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translucent waters springing warm and the surface. For in midwinter this bright from the deep chalk that lies water-garden is in full growth. Exbeneath the frozen downs. The river quisitely cut leaves like acanthus wave is so mild and full, that it runs like beneath the surface, tiny pea-like plants a vein of warm life through the cold trail in the eddies, and masses of brilbody of the hills. Its water-meadows liant green feathery weed, like the train are still green, though ribbed across of a peacock's tail, stream out, in conwith multitudinous channels of white stant undulating motion, just beneath and crackling ice; and to them crowd the surface. In other places the scour plovers and redwings, snipe and water- of the river has washed the bed bare, hens, seagulls, field-fares and missel- and the tiny globules of grey chalk thrushes, pipits and larks, and all the may be seen gently rolling onward as soft-billed birds in search of food. On the slow friction of the water detaches and around the stream itself there is them from their bed. The low, bright more life than at any time since the sunbeams were still upon the water swallows left and the gnats died. That, when, slowly and almost insensibly, at least, was the impression left on the from beneath the dark arches of the writer's mind, when standing on one of bridge, there glided out two mighty the main bridges over the river below fish-not the bright, sparkling troutSt. Cross, in the bright sunlight of lets of West Country streams, arrowNew Year's day. Though the banks like and vivacious, or the brown and were frozen like iron, not a particle of lusty denizens of Highland rivers, but ice appeared on the broad surface of the solemn and sagacious monsters the river. Two of the scarce eared- which only such chosen waters as those grebes were fishing and diving some of the Hampshire chalk-streams breed, fifty yards above the bridge, not alto-fishes which would have done credit gether without fear of man, but appar- to the table of such prelates as Wilently confident in their powers of liam of Wykeham, trout that are known concealment and escape. Coots and and familiar to every inhabitant, honwater-hens were feeding beneath the banks, or swimming, and returning from the sides to an osier-covered island in the centre. Exquisite grey wagtails, with canary-colored breasts, and ashen and black backs, flirted their tails in the shallows or on the coping-stones which had fallen into the stream. But the river itself was even more in contrast to its setting than the contentment of the river-birds to the pinched misery of the inhabitants of the garden or the fields. From bank to bank, and from Clearly in this water-world, the great its surface to its bed, the waters showed change wrought on land by frost was a wealth and richness of color, rendered still unfelt. The cold has no power all the more striking by the cold and beyond its surface; plants and fishes wintry monotony of the fringe of were unaffected. Yet on the bank, downs on either side. As it winds be-even at midday, the thermometer tween the frozen hills the bed of the marked fifteen degrees below freezingItchen is like a summer-garden set in point, and at night a cold approaching an ice-house. However great the depth that of Canada. The reason is not far - and an eight-foot rod would scarcely to seek. The whole body of the river reach the bottom in mid-stream every had maintained its temperature but stone and every water-plant is to be little below that at which it issues from seen as clearly as though it lay above the chalk.

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ored and envied while they live, and destined, when caught at last, to be enshrined in glass coffins, with inscriptions, like embalmed bishops. pounds apiece was the least weight which we could assign to the pair as they slowly forged up stream and lay side by side, the tops of their broad tails curling, and their fat lips moving, looking from above like two gigantic spotted salamanders among the waving fronds of weed.

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VI. TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF VILLAGE LIFE, Longman's Magazine,

VII. SKETCHES IN IVIZA, .

Edinburgh Review,
Belgravia,

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Contemporary Review,
All The Year Round,

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For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded for a year, free of postage.

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SHE lingered 'midst the lilies white and fair, Marguerite,

Pale faith that fears itself, hopes without Herself the fairest flower that blossomed

wings,

Man's puzzled eyes pathetic,

Ill omens that the ending century brings, A hush of tones poetic.

Some other sunset I may search the west, And that lost light discover,

My longing compass its unthwarted quest, Fit lyric for true lover :

Or, in earth's air I ne'er may see that same Fine dying flame of splendor,

there,

Pure and sweet.

The music of her voice came unto me
Soft and low;

She sang of happy days that were to be
Long ago.

It was a golden dream of hope and love,
Born but to die.

The lilies drooped their heads; the storm-
clouds came
Across the sky.

Yet, haply elsewhere find the power to And I have wandered on through weary

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From The Edinburgh Review.
THE LIFE OF JOHN ERICSSON.1

2

favored son, whose greatest difficulties lay outside her realm. A life of eightysix years, unwearying toil, and some exceptional opportunities were required to secure the ultimate triumph.

"ALL ingenious and accurate mechanical inventions," wrote Bacon, "may be conceived as a labyrinth, which, by reason of their subtilty, in- The roles of the inventor and the tricacy, and the apparent resemblances engineer are dissociable. The inventor they have among themselves, scarce may be no engineer; the engineer may any power of the judgment can unravel be hampered by the genius of invention. and distinguish, so that they are only The one investigates scientific laws, to be understood and traced by the clue and by experiments attains specific reof experience." These words explain, sults; the other grasps the uses of those in one aspect, the fascination of the life results, and applies them, under widely of the inventor, who, with infinite pa- varying conditions, to the service of tience and unstinted labor, successfully mankind. Edison cannot, strictly speakthreads the maze. Frequently missing ing, be called an engineer; the second the clue, or deceived for the moment by Brunel was not an inventor. The dis"apparent resemblances," he will yet tinction between these functions will be retrace his steps, and with unerring in- more marked in the future than has stinct resume the lost trail. Other been the case in the past, although inquirers will cross his path, journey by points of contact will necessarily rehis side, perhaps pass him for a time, main. Ericsson united both rôles, and to lose themselves inextricably in the could invent a sounding apparatus, or dark passages. The splendid triumphs design and construct an armor-clad which success holds out, the infinite navy. The profusion of his creative possibilities of failure, and the apparent genius was as marvellous as its versaaccidents which determine success or tility. "It was estimated by Isaac failure,.combine to invest the career of Newton, the first engineer of the Monthe inventor with a peculiarly dramatic itor, that she contained at least forty charm. In another aspect, this career patentable inventions.” The inventor is scarcely less full of stirring interest. of the "caloric" engine was also one It is not merely matter which has to be of the pioneers of the locomotive, the subjected to the directing will. It is introducer of screw-propulsion, and the not merely necessary to achieve me- designer of a type of warship which has chanical success, but to demonstrate the left its mark upon the navies of the (achievement to dull minds. Mechan- world. -ical success will, in the long run, enforce acquiescence; but the inventor must spend the greatest part of his energies in a long struggle against the tyranny of custom, or rest content with posthumous fame, certain to be disputed.

The life of John Ericsson exactly illustrates both aspects of the inventor's career. No one ever penetrated more -successfully into the intricacies of the labyrinth. No one met with more opposition. Men, with their ingrained prejudices, proved more intractable than matter, subject only to inexorable laws. Science, with a free hand, revealed innumerable secrets to her

1 Life of John Ericsson. By William Conant

Church. 2 vols. London: 1890.

2 Wisdom of the Ancients, Dædalus.

Among the secluded mountains of the rugged district of Vermland John Ericsson was born in 1803. His father Olof was "a clever mathematician," and possessed an excellent "mechanical judgment;" but to his mother, and her Flemish and Scotch descent, he seems to have owed the most striking features of his character. Olof Ericsson was ruined in 1811 and, compelled to break up his home and seek employment on the Göta Canal, then recently started. The great project of a navigable waterway across the Swedish peninsula had long slumbered. Originally proposed in 1526, it was warmly the route, and in 1718 obtained authorespoused by Swedenborg, who surveyed lity from Charles XII, to undertake the

work. The king died shortly after- |ing working models of a saw-mill and wards, and little progress had been a pump, and the poverty which premade when, in 1755, the locks were vented him from procuring tools served destroyed by masses of timber mali- thus early to develop his resourcefulciously sent down the river. More than ness. fifty years passed before the project "His home was in the depths of a was revived by Count von Platen, who pine forest. nothing was to be called in the assistance of Telford, then bought, and he had nothing to buy engaged upon the Caledonian Canal. with." Keenly anxious to be able to The grant of a new constitution brought color his drawings, he succeeded in internal tranquillity to Sweden, and making two small brushes of hair abopened an era of progress. The mili-stracted from his mother's fur cloak. tary aspects of the scheme impressed What institute training could so efthemselves upon Bernadotte as upon fectually teach the great lesson of selfCharles XII., and from this time the reliance? At fourteen the boy was work was steadily carried through to superintending the labor of six hundred completion. Later projects, involving troops, "though he was still too small far greater commercial and military to reach the eyepiece of his levelling possibilities, have effectually diverted instrument without the aid of a stool attention from the Göta Canal; but, as carried by an attendant." After seven an engineering work, the latter ranks years of hard work on the canal a fit considerably above the cutting of the of restlessness seems to have taken Isthmus of Suez, and rivals the Nica- possession of him. He was now sevenragua scheme now in progress. teen; he had come in contact with several officers of the army employed on the works; Napoleon's career was still fresh and vivid; a French general occupied the throne of Sweden. Fired with a temporary outburst of military ambition, and chafing under the hopeless seclusion of the remote pine woods, young Ericsson determined to be a soldier. Vainly his powerful patron, Count von Platen, endeavored to change his decision, leaving him in much irriTo a friend who once said to him, "It is tation with the final admonition to " a pity you did not graduate from a techno-to the devil." As an alternative, Ericslogical institute," Ericsson replied, "No, it son became ensign in the Jemtland was very fortunate. Had I taken a course Field Chasseurs, and describes his at such an institution, I should have acquired such a belief in authorities that I should never have been able to develop originality and make my own way in physics and mechanics as I now propose to do." have learned tolerably well what it The 66 technological institute" is at best merely an attempt to bring within the reach of the many some approximation to the training which the exceptional individual, under exceptionally favorable circumstances, secures for himself. From the officials employed upon the canal Ericsson quickly learned mechanical drawing, surveying, algebra, chemistry, and English. At nine them." years of age he had succeeded in mak-adds.

To young Ericsson the new era was pre-eminently auspicious. Living in the wilds of Sweden, he was yet brought from boyhood into close contact with "the latest results of English engineer ́ing experience," and gained practical insight into the countless contrivances, expedients, and applications of science involved in a great undertaking. No better training could have been provided for the future inventor.

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early experiences to his mother in a letter which the young Von Moltke might have written. "During that time" (seven weeks of manœuvres) "I

means to be a soldier, and am inspired with an unchanging love for the military profession." Like Von Moltke, also, he explains his small pecuniary difficulties, and asks assistance. "I think I can defray most of the charges myself, but if you can spare fifty rixdollars early in the winter, without inconvenience, I should be glad to have

"I am studying Euclid," he "Later on I am going to prac

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