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interference and French dictation with an appearance of good-will, is lost. There is no road to Rome except through force, and what marvel that the party in Italy which believes in force should increase till rumours spread that in the last resort the King, aware that force is for the hour impossible, has resolved to meet Parliamentary opposition by means other than an appeal to the electors? Those rumours are, we believe, unfounded, but the Government, which appears to wish to exist in order to carry out an internal policy, and does exist lest the conduct of foreign affairs should be entrusted to other hands, is of necessity weak.

tended in signing the Convention of 15th successive Ministries have endured French September to assure the co-existence in Italy of two separate sovereignties that of the Pope reduced to the proportions it possesses to-day, and that of the kingdom of Italy." He informed him also that the expression "moral means" had been "abused," and signified for the French Government only conciliation, and the effects of similar interests and of time, which would ultimately produce the reconciliation of a power eminently Catholic with the chief of Catholicism. And finally, M. de Sartiges told the Premier, then in the very throes of a great Parliamentary conflict, that while he remained in power the Imperial Government had certainty, and that even if power passed to men whose ideas were neither It is a terrible crisis for Italy; but in those of the Premier nor of the Emperor, Rome, as in Mexico, Napoleon, will, we France still would not "permit" herself believe, be baffled. It is the weakness of to doubt the strict execution of the treaty! intellects like his, it is pre-eminently his own There, then, is the design of the Emperor weakness, never quite to comprehend the at last fully revealed. He does not intend force of a national passion, the solidity of a that Rome should become Italian. If the feeling once engrained in the hearts of a Pope will reconcile himself with Italy, well; separate people. Four of the great miseven if the reconciliation should involve an takes of his life have been due to this break Italian garrison in Rome the Emperor will in the chain of his sympathies. He did not not oppose, will rather point to that consum- comprehend why, if a British Government mation as a proof of his wisdom and fore- was willing to pass a Conspiracy Bill, the sight. But in no case is the temporal British people should be so certain to reject power to be overset, or merged in that it, for he had never realized to himself the of the Italian kingdom, in no case is "sacredness,” as a Greek would have called Rome to cease to obey her priestly rulers, it, of the English horror of foreign dictaunder penalty of a declaration that a solemn tion. He has been but once defeated in treaty with France has been violated by his own Legislature, and it was because he Italy, that is, in undiplomatic language, under forgot that France would not reason even penalty of war. France is to be relieved with him about the creation of majorats. of the expense of this great garrison, but He has wasted millions in Mexico because Italy is to gain nothing save one more he did not perceive that the North would chance of reconciliation with Rome, is never be spent, treasure and men, before it would to be relieved from the danger that an in-resign its dream of the American future. dependent Sovereign, seated in her midst, may not summon a Frenchman or Austrian back to help him rule. Italy is to be two, not one, and the power which has liberated her assumes to dictate Cabinet combinations agreeable to herself. The idea of Villafranca is to be realized in Rome, and the Papacy, guaranteed by its only imminent foes, is to commence a new career of separate sovereignty. No wonder that the Red party gains ground in Italy. No wonder that Florentine politicians whisper of foreign interference, and that Ministry and Parliament alike seem paralyzed, and that the King fears to dissolve lest the electors should return him a Chamber still more democratic. The one object which lies close to the heart of all Italians, without which Italy must be, as M. Mon wrote to Spain, "Somehow or other a federation," for which

And now he thinks that with time he can make Italians forget that Rome is theirs. As well might he strive to cancel the Italian past. Without that forgetfulness his policy, wise, and astute, and sure as his courtiers may declare it to be, is but a policy of the hour. A population cannot perish. The Italian population, persistent beyond all human precedent, though patient beyond all Red endurance, will not give up its end, and the defeat of the Napoleonic idea there, as in Mexico, is as certain as that the Italians will survive the Bonaparts. Either an Italian Pope will weary of dependence upon "barbarians," or the support of Austria will make France perceive that the temporal power injures her, or Napoleon will need the Italian sword, or accident will compel him once more to court the revolution, and in any one of these

events the capital will be free. M. de Sartiges has scarcely finished speaking before General della Marmora, who bows to him, tells the Spanish Court, in language almost of menace, that Italy has not pledged, and will not pledge herself, to tolerate the permanent sacrifice of Rome to the interests of the Catholic world, or the meddling of a power other than France in her internal affairs. Every word of his despatch, which is bitter to the last degree, and has been published in the official gazette of Florence, is intended to tell Italy and Napoleon that the Italian Premier only yields to force in abstaining from Rome. As the Premier thinks so thinks the population of Italy. There are among them those who think Rome would not be the better capital, but there is not from the Alps to Sicily one who believes that Rome can justly have an owner other than united Italy. The spring now so sharply pressed down must fly back some day; and when it does, in spite of Popes and Emperors, of the wiles of the Vatican, and the deep-laid schemes of the Tuileries, Rome will be Italian once more.

From the Evangelist.

NIAGARA IN WINTER.

THE 24th of January, 1866, was a white day in my calendar. I passed it amongst the white wonders of the ice of Niagara. For a score or more of years, as old inhabitants assured me, there had been nothing like it. The marvels of the grandest of the glaciers amongst the Alps did not surpass it. In some aspects they did not equal it.

come from the broader surfaces above, and the accumulations, held more firmly by congelation, choked up the outlet; and when the wild waters swept and eddied underneath, the foot of man could pass in safety from the United States to Canada !

But water and ice had not finished their work in building this marble bridge. It must be lifted and torn and ridged. It must have profound fissures, into which one might look with awe, wild hummocks, and broad fields of terrific roughness roughness which I can equal in memory only by the lava of Vesuvius, freely poured and cooled from the side of the rent crater, and this was effected by continuous accessions of ice, which, coming over the cataract, plunged under the surface, and by the violence of the water, swept onward, lifted the mighty mass bodily on its back. In this way the ice was perhaps from twenty to fifty feet in thickness!

It was thus that I saw it on the 24th. Going at once down, at the inclined plane, to the ferry-just below the cataract. I crossed over to the Canada side on foot, went to Table Rock, passed under the sheet, and came back as I went. Many others were performing the same feat.

It was a glorious morning, clear and brilliant, and a myriad icicles were pendent from every point where precipice projected. Just under Table Rock a vast column had formed, as if to say, "What is left of this ancient stand-point shall never perish!" Beside it was an ice-stalagmite, perhaps two feet and a half in diameter, and just high enough to serve as an altar, and crowned with rounded crystals which might well be taken for crowded garlands. How Nature, in her most fantastic forms, seems to speak of God! Under the Fall, where the rock The morning of Saturday, the 20th, was is hollowed from the above like a scallopalmost summer-like in mildness, and rainy. shell, was perhaps the highest concentraBut before night the weather grew intense- tion of beauty. This was one incrustation ly cold, and the wind blew a gale. The of icicles, glittering like diamonds in the morning of the Sabbath saw the waters of the cataract greatly swollen, and huge masses of ice dashing down the abyss. Whole fields of it, cracked and torn in the rapids above, plunged headlong into the awful cauldron, and were then ground and dashed into myriads of fragments. It must have been a magnificent sight.

But what was more marvellous, the ice had become jammed, or was jamming, from shore to shore; so that on the Sabbath, from the very foot of the Falls almost to the Suspension Bridge- two miles-there was one compact mass of it. The narrow channel could not disgorge the masses which had

sun. Under foot huge banks of ice had
formed, inclining inward, so that the foot-
ing was more than safe; the only effort
needed to a certain distance
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Above, in the vicinity of Table Rock, the whole surface was one glare of ice to the very edge of the precipice; and I shuddered at the thought of a careless step plunging one downward to an awful death. At this point the icy spray was pouring like rain, making thicker and thicker the marble sheet which hid the ground.

In going over I had not sighted well my

course, and so found myself in a world of whiteness and roughness. But in returning I marked a path where an eddy, apparently, had deposited a semi-circle of finely ground ice, almost from shore to shore; and on this I made the passage homeward with twice the ease that I had gone abroad. Blest is the path ever that leads us HOME!

Reclimbing the bank, past ice encrusting rock and tree and shrub, ice everywhere, I crossed to Goat Island. The passage to Terrapin Tower was barred and marked "Dangerous." But it was barred more effectively by the ice, which so covered the path by which you descend to it, that it was like letting yourself go from the ridge of the roof of Just under the American Fall, and in a cathedral to start for it. But finding a front of it, I got a view, the memory of place where a descent was possible, I let mywhich a life-time could not efface. The self down by trees and rocks, and was soon spray, freezing as it fell, had built up on the at the Tower. Here, amidst spray and icy foundation a succession of hills, from thir- thunder, I caught the final glory. The Sea ty to fifty feet in height above the surrounding of Ice was before me; the mad, cold waters surface. They were beautifully rounded like rolled and plunged in their awful descent; a sugar loaf, and almost as white. One of terror and sublimity held high carnival; these I climbed, and from it looked down while on either hand, arching one from the into the awful gloom and madness of the American and one from the Canada sideplunging water. At my left, half hidden as if to whisper of hope and heaven amidst in the mist, was another, and apparently those symbols of perdition and the pit — still another. It was at this point that the floated a quivering rainbow. sense of awe culminated.

J. A. P.

they were indebted for the means of attaining to such accuracy in their observations through the telescope, as to have established, beyond a question, the truth of their discoveries, in opposition to some of the predetermined dicta of the Old World. The Chronograph, or Spring Governor, to which was accorded the bronze medal of the World's Fair in 1851, was Richard Bond's individual invention, though, with the retiring modesty which was part of his character, he was anxious only to attach to it the well-known name of William Bond and Son; and he was happy in the conviction of the world-wide appreciation of the instrument itself,-Europe, Africa, America, and Australia bearing testimony to its perfection. His dying legacy to the scientific world is as perfect as the Chronograph, and worthy of being attached to it as a companion, - -a clock escapement which seems almost to have controlled the laws of matter, being wholly divested of friction, hitherto deemed inseparable from mechanical agency.

THE LATE RICHARD F. BOND, of the well- late lamented Directors of the Cambridge Obknown firm of William Bond & Son, chronom-servatory, it was to his inventive genius that eter makers, Congress Street, whose death occurred in Cambridge on the 6th of February last, has left behind him a monument, which, although constructed of brass, may well be termed, in the words of the Latin poet, "Ere perennius." This work is a simple, yet wonderfully perfect, clock escapement. His leisure moments had been devoted to its accomplishment for some months, but the finishing touch was given to it only three days before his death. A working model had been constructed under his direction, which was set up by his bed side; at intervals he was enabled to give instruction to one of his workmen, - an intelligent man who entered fully into the interest of the work,and by frequently-interrupted efforts, it grew steadily and surely to its completion; and at length for it seemed as though he could not die until this consummation was reached-he could whisper, almost with his dying breath, "it is perfect." And when his eyes were closed in death, the attention of the sorrowing friends who stood or knelt around his bed, was turned from the motionless form beside them to the regular pulsations of the almost living instrument which he had called into action, recording the passing away of moments, which, for him, were no more to be numbered on earth. Equally gifted with his father and brother, the

This escapement is to be immediately attached to an astronomical clock which the firm are now manufacturing for the Observatory in Liverpool, England.

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- Transcript.

J. H. C.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-NO. 1138.-24 MARCH, 1866.

From the Fortnightly Review. ON THE RELATIONS OF RADIANT HEAT TO CHEMICAL CONSTITUTION, COLOUR,

AND TEXTURE.

A LECTURE, DELIVERED IN THE ROYAL
INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN, ON
FRIDAY EVENING, 19th JANUARY, 1866.

ONE of the most important functions of physical science, considered as a discipline of the mind, is to enable us by means of the tangible processes of nature to apprehend the intangible. The tangible processes give direction to the line of thought; but this once given, the length of the line is not limited by the boundaries of the senses. Indeed, the domain of the senses in Nature is almost infinitely small in comparison with the vast region accessible to thought which lies beyond them. From a few observations of a comet, when it comes within the range of his telescope, an astronomer can calculate its path in regions which no telescope can reach; and in like manner, by means of data furnished in the narrow world of the senses, we make ourselves at home in other and wider worlds, which can be traversed by the intellect alone.

nerves of his body those tremors which, when imparted to the nerves of healthy ears, are translated into sound. There are various ways of rendering those sonorous vibrations not only tangible but visible; and it was not until numberless experiments of this kind had been executed, that the scientific investigator abandoned himself wholly, and without a shadow of uncertainty, to the conviction that what is sound in us is, outside of us, a motion of the air.

But once having established this factonce having proved beyond all doubt that the sensation of sound is produced by an agitation of the nerve of the ear, the thought soon suggested itself that light might be due to an agitation of the nerve of the eye. This was a great step in advance of that ancient notion which regarded light as something emitted by the eye, and not as anything imparted to it. But if light be produced by an agitation of the optic nerve or retina, what is it that produces the agitation? Newton, you know, supposed minute particles to be shot through the humours of the eye against the retina, which hangs like a target at the back of the eye. The impact of these particles against the target, Newton believed to be the cause of light. But Newton's notion has not held its groun/l, being entirely driven from the field by the more wonderful and far more philosophical notion that light, like sound, is a product of wave-motion.

From the earliest ages the questions, "What is light?" and "What is heat? have occurred to the minds of men; but these questions never would have been answered had they not been preceded by the question, "What is sound? Amid the The domain in which this motion of light grosser phenomena of acoustics the mind is carried on lies entirely beyond the reach was first disciplined, conceptions being of our senses. The waves of light require there obtained from direct observation, a medium for their formation and propagawhich were afterwards applied to phenome- tion, but we cannot see, or feel, or taste, or na of a character far too subtle to be ob- smell this medium. Still, though thus apserved directly. Sound we know to be due parently cut off from all investigation, its to vibratory motion. A vibrating tuning- exsitence has been established. How has fork, for example, moulds the air around it this been done? By showing that all the into undulations or waves, which speed phenomena of optics are accounted for with away on all sides with a certain measured a fullness and clearness and conclusiveness velocity, impinge upon the drum of the ear, which leave no desire of the intellect unfilshake the auditory nerve, and awake in the filled, by the assumption of this wonderful brain the sensation of sound. When suffi- intangible ether. When the law of gravi ciently near a sounding body we can feel tation first suggested itself to the mind of the vibrations of the air. A deaf man, for Newton, what did he do? He set himself example, plunging his hand into a bell when to examine whether it accounted for all the it is sounded, feels through the common facts. He determined the courses of the THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. 1491.

planets; he calculated the rapidity of the spaces, bathing the sides of suns and planmoon's fall towards the earth; he consid-ets, but it also encircles the atoms of which ered the procession of the equinoxes, the ebb and flow of the tides, and found all explained by the law of gravitation. He therefore regarded this law as established, and the verdict of science subsequently confirmed his conclusion. On similar, and, if possible on stronger grounds, we'found our belief in the existence of the universal ether. It explains facts far more various and complicated than those on which Newton based his law. If a single phenomenon could be pointed out which the ether is proved incompetent to explain, we should have to give it up; but no such phenomenon has ever been pointed out. It is, therefore, at least as certain that space is filled with a medium by means of which suns and stars diffuse their radiant power, as that it is traversed by that force which holds not only our planetary system, but the immeasurable heavens themselves, in its unconquerable grasp.

these suns and planets are composed. It is the motion of these atoms, and not of any sensible parts of either planets or stars, that the ether conveys; it is this motion that constitutes the objective cause of what in our sensations are light and heat. An atom, then, sending its pulses through the infinite ether, resembles a tuning-fork sending its pulses through the air. Let us look for a moment at this thrilling ether, and briefly consider its relation to the bodies whose vibrations it conveys. Different bodies, when heated to the same temperature, possess very different powers of agitating the ether: some are good radiators, others are bad radiators; which means that some are so constituted as to communicate their motion freely to the ether, producing therein powful undulations; while others are unable thus to communicate their motion, but glide through the ether without materially affecting its repose. Experiment has proved that elementary bodies, except under certain anomalous conditions, belong to the class of bad radiators. An atom vibrating in the ether resembles this naked tuning-fork vibrating in the air. The amount of motion communicated to the air by these thin prongs is too small to evoke at any distance the sensation of sound. But if we permit the atoms to combine chemically and form molecules, the result in many cases is an enormous change in the power of radiation. The amount of ethe real disturbance produced by a compound molecule may be many thousand times that produced by its constituent atoms when uncombined. The effect is roughly typified by this tuning-fork when connected with its resonant case. The fork and its case now swing as a compound system, and the vibrations which were before inaudible, are now the source of a musical sound so powerful that it might be plainly heard by thousands at once. The fork and its case combined may be regarded as a good radiator of sound.

There is no more wonderful instance than this of the production of a line of thought from the world of the senses into the region of pure imagination. I mean by imagination here, not that play of fancy which can give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name, but that power which enables the mind to conceive realities which lie beyond the range of the senses to present to itself distinct physical images of processes which, though mighty in the aggregate beyond all conception, are so minute individually, as to elude all observation. It is the waves of air excited by this tuning-fork which renders its vibrations audible. It is the waves of ether sent forth from those lamps overhead which render them luminous to us; but so minute are these waves, that it would take from 30,000 to 60,000 of them placed end to end to cover a single inch. Their number, however, compensates for their minuteness. Trillions of them have entered your eyes and hit the retina at the back of the eye in the time consumed in the utterance of the shortest sentence of this discourse. This is the steadfast result of modern research; but we never could A single example will suffice to illustrate have reached it without previous discipline. the vast influence of the coalescence of We never could have measured the waves atoms to oscillating systems upon the radiaof light, nor even imagined them to exist, tion of heat. Supposing a pound of dry had we not previously exercised ourselves oxygen, and also a pound of the transpa among the waves of sound. Sound and rent vapour of water, to be taken to the light are now mutually helpful, the concep- top of a high mountain where the air is too tions of each being expanded, strength-attenuated to offer any sensible resistance ened, and defined by the conceptions of the to the passage of radiant heat towards stellar space; suppose the gas and the vapour The ether which conveys the pulses of to be there heated to the temperature of light and heat not only fills the celestial boiling water, and afterwards exposed be

other.

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