as those we've loved and lost may greet. And, in the silent, solemn, holy place, We, as we speechless stood and looked on him, Felt he was listening with the Seraphim Yet in a child's blind, ignorant faith he To music sweeter than the lovely strains That fed the fancies of the lonely boy; went On his strange errand, with nor doubt nor To music richer than the dreamy gains For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & CO. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. THE NYMPH OF SUMMER. WHEN first the Nymph of Summer woke to pleasure The birds sang shrill and sweet in leafy bowers; Before her feet June shed her fairest treas ure The day draws in; the mists of eve wax chilly, And fainter grow her footsteps and more faint, The graceful head droops like a faded lily Hung from the dead hand of a virgin saint. And gemmed the untrodden grass with Night falls. An owl hoots from the fir nodding flowers. By some lone fount, in forest dell secluded, Where thick ferns hung their tresses in the stream, All the hot summer days she sat and brooded Over sweet memories of a happy dream. finger, tree cover, A breeze sighs through the rushes dried and sere, And autumn clouds hang their dank tresses And shrinks before him as the blossoms Be she sitting I desire her shrink; She rises slow, no longer may she linger Beside her charmèd fountain's mossy brink; But, wandering down the glades, ere death o'ercome her, For her state's sake, and admire her Gait and state and wit approve her; Be she sullen, I commend her Hears, through the silence of the autumn For a modest; be she merry days, The sad-voiced robins singing out the sum- Briefly, everything doth lend her mer And dead leaves falling thick in wood land ways. So much grace and so approve her, observation. From The Edinburgh Review. No criterion was, howto decide THE LIQUEFACTION OF GASES.1 ever, at hand by which THE "third state" of matter was whether, in so doing, it constituted an formally recognized by Van Helmont, exception or followed a rule. Indeed, a Belgian alchemist, early in the seven- we are still ignorant of any abstract teenth century. bearing on the subject. But his discovery principle bearing on might have slipped back into oblivion Thus, apart from actual experience, had he not emphasized it by the inven- there could be no well-grounded assurtion of a name. The unseen and un-ance that the behavior of water would Under altered condifelt, yet material, substances brought prove typical. into notice by his researches were tions it even departs from its own " and are called standard. In a partial vacuum ice called by him " gases,' so still. Atmospheric air was not in- cannot be melted. When heated above cluded among them. For it ranked in freezing-point, in a vessel exhausted those days as an "element" in the of air to a certain degree, it passes Aristotelian sense. Boyle, however, directly into vapor. On a planet, in became aware of its composite charac- fact, possessing an atmosphere ter, though he failed to isolate the hundred and sixty-five times rarer than "vital" ingredient, the existence and our own, liquid water could not exist. functions of which he divined. not, indeed, until more than a century later that oxygen was definitively captured by Priestley and Scheele. Carbonic acid, meanwhile, had been investigated by Black; It was one Whether placed as near to the sun as Mercury, or as far from him as Neptune, such a globe could show neither seas nor streams. No rain could fall there, no dew be deposited; aqueous Cavendish condensations would invariably take gave, in 1766, the earliest description of the form of snow. Sublunary experi"inflammable air," alias hydrogen; ence, too, makes us acquainted with and nitrogen was made known by many complex substances which cannot Priestley in 1772. Then Lavoisier, ex- change their state, because the applicatricating these valuable discoveries tion of heat very quickly tears their from the misapprehensions in which innermost structure to pieces. Who, they lay involved, and bringing them for instance, would attempt to melt into logical connection with the results wood or leather? The very idea seems of his own inquiries, shaped the new absurd, because every one knows that science of pneumatic chemistry. they char or burn while still solid. Matter in general was thenceforward That is to say, they cease to be, as systematically studied under its solid, wood or leather, long But there respective ideal fusing-points are liquid, and gaseous forms. Elementary bodies cannot, of course, be decomposed; but some resist liquefaction, if not absolutely, yet at least so far as to sublime without One of melting, like ice in a vacuum. And carbon volatilthese is arsenic. izes only at an enormously high temperature, and has never been liquefied. Possibly the intermediate state might be forced upon it by accompanying great heat with high pressure; but the idiosyncracies of chemically distinct substances are so peculiar that its re was as yet no certainty that every indi- reached. By Professor 2. Magnetic Properties of Liquid Oxygen. Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, June 2, 1892. By Professor Dewar, M.A., F.R.S. 3. Liquid Atmospheric Air. Lecture delivered before their at the Royal Institution, January 20, 1893. By luctance may represent real inability to Professor Dewar, M.A. F.R.S. Lecture 4. The Scientific Uses of Liquid Air. delivered at the Royal Institution, January 19, 1894. By Professor Dewar, M.A., F.R.S. liquefy. The law, however, of the three states of matter is most probably universally valid both for simple bodies and for | influences of heat, light, electricity, or stable compounds. The power by chemical affinity; but the operation is which it is enforced resides in heat. destructive of the body originally comNear the bottom of the scale of tem- posed by them, and the new ones by perature, solidification reigns supreme; which it is replaced are often wholly towards the opposite extreme, vapor- diverse from it in their qualities and ization. The moon exemplifies the relationships. Thus, each of the ultifirst condition, the sun the second. mate particles of water consists of at Between the two stands our earth, in least three unimaginably minute porwhich solids, liquids, and gases co- tions-two of hydrogen and one of exist. It is composed, in other words, oxygen-the separation of which inof the three antique "elements," volves the demolition of water and the earth, water, and air. Now, the fact substitution for it of its gaseous conthat, under the same circumstances, stituents. Conversely, oxygen is condifferent substances are differently ag- verted into ozone when its molecules gregated is none the less remarkable are compelled, through the action of for being tritely familiar. It seems a electricity, to annex each a third atom matter of course that our atmosphere of the stuff itself. Yet ozone, though should, at all times and seasons, remain nothing but oxygen chemically conimperturbably ethereal that rigid densed, possesses highly characteristic rocks should enclose a heaving ocean, qualities of its own. and that mercury, alone among metals, Molecular structure, then, and the should flow like water. And it is easy forces of which the modes of action are to see that the prevalence of such like modified by it, determine the properincongruities is essential to the scheme ties of matter. A molecule is a subof things to which we ourselves belong. microscopic piece of mechanism of Unanimity among the various kinds of exquisite flexibility, conjoined, in many matter in freezing, melting, and boil- cases, with a high degree of stability. ing, would obviously exclude the possi- An organic whole, complete in itself, it bility of life. The question, then, why is nevertheless sensitive to manifold it is excluded, answers itself; but if influences from without. It is all alive we go on to ask how it is excluded, we with energy in the shape of motion, the meet with no truly articulate respouse. motive power being supplied by heat. All that can be said is that the ob- Apart from this stimulus it would be as served wide diversities of melting and inert as a locomotive with the steam boiling points result from an equally shut off. Matter in this state of hiberwide diversity in the conditions affect-nation, however, lies outside the scope ing the molecular equilibrium of the of terrestrial experience. Even at the substances severally concerned. As an lowest temperatures attainable by artiexplanation this is evidently unsatisfactory. It amounts to little more than a restatement of the same fact in different words. Yet the difference of wording is instructive; it implies a good deal. Let us consider and draw out its meaning. ficial contrivances, its particles thrill with varied movements, which, as they gain intensity through increase of heat, tend to separate the molecules in opposition to the cohesive force drawing them together. Cohesion acts with enormous power, but over a narrowly The word "molecule ” — equivalent limited range. M. Quincke calculates to little mass was employed in 1811 that the mutual attraction of two molby an Italian physicist named Avoga- ecules is insensible at distances exdro, to designate the smallest particles ceeding one twenty-thousandth of a of any substance-solid, liquid, or millimetre; yet within that minute gaseous in which its distinctive qual- interval its action is of amazing vigor. ities are preserved in their integrity. The irresistible energy of heat can, Molecules are not indivisible. They can be severed into "atoms" by the 1 Glazebrook, Properties of Matter, p. 119. |