Part 1

Transcriber's Note: Underscores "_" before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_ in the original text. Equal signs "=" before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold= in the original text. The carat character "^", designates a superscript. Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals. Old or antiquated spellings have been preserved. Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered. Footnotes have been moved to the end of the article in which they occur.

THE ECLECTIC MAGAZINE OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

OLD SERIES COMPLETE IN LXIII. VOLS.

JANUARY, 1844, TO DECEMBER, 1864.

NEW SERIES, VOL. XLI.

JANUARY TO JUNE, 1885.

NEW YORK: E. R. PELTON, PUBLISHER, 25 BOND STREET. 1885.

INDEX TO VOLUME XLI.

FRONTISPIECE: THE LESSON. PAGE. AGNOSTICISM AND THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY, LAST WORDS ABOUT. By Herbert Spencer _Nineteenth Century_ 127

AMERICA, A WORD MORE ABOUT. By Matthew Arnold _Nineteenth Century_ 433

AMERICAN AUDIENCE, THE. By Henry Irving _Fortnightly Review_ 475

ANCIENT ORGANS OF PUBLIC OPINION. By Prof. R. C. Jebb. _Fortnightly Review_ 107

ARNOLD’S LAY SERMON, MR. _Spectator_ 259

ART, A FEW NOTES ON PERSIAN. _Chambers’s Journal_ 396

AUTHORS AS SUPPRESSORS OF THEIR BOOKS. By W. H. Olding, LL.B. _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 262

AUTOMATIC WRITING, OR THE RATIONALE OF PLANCHETTE. By Frederick W. H. Myers _Contemporary Review_ 547

BANK OF ENGLAND, THE. By Henry May _Fortnightly Review_ 679

BEHIND THE SCENES. By F. C. Burnand _Fortnightly Review_ 408

BIG ANIMALS _Cornhill Magazine_ 778

BISMARCK’S CHARACTER, PRINCE _Temple Bar_ 386

BLACKSTONE. By G. P. Macdonell _Macmillan’s Magazine_ 703

BYGONE CELEBRITIES AND LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS. By Charles Mackay _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 29

BYGONE CELEBRITIES AND LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS. By Charles Mackay, LL.D. _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 165

CAMORRA, THE. _Saturday Review_ 381

COLERIDGE AS A SPIRITUAL THINKER. By Principal Tulloch. _Fortnightly Review_ 305

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF GHOST STORIES, THE. By Andrew Lang _Nineteenth Century_ 805

COMMENT ON CHRISTMAS, A. By Matthew Arnold _Contemporary Review_ 836

CONCERNING EYES. By William H. Hudson _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 772

CORNEILLE, LE BONHOMME. By Henry M. Trollope _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 359

CURIOSITIES OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND _Chambers’s Journal_ 245

DAY OF STORM, A _The Spectator_ 786

DE BANANA _Cornhill Magazine_ 529

DELLA CRUSCA AND ANNA MATILDA: AN EPISODE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. By Armine T. Kent _National Review_ 336

DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN AMERICA, THE. By William Henry Hurlburt _Nineteenth Century_ 183

DICKENS AT HOME, CHARLES. WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO HIS RELATIONS WITH CHILDREN. By his eldest daughter _Cornhill Magazine_ 362

DRESS, HOW SHOULD WE? THE NEW GERMAN THEORIES ON CLOTHING. By Dora de Blaquière _Good Words_ 273

DUELLING, FRENCH. By H. R. Haweis _Belgravia_ 222

ECONOMIC EFFECT OF WAR. _Spectator_ 846

ELECTRICITY AND GAS, THE FUTURE OF _Chambers’s Journal_ 81

ELLIOT, THE LIFE OF GEORGE. By John Morley _Macmillan’s Magazine_ 506

EMILE DE LAVELEYE _Contemporary Review_ 205

ENGLISHMEN AND FOREIGNERS _Cornhill Magazine_ 215

EXPLORATION IN A NEW DIRECTION _The Spectator_ 689

FAITHLESS WORLD, A. By Frances Power Cobbe _Contemporary Review_ 145

FOLK-LORE FOR SWEETHEARTS. By Rev. M. G. Watkins, M. A. _Belgravia_ 491

FOOD AND FEEDING _Cornhill Magazine_ 155

FOREIGN LITERATURE NOTES 143, 284, 426, 571, 717

FRENCH DRAMA UPON ABELARD, A. By a Conceptualist _National Review_ 633

GENERAL GORDON AND THE SLAVE TRADE _Contemporary Review_ 92

GERMAN ABROAD, THE. By C. E. Dawkins _National Review_ 811

GOETHE. By Prof. J. R. Seeley _Contemporary Review_ 16

GO TO THE ANT. _Cornhill Magazine_ 416

HITTITES, THE. By Isaac Taylor _British Quarterly Review_ 545

HOW INSECTS BREATHE. By Theodore Wood _Good Words_ 401

IN THE NORWEGIAN MOUNTAINS. By Oscar Frederik, King of Sweden and Norway _Temple Bar_ 521

INTERESTING WORDS, SOME. _Chambers’s Journal_ 826

IRISH HUMOR, THE DECAY OF. _The Spectator_ 383

JEWS, THE HEALTH AND LONGEVITY OF THE. By P. Kirkpatrick Picard, M.D., M.R.C.S. _Leisure Hour_ 540

JOHNSON, SAMUEL. By Edmund Gosse _Fortnightly Review_ 178

LAUREL. _All the Year Round_ 804

LITERARY NOTICES: The Correspondence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker, 136—The Story of My Life, 139—Our Great Benefactors, 141—Life of Mary Woolstonecraft, 141—Principles of Political Economy, 142—A Review of the Holy Bible, 142—The Young Folks’ Josephus, 142. True, and Other Stories, 281—Noble Blood, 281—Prince Saroni’s Wife and the Pearl-shell Necklace, 281—Dr. Grattan, 281—The Old-Fashioned Fairy Book, 281—Katherine, 281—White Feathers, 281—Egypt and Babylon, from Sacred and Profane Sources, 282—The Hundred Greatest Men: Portraits of the Hundred Greatest Men in History, 283—Eve’s Daughters; or, Common-Sense for Maid, Wife and Mother, 283—A Review of the Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, 283— The Elements of Moral Science, Theoretical and Practical, 284—Episodes of My Second Life, 423—A Historical Reference Book, 424—Bermuda: An Idyll of the Summer Islands, 425— Elements of Zoology, 425—The Reality of Religion, 425— The Enchiridion of Wit: The Best Specimens of English Conversational Wit, 426—The Dictionary of English History, 568—Personal Traits of British Authors, 569—Italy from the Fall of Napoleon I. in 1815, to the Death of Victor Emanuel in 1878, 569—Harriet Martineau (Famous Women Series), 570— Weird Tales by E. T. W. Hoffman, 571—Jelly-Fish, Star-Fish and Sea Urchins, 712—Origin of Cultivated Plants, 713—The Adventures of Timias Terrystone, 714—The Secret of Death, 716—Greater London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places, 717—Russia Under the Tzars, 851—The French Revolution, 853—Louis Pasteur: His Life and Labors, 855—At Grammar of the English Language in a Series of Letters, the Sign of the Lyre, 856—Working People and their Employers, 856.

M. JULES FERRY AND HIS FRIENDS _Temple Bar_ 753

MACPHERSON’S LOVE STORY. By C. H. D. Stocker _Leisure Hour_ 790

MAN IN BLUE, THE. By R. Davey _Merry England_ 277

MASTER, A VERY OLD _Cornhill Magazine_ 601

MASTER IN ISLAM ON THE PRESENT CRISIS, A. INTERVIEW WITH SHEIKH DJAMAL-UD-DIN AL HUSSEINY AL AFGHANY. _Pall Mall Gazette_ 849

MISCELLANY: Heligoland as a Strategical Island How the Coldstreams got their Motto Women as Cashiers The House of Lords: Can it be Reformed? A Revolving Library A Child’s Metaphors Has England a School of Musical Composition? Booty in War Sir Henry Bessemer Some Personal Recollections of George Sand The American Senate Shakespeare and Balzac The Dread of Old Age A True Critic An Aerial Ride The Condition of Schleswig Chinese Notions of Immortality An Approaching Star Germans and Russians in Persia Learning to Ride A Tragic Barring-Out Intelligence in Cats The Migration of Birds, 858 Oriental Flower Lore What’s in a Name? Historic Finance The Three Unities A Sunday-school Scholar A Mahdi of the Last Century

MONTAGU, MRS _Temple Bar_ 85

MOUNTAIN OBSERVATORIES _Edinburgh Review_ 1

MYTHOLOGY IN NEW APPAREL, OLD. By J. Theodore Bent _Macmillan’s Magazine_ 662

NEW ENGLAND VILLAGE, THREE GLIMPSES OF A _Blackwood’s Magazine_ 120

NIHILIST, A FEMALE. By Stepniak _Cornhill Magazine_ 38

ODD QUARTERS. By Frederick Boyle _Belgravia_ 648

ORGANIC NATURE’S RIDDLE. By St. George Mivart _Fortnightly Review_ 591

ORGANIC NATURE’S RIDDLE. By St. George Mivart _Fortnightly Review_ 763

ORGANIZATION OF DEMOCRACY, THE. By Goldwin Smith _Contemporary Magazine_ 609

OUTWITTED: A TALE OF THE ABRUZZI _Belgravia_ 667

PEKING, THE SUMMER PALACE. By C. F. Gordon Cumming. _Belgravia_ 373

PIERRE’S MOTTO: A CHACUN SELON SON TRAVAIL. A TALK IN A PARISIAN WORKSHOP ABOUT THE UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH _Leisure Hour_ 405

POETRY: BEYOND THE HAZE. A WINTER RAMBLE REVERIE. _Cornhill Magazine_ 84 LORD TENNYSON. By Paul H. Hayne 520 ON AN OLD SONG. By W. E. H. Lecky _Macmillan’s Magazine_ 474 RONSARD: ON THE CHOICE OF HIS TOMB. By J. P. M. _Blackwood’s Magazine_ 202

POETRY OF TENNYSON, THE. By Roden Noel _Contemporary Review_ 459

POLITICAL SITUATION OF EUROPE, THE. By F. Nobili-Vitelleschi, Senator of Italy _Nineteenth Century_ 577

POPULAR ENGLISH, NOTES ON. By the late Isaac Todhunter. _Macmillan’s Magazine_ 561

PORTRAIT, THE. A Story of the Seen and the Unseen. _Blackwood’s Magazine_ 315

QUANDONG’S SECRET, THE _Chambers’s Journal_ 525

REBELLION OF 1798, AN ACTOR IN THE. Letitia McClintock. _Belgravia_ 173

REVIEW OF THE YEAR. By Frederic Harrison _Fortnightly Review_ 445

ROMANCE OF A GREEK STATUE, A. By J. Theodore Bent _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 499

“ROMEO AND JULIET,” THE LOCAL COLOR OF. By William Archer _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 67

RUSSIAN ADVANCE IN CENTRAL ASIA, THE. By Major-General Sir Henry Rawlinson, K.C.B _Nineteenth Century_ 721

RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHER ON ENGLISH POLITICS, A _Blackwood’s Magazine_ 692

RYE HOUSE PLOT, THE. By Alexander Charles Ewald _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 249

SAND, GEORGE _Temple Bar_ 817

SAVAGE, THE. By Prof. F. Max Müller _Nineteenth Century_ 243

SIBERIA TO SWITZERLAND, FROM. The Story of an Escape. By William Westfall _Contemporary Review_ 289

SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS. By William Lant Carpenter _Gentleman’s Magazine_ 621

SIR TRISTRAM DE LYONESSE. By E. M. Smith _Merry England_ 656

SMITH, WILLIAM AND SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM _Saturday Review_ 70

SOME SICILIAN CUSTOMS. By E. Lynn Linton _Temple Bar_ 73

SOCIAL SCIENCE ON THE STAGE. By H. Sutherland Edwards _Fortnightly Review_ 830

STATE _versus_ THE MAN, THE. By Emile de Laveleye _Contemporary Review_ 732

STIMULANTS AND NARCOTICS. By Percy Greg _Contemporary Review_ 479

THUNDERBOLTS _Cornhill Magazine_ 58

TRAPPISTS, AMONG THE. A GLIMPSE OF LIFE AT LE PORT DU SALUT. By Surgeon-General H. L. Cowen _Good Words_ 53

TRUE STORY OF WAT TYLER, THE. By S. G. G. 748

TURKISH PROVERBS, SOME _The Spectator_ 787

TURNING AIR INTO WATER _All the Year Round_ 536

UNITY OF THE EMPIRE, THE. By the Marquis of Lorne _Nineteenth Century_ 643

VIVISECTION, SCIENTIFIC VERSUS BUCOLIC. By James Cotter Morison _Fortnightly Review_ 558

WHEN SHALL WE LOSE OUR POLE-STAR? _Chambers’s Journal_ 802

WÜRZBURG AND VIENNA. SCRAPS FROM A DIARY. By Emile De Laveleye _Contemporary Review_ 95

WÜRZBURG AND VIENNA. SCRAPS FROM A DIARY. By John Wycliffe: His Life and Work _Blackwood’s Magazine_ 224

ECLECTIC MAGAZINE OF FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

New Series. JANUARY, 1885. Old Series complete Vol. XLI., No. 1. in 63 vols.

MOUNTAIN OBSERVATORIES.

On October 1st, 1876, one of the millionaires of the New World died at San Francisco. Although owning a no more euphonious name than James Lick, he had contrived to secure a future for it. He had founded and endowed the first great astronomical establishment planted on the heights, between the stars and the sea. How he came by his love of science we have no means of knowing. Born obscurely at Fredericksburg, in Pennsylvania, August 25th, 1796, he amassed some 30,000 dollars by commerce in South America, and in 1847 transferred them and himself to a village which had just exchanged its name of Yerba Buena for that of San Francisco, situate on a long, sandy strip of land between the Pacific and a great bay. In the hillocks and gullies of that wind-blown barrier he invested his dollars, and never did virgin soil yield a richer harvest. The gold-fever broke out in the spring of 1848. The unremembered cluster of wooden houses, with no trouble or tumult of population in their midst, nestling round a tranquil creek under a climate which, but for a touch of sea-fog, might rival that of the Garden of the Hesperides, became all at once a centre of attraction to the outcast and adventurous from every part of the world. Wealth poured in; trade sprang up; a population of six hundred increased to a quarter of a million; hotels, villas, public edifices, places of business spread, mile after mile, along the bay; building-ground rose to a fabulous price, and James Lick found himself one of the richest men in the United States.

Thus he got his money; we have now to see how he spent it. Already the munificent benefactor of the learned institutions of California, he in 1874 formally set aside a sum of two million dollars for various public purposes, philanthropic, patriotic, and scientific. Of these two millions 700,000 were appropriated to the erection of a telescope “superior to, and more powerful than any ever yet made.” But this, he felt instinctively, was not enough. Even in astronomy, although most likely unable to distinguish the Pole-star from the Dog-star, this “pioneer citizen” could read the signs of the times. It was no longer instruments that were wanted; it was the opportunity of employing them. Telescopes of vast power and exquisite perfection had ceased to be a rarity; but their use seemed all but hopelessly impeded by the very conditions of existence on the surface of the earth.

The air we breathe is in truth the worst enemy of the astronomer’s observations. It is their enemy in two ways. Part of the sight which brings its wonderful, evanescent messages across inconceivable depths of space, it stops; and what it does not stop, it shatters. And this even when it is most transparent and seemingly still; when mist-veils are withdrawn, and no clouds curtain the sky. Moreover, the evil grows with the power of the instrument. Atmospheric troubles are magnified neither more nor less than the objects viewed across them. Thus, Lord Rosse’s giant reflector possesses—_nominally_—a magnifying power of 6,000; that is to say, it can reduce the _apparent_ distances of the heavenly bodies to 1/6000 their _actual_ amount. The moon, for example, which is in reality separated from the earth’s surface by an interval of about 234,000 miles, is shown as if removed only thirty-nine miles. Unfortunately, however, in theory only. Professor Newcomb compares the sight obtained under such circumstances to a glimpse through several yards of running water, and doubts whether our satellite has ever been seen to such advantage as it would be if brought—substantially, not merely optically—within 500 miles of the unassisted eye.[1]

Must, then, all the growing triumphs of the optician’s skill be counteracted by this plague of moving air? Can nothing be done to get rid of, or render it less obnoxious? Or is this an ultimate barrier, set up by Nature herself, to stop the way of astronomical progress? Much depends upon the answer—more than can, in a few words, be easily made to appear; but there is fortunately reason to believe that it will, on the whole, prove favorable to human ingenuity, and the rapid advance of human knowledge on the noblest subject with which it is or ever can be conversant.

The one obvious way of meeting atmospheric impediments is to leave part of the impeding atmosphere behind; and this the rugged shell of our planet offers ample means of doing. Whether the advantages derived from increased altitudes will outweigh the practical difficulties attending such a system of observation when conducted on a great scale, has yet to be decided. The experiment, however, is now about to be tried simultaneously in several parts of the globe.

By far the most considerable of these experiments is that of the “Lick Observatory.” Its founder was from the first determined that the powers of his great telescope should, as little as possible, be fettered by the hostility of the elements. The choice of its local habitation was, accordingly, a matter of grave deliberation to him for some time previous to his death. Although close upon his eightieth year, he himself spent a night upon the summit of Mount St. Helena with a view to testing its astronomical capabilities, and a site already secured in the Sierra Nevada was abandoned on the ground of climatic disqualifications. Finally, one of the culminating peaks of the Coast Range, elevated 4,440 feet above the sea, was fixed upon. Situated about fifty miles south-east of San Francisco, Mount Hamilton lies far enough inland to escape the sea-fog, which only on the rarest occasions drifts upward to its triple crest. All through the summer the sky above it is limpid and cloudless; and though winter storms are frequent, their raging is not without highly available lucid intervals. As to the essential point—the quality of telescopic vision—the testimony of Mr. S. W. Burnham is in the highest degree encouraging. This well-known observer spent two months on the mountain in the autumn of 1879, and concluded, as the result of his experience during that time—with the full concurrence of Professor Newcomb—that, “it is the finest observing location in the United States.” Out of sixty nights he found forty-two as nearly perfect as nights can well be, seven of medium quality, and only eleven cloudy or foggy;[2] his stay, nevertheless, embraced the first half of October, by no means considered to belong to the choice part of the season. Nor was his trip barren of discovery. A list of forty-two new double stars gave an earnest of what may be expected from systematic work in such an unrivalled situation. Most of these are objects which never rise high enough in the sky to be examined with any profit through the grosser atmosphere of the plains east of the Rocky Mountains; some are well-known stars, not before seen clearly enough for the discernment of their composite character; yet Mr. Burnham used the lesser of two telescopes—a 6-inch and an 18-inch achromatic—with which he had been accustomed to observe at Chicago.

The largest refracting telescope as yet actually completed has a light-gathering surface 27 inches in diameter. This is the great Vienna equatorial, admirably turned out by Mr. Grubb, of Dublin, in 1880, but still awaiting the commencement of its exploring career. It will, however, soon be surpassed by the Pulkowa telescope, ordered more than four years ago on behalf of the Russian Government from Alvan Clark and Sons, of Cambridgeport, Massachusetts. Still further will it be surpassed by the coming “Lick Refractor.” It is safe to predict that the optical championship of the world is, at least for the next few years, secured to this gigantic instrument, the completion of which may be looked for in the immediate future. It will have a clear aperture of _three feet_. A disc of flint-glass for the object-lens, 38·18 inches across, and 170 kilogrammes in weight, was cast at the establishment of M. Feil, in Paris, early in 1882. Four days were spent and eight tons of coal consumed in the casting of this vast mass of flawless crystal; it took a calendar month to cool, and cost 2,000_l._[3] It may be regarded as the highest triumph so far achieved in the art of optical glass-making.

A refracting telescope three feet in aperture collects rather more light than a speculum of four feet.[4] In this quality, then, the Lick instrument will have—besides the Rosse leviathan, which, for many reasons, may be considered to be out of the running—but one rival. And over this rival—the 48-inch reflector of the Melbourne observatory—it will have all the advantages of agility and robustness (so to speak) which its system of construction affords; while the exquisite definition for which Alvan Clark is famous will, presumably, not be absent.