I

BY WILLISTON FISH.

THINK that Time abideth in some star

That winter nights doth glimmer faint and cold, Some star lost in a mist of worlds afar,

Wherefrom he casts the spell that makes us old;
Wherefrom he maketh that the ripened grain,
The restful night, the ever-welcome day,
The sparkling tide new-risen on the main,
Do register our hours that pass away;
Wherefrom he maketh that a little sand
Cannot within its glass run silently,
Nor on a dial move a foolish hand,

But they do measure our mortality.
O demon Time, accursed, malevolent,
When shall thy rage be satisfied or spent?

Thou necromancer of the starry steeps,
Thou wizard, ravisher, and enemy,
Eternity, thy master, broods and sleeps,
And knows not of thy cruel villany.

Thou conjurest the dead forth from their mould
To question them for fearful auguries;
The golden hours that in our hands we hold
Thou changest into withered memories;

The chastest maids in youth, sole loveliness,

Thou dost pursue, and lead'st them on to scorn,

Their rosy lips and cheeks thou ravishest,

Then who shall love them that thou leav'st forlorn? Of all mankind thou art the enemy,

And never kind except in treachery.

All, all this world thou usest but to mock

Our pillaged senses that would love it well;

Of every motion dost thou make a clock;

Of every sound thou mak'st a passing-bell.

A happy moment is a moment gone;

A crowned life is but a lifetime fled.

Thou writ'st a doom across the breaking dawn: "The day that cometh passeth to the dead." Oh, might it be that thou didst not invade

Some sheltered spot, some dreaming summer land! Lo, on the turf there lies the maple's shade, And 'tis a dial with a creeping hand. O cruel Time, why doest thou this wrong, That thou lett'st not one summer's day be long?

Oh, were Time kind, as never yet Time was,

Then would he use his strange, transmuting power

Only to make fair change, bring good to pass,
Fond friends to meet, and clasped buds to flower;
To raise the worthy peasant high at court,
The lonely scholar to a great renown;

To bring far-wandered ships to happy port;

To crown our hopes and never cast them down;

To raise the patient from his weary bed,
And lead sweet lovers to their rosy bliss,

Making the timid swain emboldened

To take at last the undefended kiss.

Oh, were Time kind, then would his magic be
More golden rich than golden alchemy!

JOT many months ago word came out tion, and directed toward a peculiar elec

Nof Germany of a scientific discovery trical apparatus, to acquire clairvoyant

that startled the world. It came first as a rumor, little credited; then as a pronounced report; at last as a demonstration. It told of a new manifestation of energy, in virtue of which the interior of opaque objects is made visible to human

eyes.

One had only to look into a tube containing a screen of a certain composi

vision more wonderful than the discredited second sight of the medium. Coins within a purse, nails driven into wood, spectacles within a leather case, became clearly visible when subjected to the influence of this magic tube; and when a human hand was held before the tube, its bones stood revealed in weird simplicity,

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as if the living, palpitating flesh about them were but the shadowy substance of a ghost.

Not only could the human eye see these astounding revelations, but the impartial evidence of inanimate chemicals could be brought forward to prove that the mind harbored no illusion. The photographic film recorded the things that the eye might see, and ghostly pictures galore soon gave a quietus to the doubts of the most sceptical. Within a month of the announcement of Professor Röntgen's experiments comment upon the X ray" and the new photography" had become a part of the current gossip of all Christendom.

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It was but natural that thoughtful minds should have associated this discovery of our boasted latter-day epoch with another discovery that was made in the earliest infancy of our century. In the year 1801 Mr. Thomas Wedgwood, of the world-renowned family of potters, and Humphry Davy, the youthful but already famous chemist, made experiments which showed that it was possible to secure the imprint of a translucent body upon a chemically prepared plate by exposure to sunlight. In this way translucent pictures were copied, and skeletal imprints were secured of such objects as leaves and the wings of insects-imprints strikingly similar to the shadowgraphs" of more opaque objects which we secure by means of the new photography" to-day. these experimenters little dreamed of the real significance of their observations. It was forty years before practical photography, which these observations foreshadowed, was developed and made of any use outside the laboratory.

But

It seems strange enough now that imaginative men-and Davy surely was such a man-should have paused on the very brink of so great a discovery. But to harbor that thought is to misjudge the nature of the human mind. Things that have once been done seem easy; things that have not been done are difficult, though they lie but a hair's-breadth off the beaten track. Who can to-day foretell what revelations may be made, what useful arts developed, forty years hence through the agency of what we now call the new photography?

phetic. I wish to recall what knowledge of the sciences men had in the days when that discovery of Wedgwood and Davy was made, almost a hundred years ago; to inquire what was the scientific horizon of a person standing at the threshold of our own century. Let us glance briefly at each main department of the science of that time, that we may know whither men's minds were trending in those closing days of the eighteenth century, and what were the chief scientific legacies of that century to its successor.

II.

In the field of astronomy the central figure during this closing epoch of the eighteenth century is William Herschel, the Hanoverian, whom England has made hers by adoption. He is a man with a positive genius for sidereal discovery. At first a mere amateur in astronomy, he snatches time from his duties as musicteacher to grind him a telescopic mirror, and begins gazing at the stars. Not content with his first telescope, he makes another, and another, and he has such genius for the work that he soon possesses a better instrument than was ever made before. His patience in grinding the curved reflecting surface is monumental. Sometimes for sixteen hours together he must walk steadily about the mirror, polishing it, without once removing his hands. Meantime his sister, always his chief lieutenant, cheers him with her presence, and from time to time puts food into his mouth. The telescope completed, the astronomer turns night into day, and from sunset to sunrise, year in and year out, sweeps the heavens unceasingly, unless prevented by clouds or the brightness of the moon. His sister sits always at his side, recording his observations. They are in the open air, perched high at the mouth of the reflector, and sometimes it is so cold that the ink freezes in the bottle in Caroline Herschel's hand; but the two enthusiasts hardly notice a thing so commonplace as terrestrial weather. They are living in distant worlds.

The results? What could they be? Such enthusiasm would move mountains. But, after all, the moving of mountains seems a Lilliputian task compared with what It is no part of my purpose, however, Herschel really does with those wonderto attempt the impossible feat of casting ful telescopes. He moves worlds, stars. a horoscope for the new photography. a universe--even, if you please, a galaxy My present theme is reminiscent, not pro- of universes; at least he proves that they