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light, which so many men and women there had learned of their own minister, rare and remarkable John Robinson, in Leyden, Holland, he acted as clergyman to the Pilgrim Church for some time.

This contrast of Puritan and Separatist, as it began in England, the latter making a conscience of coming entirely out of the Church, and separating religion wholly from legal control, while the Puritan even more rigorously made a conscience of staying in the Church, with certain purifyings of it, and above all of keeping religion under legal control, ordered, directed and enforced by the law, was not the whole, nor even the most significant contrast marking the Puritan as at one extreme and the Pilgrim as at the other extreme.

In the case of all other existing "Separatists," this was the whole contrast. But under wise, scholarly, sweet and genial John Robinson, at Leyden, a man who could have sat by the side of Shakespeare for his broad love of all things of human interest, and in whom the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount again walked the earth as they had not done since Christ uttered them,the particular "Separatists" under Robinson, at Leyden, had unlearned even their own rigor, so as not to judge unkindly those who kept back in the Church, or even those who kept farther back in the Roman Catholic motherchurch; and laying aside all rigor and harsh judgment which other "Separatists," such as Roger Williams, even, were disfigured and narrowed by, they had made a study of liberty, of liberality and of charity, unexampled in that age of the world, and only paralleled now in those who stand high up in the sunlight of modern advance- the most enlightened and emancipated minds of the various churches and faiths of the world.

What Horace Mann says, in our quotation above, of "independent thought," and of the best sense of nurturing youth, -in "all kindly sympathies toward men, all elevated thoughts respecting the duties and the destiny of life, and a supreme reverence for the character and attributes of the Creator,"-could be said of the original Pilgrim mind, as we have it in the teaching of Robinson and in the impressions which he left on the best of the Pilgrims of Plymouth; but a part of this grand ideal, the kindly sympathies toward all

men, which are its crown and glory, was peculiar to the Pilgrims, and to them alone among religious parties in their day, the Puritans in particular having taken the fear of God first, stern regard for duty second, and human sympathy only after these, within limitations unhappily narrow, even if not fearfully inhuman.

Moreover, the great ideal which came out so clear and true in the Pilgrim mind, and the degree of practice in the direction of education which was attempted, did not at all constitute an innovation, but simply showed the high line of the free English mind, remarkable anticipations of which had again and again appeared in the long period from Cædmon and Bede to Shakespeare and Bacon. All that was finest in Puritan or in Pilgrim was profoundly English, and had notably come forth in such great English types as King Alfred and John Wyckliffe, and in other both earlier and later masters of English hope of culture and English desire of elevation and development.

Prof. Boone would have done more wisely not to have too hastily trusted such authorities even as Motley and Horace Mann; and, of course, he very naturally fails to discover the error which so exceptionally competent an authority as Prof. H. B. Adams falls into, in concluding for a more or less Dutch origin of our English schooling. English and Dutch are parallels, never dominant the one over the other, not even in closest connection; and in the matter of the English origin of culture in America, and notably the close connection of the Pilgrim Church, at Leyden, with Dutch culture, the English pureness and power were absolutely without Dutch taint, not to say immeasurably superior to Dutch chaos and defect.

Mr. Mann's references to the "nourishing" of the young under Puritan school arrangements, were not so much from history as it was, as from history as he would have made it if he had been there, with full power to carry out his very advanced liberal views. The "costly" means of the fathers, Pilgrim or Puritan, are a pure invention. Nothing could exceed the miserable poverty of Harvard College for its first hundred years. The ideas of the time were large, and the endeavors sometimes generous, but "costly means" belong exclusively to our time.

As to "barbarism," it was a terrific

factor of Puritan church and state, in the hands of a dominant religious party whose spirit has to this day obscured our view of Puritanism, although it was long ago exorcised by steady advance of both priest and politician out of the dens and the caves of a theological backwoods, into the civilization of our own time. The Latin Africa of a lately Catholic England dominated Harvard, where Latin alone could be spoken, and English was "to be used under no pretext whatever, unless required in public exercises," fearful degeneracy from King Alfred and from John Wyckliffe; gross infidelity to English culture and to an open English Bible.

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And the use made of culture under extreme Puritan auspices, at Salem and Boston and New Haven, was the worst barbarism ever seen under the Christian name. The Bible was read by the thickest darkness that ever fell upon English eyes or held under restraint pure Christian hearts. Mr. Mann's claim that the

education was not narrow and superficial has nothing whatever to go upon. In many important respects English culture has never known anything so narrow and superficial, so false to the natural depth, and so infidel to the better breadth of the English mind, as the bad schooling and worse nurture of Puritanism, in its more public and conspicuous form.

Pilgrim culture, indeed, adequately understood and accepted by all the Puritans of New England, would have brought into such development as the wilderness circumstances of founders of states permitted, the liberal ideals of a broad humanity; but no pureness of aspiration, no elevation of purpose, no breadth of human sympathies, could have lifted off from the first generations of Americans the repressive weight of their struggle for existence, which made the forest and the furrow more familiar to them than any places whatever of intellectual culture.

THE SUN AND THE AIR

A CHAPTER OF "STUDIES IN DISCOVERY OF THE NATURE AND PROPERTIES OF THE ATMOSPHERE"

The Studies, the first chapter of which we give below, were submitted to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution upon the offer by that body of certain prizes for essays or treatises in any way carrying out the purposes of a trust established in 1891 with a gift of $100,000, by Thomas G. Hodgkins. The language of the Hodgkins trust devoted this large fund "to the increase and diffusion of more exact knowledge in regard to the nature and properties of atmospheric air in connection with the welfare of man.”

In response to the offer of prizes just mentioned, 218 papers were submitted. The committee of award consisted of Dr. S. P. Langley, Dr. G. Brown Goode, John S. Billings, M. D., and Prof. M. W. Harrington. Dr. Langley has been, since 1887, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Goode, appointed on the committee by Dr. Langley, is Dr. Langley's official assistant. Dr. Billings is assistant Surgeon-General. Prof. Harrington was, during his time of service on the committee, the head of the weather bureau of the United States.

With a committee of four, two of whom were Dr. Langley and his assistant, with Dr. Billings and Prof. Harrington necessarily occupied with professional engagements, it would almost seem as if the disposal made of the 218 papers submitted must have rested with Secretary Langley's assistant, who is an ichthyologist, with a knowledge of fisheries, and whose subordinate position would permit him to give time to the examination of the competing papers.

Of the three prizes offered, the great one of $10,000 was awarded to Lord Rayleigh and Prof. Ramsay, of London, "for the discovery of argon, a new element of the atmosphere." A second prize of $2,000 was not awarded. A third prize of $1,000 for the best popular treatise upon atmospheric air, its properties and relationships, was awarded to Dr. Henry de Varigny, of Paris. These awards were made August 9, 1895.

In addition to this award of prizes, the committee arranged with the Smithsonian institution to bestow upon the authors of three of the papers, "Honorable Mention with Silver Medal"; upon the authors of six of the papers, "Honorable Mention with Bronze Medal "; and upon

twelve others, "Honorable Mention." One of the bronze medals was bestowed upon Mr. Maxim, the English inventor, for a paper on "Natural and Artificial Flight."

"The Studies in Discovery of the Nature and Properties of the Atmosphere," submitted by the present writer, have been returned to him without any appearance of having been read, without any word of explanation, and, as the full published statement shows, without mention in the verdict passed upon twenty-three of the 218 papers. These studies cover the whole ground of the nature and properties of the air, on lines of scholarship in every field of science, and of original thought, not likely to have passed without notice unless deliberately excluded from consideration on the ground of certain new views, which center in the writer's theory of the electrical function of the oxygen of the atmosphere, i. e., the oxygen of combustion and the oxygen of respiration.

When Benjamin Franklin sent his first studies in electricity to the Royal Society, in London, they were refused recognition as of no account, until the plaudits of Europe brought that body to their senses.

When Lavoisier brought out the true view of oxygen in chemistry, the great chemists who came just before him in the study of oxygen-Priestley, Cavendish and Scheele-stupidly refused recognition of what was soon universally accepted as the exact truth, while the physicists of Berlin burned him in effigy ; and even in his own Paris, the Journal de Physique fiercely contested his teaching.

The doctrine of the electrical function of oxygen combines the lines represented in Franklin and in Lavoisier, and it will win in the end.

The award of $10,000 to the discoverers of argon merits challenge in the courts and before Congress, to which the management of the Smithsonian Institution is responsible. Be the interest and honor of the discovery what they may, not the slightest connection with the welfare of man can be shown, or even suspected. The papers of Lord Rayleigh and Prof. Ramsay were not prepared for, or in any way aimed to meet the conditions of, the competition; and the award of the grand prize to them is not only in contravention of the trust, but is perfectly gratuitous. The $10,000 is disposed of without accomplishing anything more than would have come about if no prizes had been offered; and not even a slight excuse can be found in some connection of argon with the welfare of man.

FOREWORDS

"If, in strivings either to discover new regions of science, or to map out and develop those which are known into one harmonious whole, we see but imperfectly, still we should endeavor to see; for even an obscure and distorted vision is better than none. Let us, if we can, discover a new thing in any shape; the true appearance and character will be easily developed afterward." "All physical science is within our reach. Discoveries as large or larger than any yet made may be anticipated."

"The great difficulty is to remove the mists which dim the dawn of a subject.”

"Nothing is more difficult and requires more care than philosophical deduction, nor is there anything more adverse to its accuracy than fixity of opinion. The philosopher should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion. He should be of no school, and in doctrine have no master. Truth should be his primary object."

"The oxygen which makes up more than half the weight of the world-what a wonderful thing it is! and yet I think we are only at the beginning of the knowledge of its wonders.”Faraday.

WHAT THE SUN IS: HOW SUN-SPOTS ARE EXPLAINED

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HE relations of the sun to the earth are of extreme importance for anything like a proper comprehension of the nature and functions of the earth's atmosphere. In the article, "Astronomy," in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Mr. R. A. Proctor has given the general facts, which are of importance to be understood, of the sun as the ruler of

our atmosphere. It is a globe, supposed to be perfectly spherical, about 852,900 miles in diameter, its volume 1,252,700 times that of the earth, its mean density almost exactly one-fourth that of the earth, and the solar mass exceeding the earth's about 316,000 times. To the naked eye the sun appears only as a luminous mass of intense and uniform brightness; but, examined with the tele

scope, dark spots are seen, constantly varying in appearance, situation, and magnitude; at times their number being so great as to occupy a considerable portion of the solar surface; and occasionally a single spot of immense size,—one observed by Sir W. Herschel having had a diameter of more than 50,000 miles, or over six times the diameter of the earth. Most of the spots have a deep-black nucleus, with a surrounding umbra of lighter shade, the inner edge of which is clearly defined and is brighter than the farther part, and beyond which is a rim or encircling stripe of light more vivid than the average light of the solar surface. The spots have enabled astronomers to observe the rotation of the sun on its axis in something less than a month, and eminent observers have sought by means of them to penetrate the secrets of the shining surface pouring into space so immense a supply of light and heat. Among opinions as to the significance of the spots, those of Dr. Alexander Wilson and Sir Wm. Herschel merit consideration as hypotheses enabling us to frame conceptions of the relations between the sun and the earth.

Dr. Wilson supposed the sun to consist of a dark nucleus, covered only to a certain depth by a luminous matter, not fluid, through which openings are occasionally made by volcanic or other energies, permitting the solid nucleus of the sun to be seen; and that the umbra which surrounds the spot is occasioned by a partial admission of the light upon the shelving sides of the boundary opposite to the observer. Lalande combated this view as founded on a uniformity of appearances which does not in reality exist, and his suggestion was that the spots are scoriæ, which have settled on the summits of the solar mountains.

HYPOTHESIS OF SIR WM. HERSCHEL

Sir Wm. Herschel imagined the dark spots on the sun to be mountains, which, in view of the mass and slow revolution on its axis of the vast orb, he thought might stand more than 300 miles high. In the observations made by him the dark spots appeared as the opaque ground or body of the sun, and the luminous part seemed to be an atmosphere, through which, when openings are made in it, we obtain a view of the sun itself. Herschel's

conclusion was that the sun has a very extensive atmosphere, consisting of elastic fluids that are more or less lucid and transparent, and of which the lucid ones furnish us with light. This atmosphere, he thought, cannot be less than 1,843 miles in height, nor more than 2,765 miles; and he supposed that the density of the luminous solar clouds needs not be much more than that of our aurora borealis, in order to produce the effects with which we are acquainted. If this hypothesis be admitted, the sun "is similar to the other globes of the solar system with regard to its solidity, its atmosphere, its surface diversified with mountains and valleys, its rotation on its axis, and the fall of heavy bodies on its surface; therefore, a very eminent, large and lucid planet, primate in our system, disseminating its light and heat to all the bodies with which it is connected." The hypothesis of Herschel was that there are two regions or strata of solar clouds; that the lower or inner stratum is opaque, and probably not unlike our own atmosphere, while the upper and outer is the lightbearing, which it pours forth on a vast scale into space. The lower clouds act as a curtain to screen the body of the sun from the intense heat and brilliancy of the upper regions; and they also serve by their outer surface to reflect the light of the luminous clouds back into space. The solid globe of the sun is shut off from our sight by the luminous clouds surrounding it, except when they are broken by openings through which spots of the solar surface become visible. That these openings last for a length of time argues against thinking that the luminous cloud-matter is either gaseous or liquid, as, if it were either, it would speedily flow back and close the openings.

HOW SUNLIGHT IS PRODUCED

The results of spectroscopic analysis applied to study of the sun's constitution, show that the light of the sun comes from an orb glowing with intense white light

light of all refrangibilities; indicating that the sun is either liquid or solid, or if vaporous, then so greatly compressed that the condition of its vapors is unlike that of any gases with which we are familiar. The multitude of dark lines crossing the rainbow-tinted streak con

stituting the solar spectrum, shows that the glowing mass of the sun must be surrounded by an envelope of many vapors at a lower temperature; not, indeed, in any sense cool, for they include vapors of magnesium and sodium, of iron, copper, and other metals, implying an excessive intensity of heat. And other considerations lead to the belief that the solar atmosphere has vapors which are luminously hot while less intensely hot than the glowing mass of the sun. The spectroscopic evidence appears to confirm the theory that the spots on the sun are due to the existence of masses of relatively cool vapors at a lower level in the immensely deep solar atmosphere. Phenomena of eruption on a scale in keeping with the mass and condition of the sun, seem to be plainly indicated. The socalled red prominences appear to be masses of glowing vapor, consisting in part of hydrogen. The great prominences are seen in the spot zone, lying between the equatorial and the polar zones. Prominences have been seen rising, generally in the form of rectilinear jets, to a height of at least 80,000 miles, and at times more than twice that, then bending back to fall in the fashion of a fountain. What has been variously named the sierra, chromosphere, or chromatosphere, shows a border of a red color around the solar disk, and has the appearance of a continuous red envelope surrounding the sun to a depth of three or four thousand miles. Among the prominences are distinguished those of a plume character, which show no sign of an eruptive origin, last longer than the other variety, change in form rapidly, and may appear anywhere on the sun's surface; and the jet-prominences, of intense luminosity, showing through the clouds into which the sierra breaks up, appearing only in connection with sun-spots, rarely lasting for an hour, indicating eruptive origin, and on reaching their height changing into exceedingly bright masses, which become at length fleecy clouds. The eminent American observer, Young, has witnessed an undoubted solar eruption propelling matter to more than 200,000 miles out from the solar surface, and in this matter glowing hydrogen thrown up, probably not from the source of the eruption, but from its place in the solar atmosphere. And observations on the corona have led

Young to the conclusion that "there is surrounding the sun a mass of selfluminous, gaseous matter, the precise extent of which it is hardly possible to consider as determined, but at least of great extent, many times the thickness of the red hydrogen portion of the chromatosphere, perhaps on an average 8' or IO', with occasional horns of twice that height; and perhaps even without upper limit, but extending indefinitely into space." What is known as the Zodiacal Light is thought to be the outermost of the series of solar appendages, next beyond the outer corona, within which lies the inner corona, then the sierra, of which the prominences are extensions; and within this, the proper, real atmosphere of the sun.

ELECTRICAL EMANATIONS FROM

THE SUN

Mr. Proctor quotes from Prof. Elias Loomis of Yale University a statement in regard to the possible connection of spots on the sun with the magnetic and electrical phenomena of the surface and the atmosphere of the earth. It is to this effect:

If

"We cannot suppose that a small black spot on the sun exerts any influence on the earth's magnetism or electricity; but we must rather conclude that the black spot is a result of a disturbance of the sun's surface, which is accompanied by an emanation of some influence from the sun, which is almost instantly felt upon the earth in an unusual disturbance of the earth's magnetism, and a flow of electricity, developing the auroral light in the upper regions of the earth's atmosphere. The appearances favor the idea that this emanation consists of a direct flow of electricity from the sun. we maintain that light and heat are the result of vibrations of a rare ether which fills all space, the analogy between these agents and electricity would lead us to conclude that this agent also is the result of vibrations in the same medium, or at least that it is a force capable of being propagated through the ether with a velocity similar to that of light. While this influence is traveling through the void celestial spaces it develops no light; but as soon as it encounters the earth's atmosphere, which appears to extend to a height of about 500 miles, it develops

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