village in your own pet country haunts | native English. The old English form, has just as curious a history as those Culmingatune, gives you at once the true about Lyme Regis; but it will not do story. Once more, Warwickshire antimerely to take the name in its current quaries used formerly to assert that Birmodern form, and hazard a random guess mingham was a mere corruption of the at its meaning anyhow. You must track vulgar word Brummagem, that is, Bromit back to its earliest known shape in wychham; West Bromwich and Castle ancient records, and, if possible, find out Bromwich being two other places in the the exact historical circumstances which immediate neighborhood. This is no attended its origin. For this purpose you doubt the true derivation of Brummagem, will find Domesday Book quite invalu- which is in fact not a corruption of Birable, as it preserves for us the names of mingham, but an independent collateral almost every parish or hamlet in England name. However, the Domesday form, at the time of William the Conqueror's Beormingham, shows us that the recoggreat survey. Even Domesday however, nized legal title of the borough really priceless as it is, often fails to give us means the ham or home of the Beorma trustworthy form, as William's Nor- ings, another of the old Teutonic clans. man commissioners sometimes Latinized native English names, local or personal, under the most astoundingly garbled disguises. Accordingly, the safest guides of all are the genuine early English, or socalled Anglo-Saxon documents, the Chronicle, and the great collections of Charters published by Kemble and Thorpe. If you are lucky enough to hit upon your local names in any of these they are to be found in every good reference libraryyou will seldom have any difficulty in discovering their real origin. And now for an example or two of the necessity for finding historical evidence as to the primitive form of names. Take first Glastonbury. In its present shape the name is meaningless. An amateur might guess it to be Glass-town-bury; but the English Chronicle calls it Glæstingabyrig, and we then know at once that it is really the_bury or borough of the Glæstingas or Glastings, an early English clan. On the other hand, we might be tempted, like Mr. Isaac Taylor, to suppose that Abingdon was similarly the dune or hill of the Æbings, a real clan; but the earlier form in the Chronicle is Abbandun, and we learn from the records of Abingdon monastery that the great abbey was actually founded by one Abba, an Irish monk, from whom the place derives its title. There is a strong tendency for names of this sort to undergo an assimilation to the numerous class which are formed from the clan patronymics; for Huntandun has similarly become Huntingdon, just as captain nowadays becomes capting. Again, our old friend Kilmington has been explained by local etymologists as the Keltic Kil-maen-dun (Stone-cellhill). When anybody tries to impose upon you with a Keltic jawbreaker of that sort, you may promptly distrust him, and stick patriotically instead to your own These cases will be enough to impress upon you the lesson that you must proceed with due caution, and must not give way to mere blind guesses. But if you have access to a good library, and take moderate care, and especially if you are fortunate enough to possess a slight knowledge of the old English tongue, which we foolishly call Anglo-Saxon, you will have little difficulty in doing for other places what I have tried to do here in a rapid sketch for Lyme. The new study will add a fresh and unexpected interest to even the dullest and most unpicturesque hamlets that you happen to meet with in your daily walks. From The Spectator. THE PHOTOPHONE. THE world cannot keep pace with the scientific surprises of this age. Before sufficient time has elapsed to make one startling invention familiar, another equally astonishing is already the subject of lectures and newspaper articles. Before the telephone, the microphone, and the phonograph have found their way into common use, a still more extraordinary instrument is announced, one of which the results are as unexpected by the scientific as they are incredible to the ordinary mind. We hear of conversation being carried on by means of a trembling beam of light, and incredulity reaches its climax when it is whispered that the photophone may enable us to hear the rise and fall of those gigantic storms that are constantly sweeping over the sun's surface. Is it possible that the revelations of modern science - condemned as materialistic and prosaic- can thus outstrip the wildest flights of the imagination? The photophone is the latest develop- | elements could be eliminated, the varying ment of Professor Graham Bell's ingenu- amount of illumination received at the ity, and for its scientific novelty, if not for its practical utility, well deserves a brief description. One of the elementary bodies, named selenium, and allied to sulphur, is known to undergo certain changes in its molecular structure when light falls upon it. These changes cause the very high resistance it offers to the passage of an electric current to vary slightly, and this curious effect, hitherto believed to be unique, has lately been the subject of investigation by various English physicists. It occurred to several that this substance might be employed as a sort of telephone, a beam of light being used to replace the conducting wires of the usual forms of these instruments. Professor Graham Bell, the discoverer of the telephone, to whom, amongst others, this idea occurred, has had the good fortune to throw that thought into practical shape. A mirror, from which is reflected a powerful beam of light, may be caused to vibrate by means of the voice. These vibrations toss the beam of light slightly to and fro, and this vibrating beam falls upon a selenium receiver, through which an electric current is passing, thereby creating slight variations in the resistances the current encounters. These tiny variations in electric resistance can be detected and rendered audible by that wonderfully sensitive little instrument, the Bell telephone. This was the conception which led Professor Bell to announce, in a lecture delivered before the Royal Institution so long ago as 1878, the "possibility of hearing a shadow fall upon a piece of selenium." Within the last few months, he has succeeded in putting this into practical execution. distant end would wholly depend upon the variations in sound at the transmitting end, and an exact reproduction of the original sounds would be obtained. This we cannot expect yet, but the results already obtained lead one to hope that in time even this may be achieved. The receiver of the photophone, as at present arranged, consists of a large concave mirror, which reflects and focusses the light upon a selenium cell; this is connected with a battery, and a couple of ordinary telephones are included in the circuit. The selenium cell is very ingeniously adapted by Professor Bell to its purpose. It consists of alternate discs of brass and mica, the edges of which are coated with selenium, pared to make it as thin as possible, whilst yet exposing a sufficiently large surface to the action of the light. Any increase of light, falling upon this selenium cell, lessens its electric resistance; hence the vibrations of the mirror (caused by the words spoken into the mouthpiece by the transmitter), altering somewhat the amount of light received upon the cell, reproduce themselves audibly, by means of the greater or less amount of electricity thereby transmitted through the telephone. Both transmitter and receiver must, of course, be so supported as to be free to move, according to the direction in which the beam has to be sent or received. There are many difficulties in the prac tical working of this little instrument, but though entirely satisfactory results have not yet been obtained, the principle is beyond dispute that sound and light can act upon one another in the manner described. Articulate speech has been transmitted by means of the telephone to a distance of some two hundred and thirty yards, the voice being heard sometimes almost as loudly as in talking through an ordinary telephone, though the sound varies in intensity in an unaccountable manner. In the articulating photophone, a beam of light, derived either from an artificial source or from the sun, is thrown by a mirror on to the transmitter, which is a small disc of silvered glass, with a tube and mouthpiece attached. The beam of light reflected from the transmitter is Professor Bell has arrived at many infocussed as nearly as possible upon the teresting results while experimenting upon distant receiver. When, therefore, words this instrument. He has found that curiare spoken into the mouthpiece, the disc ous molecular changes take place not only becomes agitated, alters slightly in shape, in selenium, but also in thin surfaces of and, therefore, in its focal length, and almost any substance; so that they rethus affects the receiving station, by spond, by audible vibrations, to the action throwing upon it a greater or less amount of an intermittent beam of light. There of light, according as the beam is in or is a great difference, however, in the out of focus. If absolutely accurate ad- sensitiveness of the different substances; justment were possible, and all disturbing | vulcanite is one of the best, carbon is very good, but water is absolutely irresponsive, and glass, unsilvered, is also bad. Upon this discovery, Professor Bell has constructed a simple form of photophone for transmitting musical tones. A beam of light is thrown upon a mirror, and focussed by a lens as before; at the focus is a disc, perforated round its circumference with numerous holes. From this disc, which can be rotated so that the beam passes through a varying number of holes, according to the speed of rotation, the light passes on to a receiving disc of ebonite, from whence the sounds are conveyed by a tube to the listener. That these musical sounds which are much louder than the spoken words - are really due to the action of light or radiant energy of some form, may be easily proved, for when the beam is interrupted by means of a disc of some opaque body, though the perforated disc is still rotating, nothing is heard at the receiver. No wires are needed as conductors between the transmitter and the receiver; the beam of light forms the only necessary connection, and this beam of light, with the simple apparatus described, has been the means of conveying distinct musical sounds to a distance of more than a mile. Not that even this distance is a necessary limit, for there is no reason why the sound should not be carried as far as the light can be thrown. We have here, in fact, a musical heliostat. The real cause of the molecular changes accompanying this action of an intermittent bean of light upon different substances is not yet certain. It appears probable, however, that the varying electric resistances of selenium are directly due to light; whilst, as with the radiometer, radiant heat is probably the real source of those molecular changes which produce the audible vibrations of vulcanite and other bodies. Whether, however, it be heat or light which is the original source of these vibrations, the wonder is equally great; for, if it be heat, the molecules composing the substance must be cooled and heated with sufficient rapidity to respond to vibrations, of which there may be many hundreds in a second. Science is every day showing us that we are only beginning to discern the subtler potencies of matter and energy, and we find that the goal of to-day becomes the starting-point of to-morrow, and that a barrier is no sooner reached, than it becomes a gateway to new and wider views of truth. From The Spectator. a SIR ALEXANDER COCKBURN. IN Sir Alexander Cockburn, we lose one who, after all due abatement has been made from the rather indiscriminate eulogies of the past week, must be acknowledged to have been a great, and in many respects a typical, Englishman. He came of a Scotch house, and had French blood in his veins; but his nature, both in its strength and in its weaknesses, was thoroughly English. But he was an Englishman of a particular epoch, who had survived all or almost all, his contemporaries, and lived on into a generation with whose ideas and aims he was not altogether at home. His vitality was so persistent, his powers so elastic, his resources so varied, that he often seemed as though he were one of ourselves, and we were tempted to forget that he belonged, in spirit as well as in time, to the Palmerstonian era. It was not a mere coincidence that the occasion which inspired his first great effort as a political speaker, and which revealed to the House of Commons his extraordinary faculty for argumentative rhetoric, was the Don Pacifico Debate. Don Pacifico was poor creature; his claims were of the most questionable kind; Lord Palmerston's interference had been even exceptionally blustering; and Mr. Gladstone's condemnation of the whole business, to which Cockburn's speech was a reply, correctly anticipated the verdict of history. Yet the debate was one long triumph for Lord Palmerston, and Cockburn's success was as sudden and striking as any in Parliamentary annals. The explanation is that both men were, as they always remained, in hearty sympathy with the ideas which at that time formed the main part of the average Englishman's political gospel, and which were eloquently summed up in the famous Civis Romanus sum peroration with which Lord Palmerston ended his speech. To the end of his life, Sir Alexander Cockburn was constantly showing that his mind was under the dominion of the same class of ideas. A man of the widest culture and of excellent literary taste, he had the most sincere reverence for, and was always ready to give sonorous expression to, the commonplaces of the English Constitution. The "majesty of the law," the "liberty of the subject," the inviolability of constitutional rights and legal modes of procedure, were themes which excited in him genuine enthusiasm. The “common were form" of the bench had, in his eyes, real | persistent and powerful antagonist of com it is the duty of the judge in charging the jury to do something more than chop up the evidence into small pieces, and cram it raw down their throats. It was, as a rule, not difficult to gather from his summingup which way he thought the verdict ought to go. Accordingly, he was not unfrequently accused by stupid people of partiality, when he had in reality only done what every judge who is determined to prevent the defeat of justice is from time to time bound to do. There is no doubt that he was seen at his best when presiding over a criminal court or sitting at nisi prius. That he had a weakness for sensational cases must be acknowledged; but may not the same thing be said of the great Lord Mansfield, and of Lord Campbell, and, indeed, of almost every judge whose position has allowed him to gratify his tastes? In Banc he had the good or the bad fortune to sit for years side by side with the greatest living master of the common law. Of the judgments which are recorded in the reports of the Queen's Bench during the last twenty years, it is no disparagement to his memory to say that those of the chief justice will not be the most frequently cited. The elaborate learning with which his prepared decisions abound, has sometimes rather the air of having been got up for the occasion. But they display an intellectual grasp, a felicity of expression, a familiarity with other systems of law, and an insight into the principles of general jurisprudence, which are not too common in the English courts, and which will cause them to be remembered and admired by posterity. The best tribute to the memory of the late chief justice is the feeling, which is, we believe, universal, both in the legal profession and in the country, that his loss has left a blank which cannot be supplied. His many-sided talents, his exuberant energy, and his brilliant career, prolonged with unabated vigor and success through the lifetime of two generations, made him a unique figure among our public men. His name was associated in the popular mind with a very definite and very interesting personality. The people knew him, understood him, and were proud of him; and though a fit successor to his vacant office may not be difficult to find, it will be long before the void which his death has caused will cease to be felt. He was a great judge, and an even greater power. From The Spectator. JEWISH SUCCESS AND FAILURE. THE success of the Jews in western and central Europe, of which so much is being said just now in Germany, is not, we think, very hard to understand. The Jewish, like every other tolerably pure race, has its own distinctive quality, and that quality, which is substantially quickness of insight, or, to use a simpler phrase, intelligent keenness, happens, under the conditions of modern society, to be exceedingly valuable. There are many other qualities which the race has never displayed, and which are also very important. They have never founded a State of any magnitude, though they have always been more numerous than the Romans who conquered the world, and now exceed in numbers any of the minor peoples of Europe. They have never made even an effort to become a nation, which, in recent times, at all events, would have been easy for them, on better soils than Palestine. With a momentary exception in Moorish Spain, they have never dominated any people, or conciliated any people, even in the East, where they have had fair chances; or founded any great city, or done anything, except in theology, of which history hitherto has found itself compelled to take great notice. It may hereafter be compelled to describe Lassalle and Marx, but the hour of triumph for their ideas, if it is ever to arrive, has not come yet. They have never since the Maccabees produced a great soldier, for Masséna was only second-rate, the Jewish chief of the staff on the Austrian side did not succeed at Sadowa, and we cannot yet credit them with a statesman of the first class. Lord Beaconsfield is hardly more than a great party leader in politics, though he has a certain genius for apprehending the passing waves of emotion in the British people; Herr Lasker has never overthrown a government, M. Crémieux proved a failure at Bordeaux, M. Fould was only a clear-headed banker, Sir H. Drummond Wolff has scarcely made a mark, and if M. Gambetta is, as the Jewish papers say, Hebrew by descent, he is at once the strongest representative of the race and the one whose blood is least pure. The Jews have never produced a very great engineer, and, curiously enough, have not risen to the front rank among the captains of industry. We can recall no man of the race, who, as inventor, is on a level with Arkwright; or, as manufacturer, with Titus Salt; or, as contractor, with Mr. Brassey; for Herr Strousberg, who in the range of his ideas was decidedly greater than any of the three, failed, being beaten, we have always thought, by quali |