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the generous hope of helping forward some of these that the De Goncourts made up their minds to found a certain number of literary scholarships for which only bonâ fide men of letters should be eligible. The number was restricted to twelve, partly on account of the expense; and the scheme can only come into operation after the surviving brother has departed this world-a rather melancholy thought, bythe-by, for those who have already a destined place in the Académie. When the brothers first conceived the idea, the men were chosen-all, it is hardly necessary to state, outside the Académie Française, and all men to whom the six thousand fraucs income (exactly £240) would have been wealth. These men were then Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, Barbey d'Hervilly, Louis Veuillot-for whose talent, strange as it may seem consider ing the extreme differences both of opinion and style existing between them, the De Goncourts had a great respect-Theodore de Banville, and, among the younger men, Alphonse Daudet and Emile Zola. Of these the older generation has disappeared as though it had not been, and M. Zola is in training for the Académie, so to Alphonse Daudet will probably fall the task of forming the Académie de Gon. court, which may in tine become a serious rival to the Forty. It is difficult to divine who would now compose the twelve, but Guy de Maupassant may almost certainly be cited, the more so that he has always refused to enter the Academic fold. Paul Marguerite and Reny among the new writers would also probably have their place.

It is unnecessary to point out what a boon this Académie de Goncourt will prove, if the management and general direction fall into the right hands. Life

is almost impossible to the literary begin. ner abroad. Magazines are practically non-existent, and, owing to the absence of good circulating libraries, it takes as many years to become popular in France as it would months in England or America.

One of the finest collections of Japanese art in the world is contained in the Auteuil villa where M. Edmond de Goncourt now lives in solitude, and the walls of this maison d'artiste are covered with exquisite eighteenth-century miniatures, drawings and pastels signed Fragonard, Boucher, Watteau, and rare Beauvais tapestries, to

say nothing of the quaint, ill-spelled autograph letters of the grandes dumes Messieurs de Goncourt made to live again in their "Histoire de la France au 18eme Siècle," for both brothers were passionate collectors at a time when a Fragonard worth three thousand francs to day could be bought for as many centimes.

Very characteristic of the genius and aptitudes of the De Goncourts is the account of their home at Auteuil written by the elder brother ten long years after the death of Jules. Surely the plaques, and the bronzes, and the Japanese stuffs must one and all have caught the echoes of that sad death-bed, and the lonely pain of the survivor. There is something horribly melancholy in the enumeration of all the precious things, especially when we remember that after a particularly costly purchase the two young brothers would go off and economize in some artists' tavern where their food and lodging came to half-a-crown a day. Here is Edmond's account of the growth of this hereditary passion.

"Sitting by my chimney-corner, in the interval of work, a cigar between my lips and my eyes wandering over all the surrounding bric-à-brac, I had often asked myself whence arose this passionate love du bibelot which has made me happy and miserable all my life. . . .

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"One of the most eager amateurs of the eighteenth century was a connection of my family, M. le Bas de Courmont, but he," adds Edmond, was not a blood relation." The grandfather De Goncourt lived in a beautiful sculptured house at Neufchateau, and had within it divers bronzes, drawings, and fine pieces of furniture; but simple as the fitting adornment of his rank in life. The father, an officer, never troubled his head about "these stupiditics," but always chose articles of common necessity, such as a brush of elegant and even artistic make, and his drinking-glass was one of the first verres mousselins made.

But it is to the influence of an aunt by marriage that M. de Goncourt attributes the collecting passion which grew with his growth. This lady lived at Croissy, in the neighborhood of Paris, and Madame de Goncourt sometimes spent the summer with her and a third relative, a sort of domestic colony very common in France. They would set out on the Sunday after

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noons when the little Edmond came home from school, and find their way down the Boulevard Beaumarchais to the Faubourg St. Antoine, and so to certain vendors of curiosities. This was about 1836, and the three ladies are daintily described in their thin muslin gowns, and prunella shoes with curved sandals tied round the ankle, "a charming trio." "Ma tante," says M. de Goncourt, was at that time one of the four or five persons in Paris who loved the old things of a former time; Venetian glass, sculptured ivories, inlaid furniture, Genoese velvets, Point d'Alençon and Porcelaines de Saxe. The ladies would find the dealer putting up his shutters previous to going out to dine in some tavern at Vincennes, but they would generally pick up some precious trifle that was given to Edmond to carry, who watched his own feet with careful zeal lest he should trip, while his aunt would look smilingly back with an Edmond, take care not to break it.'

"It is certainly these old Sundays which made the bibeloteur which I have been, which I am, and shall be all my life long." These pages recall the house of Victor Hugo at Guernsey, Hauteville House, which was decorated to such an extraordinary degree with old tapestry, sculptured oak and Japanese treasures, that it seemed to detract a little from the value of the dwelling as an exponent of the life of the

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father-in-law the Duc de Penthievre, I take this account of an inlaid casket, made of foreign woods, such as they loved a century ago.

"It is the casket where my grandmother, elegant in her tastes, kept her best Indian cashmeres; for she had so many, that I remember at the time of her death my childish astonishment at heating the dealers who came to the sale speak of it as the sale of the Indian lady.' At this date all that remains in the casket belonging to its original owner is a curious. account book of the time of the Directoire, at the moment of the depreciation of the paper money-the Assignats-during months when a turkey cost 600 francs. This account-book is in the midst of a pile of literary agreements, shares and bonds, paid bills for works of art, family papers, all the mass of serious archives belonging to the living man, mingled with the relics which he keeps of those who are no more; where my fingers touch, now my father's Croix d'Officier,' now my mother's wedding-ring, or a fair-haired curl of my little sister Lili, who died of cholera in 1832-died upon our knees in a compartment of a diligence, while we were in agonizing uncertainty whether to alight in one of the passing villages, or to hurry on for help to the next great town."

The great charm of the "Maison d'Artiste" consists in the little interspersed memories of family life which cling to some unbought relic of the De Goncourt family-memories in which the essentially delicate and kindly nature of the writer dignifies each reminiscence of the past, and makes every reader feel in him a friend.—Murray's Magazine.

THE GRINDSTONE THEORY OF THE MILKY WAY.

BY J. ELLARD GORE.

THE original conception of the "grindstone" or "disc theory" of the Milky Way, although usually attributed to Sir William Herschel, is certainly due to Thomas Wright of Durham, who first published the theory in the year 1750 in a work entitled "An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe, founded upon the Laws of Nature, and solving by Mathematical Principles the General Phæ

nomena of the Visible Creation; and particularly The Via Lactea. Compris'd in Nine Familiar Letters from the Author to his Friend." This work is very rare. Even the great library of the Poulkova Observatory, Russia, does not possess a copy, and it appears from the writings of Kant, Struve, and Arago that neither of them had seen an original copy of Wright's work. On the title-page of the copy be

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longing to the Library of the Royal Astronomical Society (from which the extracts in the following pages are quoted) there is a inanuscript note by Professor De Morgan (author of "The Budget of Paradoxes'), in which he says that he had only seen three copies of the work, one of which had an ingenious attempt to alter MDCCL into MDCCC, which could only be detected by looking through the back of the page"-an attempt probably made by some unscrupulous person to try and prove that Wright's views were not published till 1800, or a date subsequent to the appearance of Sir W. Herschel's earlier papers.

Thomas Wright was born on September 22, 1711, at Byer's Green, near Durham, and died at the same place on February 25, 1786. He seems to have been an observer especially of comets, and a computer of their orbits. He published some other works, and acquired such a reputation by his writings on navigation that in 1742 he was offered the professorship of navigation in the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg.

In the seventh letter of the work referred to Wright says: "Let us imagine a vast infinite Gulph, or Medium, every Way extended like a Plane, and inclosed between two Surfaces, nearly even on both Sides, but of such a Depth or Thickness as to occupy a Space equal to the double Radius, or Diameter of the visible Creation, that is to take in one of the smallest Stars each way, from the middle Station, perpendicular to the Plane's Direction, and, as near as possible, according to our Idea of their true Distance;" and again, “If your Opticks fail you before you arrive at these external Regions, only imagine how infinitely greater the Number of Stars would Le in these remote Parts, arising thus from their continual crowding behind one another, as all other Objects do toward the Horizon Point of their Perspective, which ends but with Infinity. Thus, all their Rays at least so near uniting, must meeting in the eye appear, as almost, in Contact, and form a perfect Zone of Light; this I take to be the real Case, and the true nature of our Milky Way." Here we have the disc theory" clearly propounded.

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Herschel was, however, the first to put this theory to the test of observation. Let us consider the principle on which his ob

servations were based. If we suppose the stars to be uniformly scattered through a space extending to the same distance in all directions, with the observer's eye placed neatly in the centre, it is evident that the number of stars visible in the field of the telescope directed to different portions of the stellar vault would be nearly the same for every position of the telescope. But let us suppose that the stars are equally distributed, not in a sphere, but in the form of a cylindrical disc-like a grindstone--of a small thickness in comparison with its diameter. In this case-if the stars near the borders of the disc are within the range of our telescope-there will be seen in the direction of the diameter of the disc a very large number of stars, and in that of the thickness, or axis of the disc, a comparatively small number. In other directions the number visible will be proportional to the length of the visual ray. It follows, therefore, that an enumeration of the stars visible in various directions would enable us to determine the exact form of the stellar stratum, and also the position of the observer in the interior of the disc. For, as the volumes of spheres vary as the cubes of their radii, the number of stars visible in any two directions would be proportional to the cubes of the distances to which the stratum extended in the two directions. For example, if in the field of view of the observing telescope ten stars are counted in one direction and eighty in another, the length of the visual rays will be as one to two (or as the cube roots of one to eight). From the observed numbers, and a comparison between the area of the field of the observing telescope and the total area of the star sphere, the length of the visual ray, compared with the mean distance of stars of the first magnitude, may also be computed.

In pursuance of this method Sir W. Herschel undertook a series of " gauges, or counts of stars, visible in different portions of the sky with a reflecting telescope of 18.8 inches aperture. The magnifying power used was 157, and the diameter of "the field of view' about fifteen minutes four seconds of arc, or about half the moon's apparent diameter. It may be shown that the area of this field of view is equal to that of the whole celestial sphere divided by 833,000. It would, therefore, be necessary to count this im

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mense number of fields in order to gauge" the whole visible heavens. Her schel's gauges number about 3400, so that in reality he examined only a small fraction of the celestial vault. The number of stars visible in these gauges range from 0 to 588. This latter number, large as it is for so small a field of view, would give for the whole heavens- if equally rich-a total of 489,804,000 stars, a number which, although absolutely large, must be considered as comparatively small if we consider space as infinite in extent.

Herschel's gauges were made along a great circle of the celestial sphere at right angles to the course of the Milky Way. This section was inclined at an angle of 35 degrees to the celestial Equator. It intersects the Milky Way at right angles, and passes close to the Galactic poles. On one side of the star sphere it cuts the Milky Way in the two branches in Aquila, and at the opposite side in the southern portion of Monoceros near Canis Major. Herschel found the greatest diameter of his stellar stratum to have an extension of 850 times the mean distance of stars of the first magnitude; the thickness at right angles to the diameter of the discor in the direction of the poles of the Milky Way--being 155 of the same units. In this hypothetical disc the sun is not quite centrally placed either in the direc tion of the thickness, or in that of the diameter of the disc. In the direction of the thickness he found an extension of 75 units toward Coma Berenices, or Northern Galactic pole, and 80 units toward Cetus, or the Southern pole. In the direction of the diameter the maximuin extension is in the direction of Aquila, where we have distances of 497 and 420 units. Between these two branches lies a void gulf, of which the nearest point to the sun is at a distance of 220 units. In the opposite direction the extreme distance of the borders of the disc is at 352 of the same units, in that portion of the Milky Way above Canis Major.

Herschel estimates the average distance of stars of the sixth maguitude-about the limit of ordinary eyesight-to be twelve times the average distance of stars of the first magnitude. Now, with a light ratio" of 2.512, I find that the average distance of stars of the eighth magnitude will be 30.14 units of the adopted scale, the distance of ninth mag

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nitude stars 47.76, and of tenth magnitude stars 75.72 of the same units. From this it follows that a telescope which shows stars to the tenth magnitude only should suffice to pierce through the thickness of the stellar disc in the direction of the North Galactic pole. As this is probably not the case, it would seem that Herschel's assumed dimensions are too small. Assuming his figures, however, let us consider how the disc theory" agrees with observation. As the late Mr. Proctor has shown, the stars visible to the naked eye alone show a marked tendency to aggregation on the Galactic stream. My own investigations on the subject confirm the correctness of this conclusion. Now, as the average naked eye can only penetrate to a small distance in any direction of the disc, we should find the number of naked eye stars nearly the same in all directions, with of course a nebulous background. There seems, therefore, no reason why the naked eye stars should be more numerous in the direction of the Milky Way than in any other direction. It may, however, be objected to this argument that the tendency of the lucid stars to crowd on the Milky Way is not sufficiently well marked to warrant us in drawing any decided conclusion from their apparent distribution over the celestial vault. Let us, therefore, consider the observed distribution of stars to the eighth and ninth magnitudes, of which the limit in distances fall well within the thickness of the hypothetical disc. Struve found that for the hours VI. and I. of Right Ascension the ratio of stellar density is about 3 to 1 for stars to the ninth magnitude, included in a zone from 15° North Declination to 15° South Declination. Argelander's maps show that for a distance of 30° on each side of the centre line of the Galactic zone the stars to the eighth magnitude inside these limits are more numerous than those outside in the ratio of about 2 to 1. For stars of the ninth magnitude this ratio is nearly 2 to 1.

Adopting Struve's method of counting the stars in a zone from 15° to — 15° of Declination, I have made a careful enumeration of the stars to the eighth magnitude inclusive, as shown in Harding's charts, which are fairly complete for stars of that magnitude, at least in the selected zone. The results I have found show that the maximum number of stars

occurs in the hour XVIII, to XIX. (Milky Way), where the number contained in the zone is 611, and the minimum in hour I. to II., where the number is 275. This gives a ratio of 2.22 to 1. Another maximum occurs in hour VI. to VII. (Milky Way), where the number is 601. The average for the whole zone is about 436 stars per hour of Right Ascension; the average for the hours V. to VIII. being 543, and for the hours XVIII. to XXI., 581. We see, therefore, that the stars down to only the eighth magnitude show a strongly marked tendency to aggregation on the Milky Way stream.

see, may truly be said to be in the plane of the Milky Way, yet I am now convinced by a long inspection and continned examination of it, that the Milky Way itself consists of stars very differently scattered from those which are immediately about us." And in his paper of 1811 he says: "An equal scattering of the stars may be admitted in certain calculations; but when we examine the Milky Way, or the closely compressed clusters of stars of which my catalogues have recorded so many instances, this supposed equality of scattering must be given up." In his paper of 1817 Herschel expresses his opinion that although a large number of stars visible in the field of view of the gauging telescope would generally indicate a great extension of stars in the line of sight, these " gauges" in reality point more directly to the relative condensation of the stars in space, and show the varying richness of star distribution in different re

fundamental assumption of the theory abandoned by the author himself.

These results are quite inconsistent with the "disc," or "grindstone" theory of the Milky Way. As the stars are, by this hypothesis, supposed to be uniformly distributed throughout every part of the disc. and as the limiting distances for stars of the eighth and ninth magnitudes fall well within the boundaries of the disc, there is clearly no reason why stars of these mag-gions of the heavens. Here we have the nitudes should not be quite as numerous in the direction of the Galactic poles as in that of the Milky Way itself. We see, therefore, that the disc theory fails to represent the observed facts, and that Struve and Proctor were fully justified in their opinion that the theory is wholly untenable and should be abandoned. These views are of course strengthened by the fact that the disc theory was abandoned by Herschel himself in his later writings. In his paper of 1802 he says: "For though our sun, and all the stars we

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The disc theory" of the Milky Way has-like many other errors-persistently held its ground in astronomical text-books, and it certainly does seem strange that the opinions held by Herschel when, as Proctor says, "his labors were but beginning, should be adopted by future astronomers in preference to those which were the fruits of his ripened experience."-Gentleman's Magazine.

HIS PRIVATE HONOR.

BY RUDYARD KIPLING.

THE autumn batch of recruits for the Old Regiment had just been uncarted. As usual they were said to be the worst draft that had ever come from the Depot. Mulvaney looked them over, grunted scornfully, and immediately reported himself very sick.

"Is it the regular autumn fever?'' said the doctor, who knew something of Terence's ways. "Your temperature's normal."

"'Tis a hundred and thirty-seven rookies to the bad, sorr. I'm not very sick now, but I will be dead if these boys

are thrown at me in my rejuced condition. Doctor, dear, supposin' you was in charge of three cholera camps an’—”

"Go to hospital then, you old contriver," said the doctor laughing.

Terence bundled himself into a blue bedgown,-Dinah Shadd was away attending to a major's lady, who preferred Dinah without a diploma to anybody else with a hundred-put a pipe in his teeth, and paraded the hospital balcony exhorting Ortheris to be a father to the new recruits.

"They're mostly your own sort, little

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