A young governess whom some wicked fairy endowed at her birth with the sensitiveness often denied to princesses, has assured me that her journeys by railway have sometimes been rendered miserable by the thought that she had not even a few pence to spare for the porter who would presently shoulder her little box on to the roof of her cab. in railway travelling; no lady of any sense | confess, do they do so elsewhere; if I or spirit objects to travel by the second, had been in their place, perhaps I should or even the third class, if her means do have been equally selfish; though I do not justify her going by the first. But think I should have made an effort, in when she meets with richer friends upon this instance at least, to make room for I the platform, and parts with them to jour- her close beside me.* ney in the same compartment with their manservant, she suffers as acutely as though, when the guard slams the door of the carriage with the vehemence proportioned to its humble rank, her tender hand had been crushed in it. Of course it is very foolish of her; but it demands democratic opinions, such as almost no woman of birth and breeding possesses, not to feel that pinch. Her knowledge that it is also hard upon the manservant, who has never sat in her presence before, but only stooped over her shoulder with "Ock, miss," serves but to increase her pain. It is people of this class, much more than those beneath them, who are shut out from all amusements. The mechanic goes to the play and to the music-hall, and occasionally takes his "old girl," as he calls his wife, and even "a kid" or two, to A great philosopher has stated that the the Crystal Palace. But those I have in worst evil of poverty is, that it makes my mind have no such relaxation from folks ridiculous; by which I hope he only compulsory duty and importunate care. means that, as in the above case, it places" I know it's very foolish, but I feel it them in incongruous positions. The sometimes to be a pinch," says one of man, or woman, who derives amusement these ill-fated ones, "to see them all [the from the lack of means of a fellow#creature, would jeer at a natural deformity, be cruel to children, and insult old age. Such people should be whipped and then hanged. Nevertheless there are certain little pinches of poverty so slight, that they tickle almost as much as they hurt the victim. A lady once told me (interrupting herself, however, with pleasant bursts of merriment) that as a young girl her allowance was so small that when she went out to spend the morning at a friend's, her promised pleasure was almost darkened by the presentiment (always fulfilled) that the cabman was sure to charge her more than the proper fare. The extra expense was really of consequence to her, but she never dared dispute it because of the presence of the footman who opened the door. daughters of her employer] going to the play, or the opera, while I am expected to be satisfied with a private view of their pretty dresses." No doubt it is the sense of comparison (and especially with the female) that sharpens the sting of poverty. It is not, however, through envy that the "prosperity of fools destroys us so much as the knowledge of its unnecessariness and waste. When a mother has a sick child who needs sea air, which she cannot afford to give it, the consciousness that her neighbor's family (the head of which perhaps is a most successful financier and market-rigger) are going to the Isle of Wight for three months, though there is nothing at all the matter with them, is an added bitterness. How often it is said (no doubt with some well-intentioned idea of consolation) that after all money cannot buy life! I remember a curious instance to the contrary of this. In the old days of sailing-packets a country gentleman embarked for Ireland, and when a few miles from land broke a blood-vessel There is, however, some danger in this. I remember reading of some highly respectable old gentleman in the city who thus accommodated on a wet day a very nice young woman in humble circumstances. She was as full of apologies as of rain-water, and he of goodnatured rejoinders, intended to put her at her ease; so that he became, in a platonic and paternal way, quite friendly with her by the time she arrived at her destination which happened to be his own door. She turned out to be his new cook, which was afterwards very embarrassing. through sea-sickness. A doctor on board | other (just as after constant "pinching" pronounced that he would certainly die before the completion of the voyage if it was continued; whereupon the sick man's friends consulted with the captain, who convoked the passengers, and persuaded them to accept compensation in proportion to their needs for allowing the vessel to be put back; which was accordingly done. One of the most popular fictions of our time was even written with this very moral, that life is unpurchasable. Yet nothing is more certain than that life is often lost through want of money- that is of the obvious means to save it. In such a case how truly has it been written that "the destruction of the poor is their poverty"! This, however, is scarcely a pinch, but, to those who have hearts to feel it, a wrench that "divides asunder the joints and the marrow." A nobler example, because a less personal one, of the pinch of poverty, is when it prevents the accomplishment of some cherished scheme for the benefit of the human race. I have felt such a one myself when in extreme youth I was unable, from a miserable absence of means, to publish a certain poem in several cantos. That the world may not have been much better for it if I had had the means does not affect the question. It is easy to be incredulous. Henry the Seventh of England did not believe in the expectations of Columbus, and suffered for it, and his case may have been similar to that of the seven publishers to whom I applied in vain. A man with an invention on which he has spent his life, but has no means to get it developed for the good of humanity or even patented for himself- must feel the pinch of poverty very acutely. To sum up the matter, the longer I live, the more I am convinced that the general view in respect to material means is a false one. That great riches are a misfortune is quite true; the effect of them in the moral sense (with here and there a glorious exception, however) is deplorable: a shower of gold falling continuously upon any body (or soul) is as the waters of a petrifying spring. But, on the other hand, the occasional and precarious dripping of coppers has by no means a genial effect. If the one recipient becomes hard as the nether millstone, the a limb becomes insensible) grows callous, THE and also (though it seems like a contra- BE diction in terms) sometimes acquires a certain dreadful suppleness. Nothing is more monstrous than the generally received opinion with respect to a moderate ke competence; that "fatal gift," as it is sp called, which encourages idleness in ch youth by doing away with the necessity for exertion. I never hear the same people inveighing against great inheritances, which are much more open to such objec- Were tions. The fact is, if a young man is naturally indolent, the spur of necessity ven will drive him but a very little way, while the having enough to live upon is often the means of preserving his self-respect. One often hears what humiliating things men will do for money, whereas the truth is that they do them for the want of it. It is not the temptation which induces or them, but the pinch. "Give me neither poverty nor riches," was Agur's prayer; "feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor and b steal." And there are many things, flatteries, disgraceful humiliations, hypocrite sies, which are almost as bad as stealing. h One of the sharpest pinches of poverty to some minds must be their inability (because of their dependency on him and that of others upon them) to tell a man what they think of him. Riches and poverty are of course but relative terms; but the happiest material position in which a man can be placed is that of "means with a margin." Then, however small his income may be, however it may behove him to "cut and contrive," as the housekeepers call it, he does not feel the pinch of poverty. I have known a rich man say to an acquaintance of this class, "My good friend, if you only knew how very small are the pleasures my money gives me which you yourself cannot purchase! And for once it was not one of those cheap and empty consolations which the wealthy are so ready to bestow upon their less fortunate fellowcreatures. Dives was, in that instance, quite right in his remark; only we must remember he was not speaking to Lazarus. "A dinner of herbs where love is," is doubtless quite sufficient for us; only there must be enough of it, and the herbs should be nicely cooked in an omelette. JAMES PAYN. chea From Nature. for its heat. If so space must be enor THE TEMPERATURE OF SPACE AND ITS mously more transparent to heat-rays BEARING ON TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS. as four to one; and consequently if our luminary were extinguished the temperature of our earth would fall to about – 360° F. than to light-rays. If the heat of the stars be as feeble as their light, space FEW questions bearing directly on ter- cannot be much above absolute zero, and restrial physics have been so much over- this is the opinion expressed to me a few looked as that of the temperature of stel- weeks ago by one of the most eminent lar space, that is to say, the temperature physicists of the day. Prof. Langley is which a thermometer would indicate if also of this opinion, for he concludes that placed at the outer limits of our atmo- the amount of heat received from the sun sphere and exposed to no other influence is to that derived from space as much than that of radiation from the stars. Were we asked what was probably the mid-winter temperature of our island eleven thousand seven hundred years ago, when the winter solstice was in aphelion, we could not tell unless we knew the temperature of space. Again, without a knowledge of the temperature of space, it could not be ascertained how much the temperature of the North Atlantic and the air over it were affected by the Gulf Stream. We can determine the quantity of heat conveyed into the Atlantic by the stream, and compare it with the amount received by that area directly from the sun, but this alone does not enable us to say how much the temperature is raised by the heat conveyed. We know that the basin of the North Atlantic receives from the Gulf Stream a quantity of heat equal to about one-fourth that received from the sun, but unless we know the temperature of space we cannot say how much this one-fourth raises the temperature of the Atlantic. Suppose 56° to be the temperature of that ocean: this is 517° of absolute temperature which is derived from three sources, viz.: (1) direct heat from the sun, (2) heat from the Gulf Stream, and (3) heat from the stars. Now unless we know what proportion the heat of the stars bears to that of the sun we have no means of knowing how much of the 517° is due to the stars and how much to the sun or to the Gulf Stream. M. Pouillet and Sir John Herschel are the only physicists who appear to have devoted attention to the problem. The former came to the conclusion that space has a temperature of — 142° C. or 224° F., and the latter, following a different method of inquiry, arrived at nearly the same result, viz., that its temperature is about 239° F. Can space, however, really have so high a temperature as 239°? Absolute zero is -461°. Space in this case would have an absolute temperature of 222°, and consequently our globe would be nearly as much indebted to the stars as to the sun It must be borne in mind that Pouillet's memoir was written more than forty years ago, when the data available for the elucidating the subject were far more imperfect than now, especially as regards the influence of the atmosphere on radiant heat. For example, Pouillet comes to the conclusion that, owing to the fact of our atmosphere being less diathermanous to radiation from the earth than to radiation from the sun and the stars, were the sun extinguished the radiation of the stars would still maintain the surface of our globe at — 89° C., or about — 53° C. above that of space. The experiments of Tyndall, however, show that the absorbing power of the atmosphere for heat-rays is due almost exclusively to the small quantity of aqueous vapor which it contains. It is evident, therefore, that but for the sun there would probably be no aqueous vapor, and consequently nothing to protect the earth from losing its heat by radiation. Deprived of solar heat, the surface of the ground would sink to about as low a temperature as that of stellar space, whatever that temperature may actually be. But before we are able to answer the foregoing questions, and tell, for example, how much a given increase or decrease in the quantity of sun's heat will raise or lower the temperature, there is another physical point to be determined, on which a considerable amount of uncertainty still exists. We must know in what way the temperature varies with the amount of heat received. In computing, say, the rise of temperature resulting from a great increase in the quantity of heat received, should we assume with Newton that it is proportional to the increase in the quantity of heat received, or should we adopt Dulong's and Petit's formula? In estimating the extent to which the temperature of the air would be affected | pass, thereby swelling the total radiation. by a change in the sun's distance, I have But as the plate becomes thinner and hitherto adopted the former mode. This thinner, the obstructions to interior radiaprobably makes the change of tempera- tion become less and less, and as these ture too great, while Dulong's and Petit's obstructions are greater for radiation at formula adopted by Mr. Hill, on the other low than high temperatures, it necessarily i hand, makes it too small. Dulong's and follows that, by reducing the thickness of Petit's formula is an empirical one, which the plate, we assist radiation at low more has been found to agree pretty closely than at high temperatures. with observation within ordinary limits, but we have no reason to assume that it will hold equally correct when applied to that of space, any more than we have to infer that it will do so in reference to temperature as high as that of the sun. When applied to determine the temperature of the sun from his rate of radiation, it completely breaks down, for it is found to give only a temperature of 2130° F., or not much above that of an ordinary fur nace. If this be the true explanation why the radiation of bodies deviates from Newton's law, it should follow that in the case of gases, where the particles stand at a considerable distance from one another, the obstruction to interior radiation must be far less than in a solid, and consequently that the rate at which a gas radiates its heat as its temperature rises, I must increase more slowly than that of a solid substance. In other words, in the case of a gas, the rate of radiation must correspond more nearly to the absolute temperature than in that of a solid; and the less the density and volume of a gas, the more nearly will its rate of radiation agree with Newton's law. The obstruction to interior radiation into space must diminish as we ascend in the atmosphere, at the outer limits of which, where there is no obstruction, the rate of radiation should be pretty nearly proportional to the absolute temperature. May not this to a certain extent be the cause why the temperature of the air diminishes as we ascend? But besides all this it is doubtful if it will hold true in the case of gases. From the experiments of Prof. Balfour Stewart (Trans. Edin. Roy. Soc., xxii) on the radiation of glass plates of various thicknesses, it would seem to follow that the radiation of a material particle is probably proportionate to its absolute temperature, or, in other words, that it obeys Newton's law. Prof. Balfour Stewart found that the radiation of a thick plate of glass increases more rapidly than that of a thin plate as the temperature rises, and that, if we go on continually diminishing the thickness of the plate whose radiation at different temperatures we are ascertaining, we find that as it grows thinner and thinner, the rate at which it radiates its heat as its temperature rises becomes less and less. In other words, as the plate grows thinner its rate of radiation becomes more and more proportionate to its absolute temperature. And we can hardly resist the conviction that if it were possible to go on diminishing the thickness of the plate till we reached a film so thin as to embrace but only one particle in its thickness, its rate of radiation would be proportionate to its temperature, or, in other words, it would obey Newton's law. In estimating the extent to which the Prof. Balfour Stewart's explanation is winter temperature is lowered by a great this. As all substances are more diather-increase in the sun's distance there is manous for heat of high than low temperatures, when a body is at a low temperature only the exterior particles supply the radiation, the heat from the interior particles being all stopped by the exterior ones, while at a high temperature part of the heat from the interior is allowed to If the foregoing considerations be correct, it ought to follow that a reduction in the amount of heat received from the sun, owing to an increase of his distance, should tend to produce a greater lowering effect on the temperature of the air than it does on the temperature of the solid ground. Taking, therefore, into consideration, the fact that space has probably a lower temperature than -239°, and that the temperature of our climate is determined by the temperature of the air, it will follow that the error of assuming that the decrease of temperature is proportional to the decrease in the intensity of the sun's heat may not be great. another circumstance which must be taken into account. The lowering of the temperature tends to diminish the amount of aqueous vapor contained in the air, and this in turn tends to lower the temperature by allowing the air to throw off its heat more freely into space. JAMES CROLL. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. An extra copy of THE LIVING AGE is sent gratis to any one getting up a club of Five New Subscribers. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. 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