Chapter V: Part 5

We cannot trace the world-growth through all its stages but can only indicate them as it were in a sketch. The more important thing to be noted is the relation of our planet in process of formation to the great fact called life. Here the New Astronomy comes in again to indicate, theoretically at least, the philosophy of planetary evolution. Each planet seems to pass through a vast almost inconceivable period in which its condition renders life on its surface or in its structure impossible. Heat is at once the favoring and the prohibitory condition of life. Without heat life cannot exist; with too great heat life cannot exist. With an intermediate and moderate degree of heat many forms of animate and inanimate existence may be promoted.

These facts tend to show that every world has in its career an intermediate period which may be called the epoch of life. Before the epoch of life begins there is in the given world no such form of existence. There is matter only. Then at a certain stage the epoch of life begins. The epoch of life continues for a vast indeterminate period. No doubt in some of the worlds an epoch of life has been provided ten times as great, possibly a thousand times as great, as in other planets. After the epoch of life begins only certain forms of existence are for a while possible. Then other and higher forms succeed them, and then still higher. Thus the process continues until the highest--that is, the conscious and moral form of existence becomes possible, and that highest, that conscious, that moral form of being is ourselves.

This is not all. The epoch of life seems to be terminable at the further extreme by a planetary condition in which life is no longer possible. The New Astronomy indicates the coming of a condition in all the worlds when life must disappear therefrom and be succeeded by a lifeless state of worldhood. This may be called the epoch of death--that is, of world-death. It seems to be almost established by investigation and right reason that worlds die. They reach a stage in which they are lifeless. They cool down until the waters and gases that are on the surface and above the surface recede more and more into the surface and then into the interior, until they wholly disappear. Cold takes the throne of nature. Universal aridity supervenes, and all forms of vegetable and animate existence go away to return no more. They dwindle and expire. The conditions that have come are virtually conditions of death.

Whether the universe contains within itself, under the Almighty supervision, certain arrangements and laws by which the dead world can be again cast into the crucible and regenerated by liberation through the action of heat into its primordial state once more and go the same tremendous round of planet life, we know not. The conception of such a process, even the dream or vague possibility of it, is sufficiently sublime and fills the mind with a great delight in contemplating the possible cycles through which the material universe is passing.

At any rate, we may contemplate the three great stages of world-life with which we are already acquainted--that is, the birth stage, the epoch of life and the epoch of death. There is a birth, as also a life and a death of planets. Richard A. Proctor, of great fame, on one of his last tours of instructive lecturing among our people, had for his subject the "Birth and Death of Worlds." The theme was not dissimilar to that which has been here presented in outline. The birth, the life and the death of worlds! Such is a summary of that almost infinite history through which our earth is passing--the history which the globe is _making_ on its way from its nebulous to its final state.

Such, if we mistake not, is the story epitomized--the life history in brief--of all the worlds of space. They have each in its order and kind, an epoch of the beginning, then an epoch of growth and evolution, then an epoch of life--toward which all the preceding planet history seems to tend--and finally an epoch of death which must, in the course of infinite time, swallow from sight each planet in its turn, or at least reduce each from that condition in which it is an arena of animated existence into that state where it is a frozen and desert clod, still following its wonted path through space, still shining with a cold but cheerful face, _like our moon_, upon the silent abysses of the universe.

WHAT THE WORLDS ARE MADE OF.

The present century was already well advanced before there was any solid ground for the belief that the worlds of space are made of analogous or identical materials. It was only with the invention of the spectroscope and the analysis of light that the material identity of universal nature was proved by methods which could not be doubted. The proof came by the spectroscope.

This little instrument, though not famed as is its lordly kinsman the telescope, or even regarded with the popular favor of the microscope, has nevertheless carried us as far, and, we were about to say, taught us as much, as either of the others. It is one thing to see the worlds afar, to note them visibly, to describe their outlines, to measure their mass and determine their motions. It is another thing to know their constitution, the substances of which they are composed, the material condition in which they exist and the state of their progress in worldhood. The latter work is the task of the spectroscope; and right well has it accomplished its mission.

The solar spectrum has been known from the earliest ages. When the sun-bow was set on the background of cloud over the diluvial floods, the living beings of that age saw a spectrum--the glorious spectrum of rain and shine. Wherever the rays of light have been diffracted under given conditions by the agency of water drops, prism of glass or other such transparent medium, and the ray has fallen on a suitable screen, lo! there has been the beautiful spectrum of light.

The artificial, intentional production of this phenomenon of light has long been known, and both novice and scientist have tested and improved the methods of getting given results. The child's soap-bubble shows it in miniature splendor. The pressure of one wet pane of glass against another reveals it. The breakage of nearly all crystalline substances brings something of the colored effects of light; but the triangular prism of glass, suitably prepared, best of all displays the analysis of the sun-beam into the colors of which it is composed.

The spectroscope is the improved instrument by which the diffracting prism is best employed in producing the spectrum. The reader no doubt has seen a spectroscope, and has observed its beautiful work. In this place we pass, however, from the instrument of production to the spectrum, or analyzed result, as the same is shown on a screen. There the pencil of white light falling from the sun is spread out in the manner of a fan, presenting on the screen the following arrangement of colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

This order of colors, beginning with red, starts from that side of the spectrum which is least bent from the right line in which the white ray was traveling. The violet rays are most bent. The red rays are thus said to be at the _lower_ edge of the prism, and the violet rays at the _upper_ edge. Below the red rays there are now known to be certain invisible rays, as of heat and electricity. Above the violet rays are other invisible rays, such as the actinic influence. In fact, the spectrum, beginning invisibly, passes by way of the visible rays to the invisible again. Nor can any scientist in the world say at the present time _how much_ is really included in the spread-out fan of analyzed sunlight.

Thus much scientists have known for some time. Certain other facts, however, in connection with the solar spectrum are of greater importance than are its more sensible phenomena. It was in the year 1802 that the English physicist, William Hyde Wollaston, discovered that the solar spectrum is crossed with a large number of _dark lines_. He it was who first mapped these lines and showed their relative position. He it was also who discovered the existence of invisible rays above the violet. Twelve years afterward Joseph von Fraunhofer, of Munich, a German optician of remarkable talents, took up the examination of the Wollaston lines, and by his success in the investigation succeeded in attracting the attention of the world.

This second stage in scientific discovery is generally that which receives the plaudits of mankind. It was so in the case of Fraunhofer. His name was given to the dark lines in the solar spectrum, and the nomenclature is retained to the present time. They are called the "Fraunhofer lines." It was soon discovered that the lines in question as produced in the spectrum are due to the presence of gases in the producing flame or source of light. It was also discovered that each substance in, the process of combustion yields its own line or set of lines. These appear at regular intervals in the spectrum. When several substances are consumed at the same time; the lines of each appear in the spectrum. The result is a _system_ of lines, becoming more and more complex as the number of elements in the consuming materials is increased.

The lines in a narrow spectrum fall so closely together that they cannot be critically examined; but when more than one prism is used and the spectrum by this means spread out widely, the dark lines are made to stand apart. They are then found to number many thousands. We speak now of the analysis of sunlight. Experimentation was naturally turned, however, to terrestrial gases and solids on fire, and it was found that these also produce like series of dark lines in the spectrum. Or when the substances are consumed _as solids_, then the spectral effects are reversed, and the lines that would be dark lines in the luminous colored spectrum become themselves luminous lines on the screen; but these lines hold the same relation in mathematical measurement, etc., as do the _dark_ lines in the colored spectrum.

Skillful spectroscopists succeeded in detecting and delineating the lines that were peculiar to each substance. By burning such substances in flame, they were able to produce the lines, and thus verify results. By such experimentation the various lines present in the solar spectrum were separated from the complex result, and the conclusion was reached that in the burning surface of the sun certain substances _well known on earth are present_; for the lines of those substances are shown in the spectrum.

No other known substances would produce the given lines. The conclusion is overwhelming that the substances in question are present in a gaseous condition in the burning flames of the sun. Down to the present time the examination of the sun's atmosphere has shown the existence therein of thirty-six known elements. These include sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, copper, cobalt, silver, lead, tin, zinc, titanium, aluminium, chromium, silicon, carbon, hydrogen and several others.

It was thus established that in the constitution of the sun many of the well-known elements of the earth are present. There could be no mistake about it. An identity of lines in such a case proved beyond dispute the identity of the substance from which such lines are derived. The existence of common materials in the central sphere of our system and in _one_ of his attendant orbs--our own--could not be doubted. The discovery of such a fact led by immediate inference to the expectation and belief that the _other_ planets were of like constitution, or in a word, that the whole solar system was essentially composed of identical materials.

As the inquiry proceeded, it was found, however, that the agreement in the lines of different spectra was not perfect. Lines would be found in the spectrum derived from one source that were not present in a spectrum derived from another source. Materials were therefore suggested as present in one body that were not present in another. Still further inquiry confirmed the belief that while there is a general uniformity in the materials of our solar system, the identity is not complete in all. An element is found in one part that may not be found in another. Hydrogen shows its line in the spectrum derived from every heavenly body that has been investigated; but not so aluminium or cobalt. Sodium, that is, the salt-producing base, is discovered everywhere, but not nickel or arsenium. The result, in a word, shows a certain variability in the distribution of solar and planetary matter, but a general identity of most.

The question next presented itself as to the character of the luminous bodies _beyond_ the solar system. Of what kind of matter are the comets? Of what kind are the fixed stars? Of what kind are the nebulæ? Could the spectroscope be used in determining also the character of the materials in those orbs that we see shining in the depths of space? The instrument was turned in answer to these questions to the sidereal heavens. No other branch of science has been prosecuted in the after half of this century with more zeal and success than has the spectroscopic analysis of the fixed stars. These are known by the telescope to have the character of suns. The most general fact of the visible heavens is the plentiful distribution of suns. They sparkle everywhere as the so-called fixed stars. To them the telescope has been virtually turned in vain. We say in vain because no single fixed star has, we believe, ever been made by aid of the telescope to show a disc.

On turning the telescope to a fixed star, its brightness, its brilliancy, increases according to the power of the instrument. Coming into the field of one of these great suns of space, the telescope shows a miraculous dawn spreading and blazing into a glorious sunrise, and a sun itself flaming like infinite majesty on the sight; but there is no disc--nothing but a blaze of glory. Thus in a sense the telescope has worked in vain on the visible heavens. But not so the spectroscope. The latter has done its glorious work. Turning to a given fixed star, it shows that the tremendous combustion going on therein is virtually the same as that in our own sun. There, too, is flaming hydrogen, and there is carbon and oxygen and iron and sodium and potassium and many other of the leading elements of what we thus know to be universal nature. The suns are all akin; they are cousins-german. They are of the same family--they and their progeny. They were born of the same universal fact. They are of the same Father! They are builded on the same plan, and they have a common destiny. Aye, more, the nebulæ that float far off, swanlike, in the infinitudes, are of the same family. The nebulæ may be regarded as the mothers of universes. It is out of their bosoms that the life and substance of all suns and worlds are drawn! And these, too, are composed of the common matter of universal nature. It is the same matter that we eat and drink. It is the same that we breathe. It is the same that we see aflame in our lamps and grates. It is the same that is borne to us in the fragrance of flowers planted on the graves of our dead. It is the common hydrogen and carbon and oxygen and nitrogen of our earth and its envelope. It is the soda of our bread; the potassa of our ashes; the phosphorus of our bones and brain! Indeed, the universe throughout is of one form and one substance, and there is one Father over all. Sooner or later the concepts of science and of religion will come together; and the small agitations and conflicts of human thought and hope will pass away in a sublime unity of human faith.

Progress in Discovery and Invention.

THE FIRST STEAMBOAT AND ITS MAKER.

On the night of the second of July, 1798, a man at a little old tavern in Bardstown, Kentucky, committed suicide. If ever there was a justifiable case of self-destruction, it was this. No human being is permitted to take his own life, but there are instances in which the burden of existence becomes well-nigh intolerable. In the case just mentioned, the man went to his room and took poison. He was a little more than fifty-five years of age, but was prematurely old from the hardships to which he had been subjected. He had not a penny. His clothes were worn out. A dirty shirt, made of coarse materials, was seen through the rags of his coat. His face was haggard, wrinkled, written all over with despair, the lines of which not even the goodness of death was able to dispel.

The man had seen the Old World and the New, but had never seen happiness. He had followed his forlorn destiny from his native town of South Windsor, Connecticut, where he was born on the twenty-first of January, 1743. His body was buried in the graveyard of Bardstown, then a frontier village. No one contributed a stone to mark the grave. Nor has that duty ever been performed. The spot became undistinguishable as time went by, and we believe that there is not a man in the world who can point out the place where the body of John Fitch was buried. The grave of the inventor of the steamboat, hidden away, more obscurely than that of Jean Valjean in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, will keep the heroic bones to the last day, when all sepulchres of earth shall set free their occupants and the great sea's wash cast up its dead!

The life of John Fitch is, we are confident, the saddest chapter in human biography. The soul of the man seems from the first to have gone forth darkly voyaging, like Poe's raven,

--"Whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster, till his song one burden bore,
Till the dirges of his hope the melancholy burden bore,--
Of 'Nevermore--nevermore!'"

Certainly it was nevermore with him. His early years were made miserable by ill-treatment and abuse. His father, a close-fisted farmer and an elder brother of the same character, converted the boyhood life of John Fitch into a long day of grief and humiliation and a long night of gloomy dreams. Then at length came an ill-advised and ill-starred marriage, which broke under him and left him to wander forth in desolation.

He went first from Connecticut to Trenton, N.J., and there in his twenty-sixth year began to ply the humble trade of watch-maker. Then he became a gunsmith, making arms for the patriots of Seventy-six, until what time the British destroyed his shop. Then he was a soldier. He suffered the horrors of Valley Forge; and before the conclusion of the peace he went abroad in the country as a tinker of clocks and watches. His peculiarity of manner and his mendicant character made him the butt of neighborhoods. In 1780 he was sent as a deputy-surveyor from Virginia into Kentucky, and after nearly two years spent in the country between the Kentucky and Green rivers, he went back to Philadelphia. On a second journey to the West his party was assailed by the Indians at the mouth of the Muskingum, and most were killed. But he was taken captive, and remained with the red men for nearly a year. But he escaped at last, and got back to a Pennsylvania settlement.

Fitch next lived for a year or two in and did approve of the invention, he withheld any public endorsement of it.

Month after month went by, and no helping hand was extended. Fitch got the reputation of being a crazy man. To save himself from starvation, he made a map of the territory Northwest of the river Ohio, doing the work of the engraving with his own hand, and printing the impressions on a cider-press! Early in 1787 he succeeded in the formation of a small company; and this company supplied, or agreed to supply, the means requisite for the building of a steamboat sixty tons' burden. The inventor also secured patents from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia, granting to him the exclusive right to use the waters of those States for fourteen years for purposes of steam navigation.

Hereupon a boat was built and launched in the Delaware. It was forty-five feet in length and twelve feet beam. There were six oars, or paddles on each side. The engine had a twelve-inch cylinder, and the route of service contemplated was between Philadelphia and Burlington. The inventor agreed that his boat should make a rate of eight miles an hour, and the charge for passage should be a shilling.

He who might have been in Philadelphia on the twenty-second of August, 1787, and did approve of the invention, he withheld any public endorsement of it.

Month after month went by, and no helping hand was extended. Fitch got the reputation of being a crazy man. To save himself from starvation, he made a map of the territory Northwest of the river Ohio, doing the work of the engraving with his own hand, and printing the impressions on a cider-press! Early in 1787 he succeeded in the formation of a small company; and this company supplied, or agreed to supply, the means requisite for the building of a steamboat sixty tons' burden. The inventor also secured patents from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia, granting to him the exclusive right to use the waters of those States for fourteen years for purposes of steam navigation.

Hereupon a boat was built and launched in the Delaware. It was forty-five feet in length and twelve feet beam. There were six oars, or paddles on each side. The engine had a twelve-inch cylinder, and the route of service contemplated was between Philadelphia and Burlington. The inventor agreed that his boat should make a rate of eight miles an hour, and the charge for passage should be a shilling.

He who might have been in Philadelphia on the twenty-second of August, 1787, would have witnessed a memorable thing. The Convention for the framing of a Constitution for the United States of America was in session. For some time the body had been wearing itself into exhaustion over this question and that question which seemed impossible of solution. On the day referred to, the convention, on invitation, adjourned, and the members, including the Father of his country, who was President, went down to the water's edge to see a sight. There Fitch's steamboat was to make its trial trip, and there the trial trip was made, with entire success.

They who were building the ship of state could but applaud the performance of the little steamer that sped away toward Burlington. But the applause was of that kind which the wise and conservative folk always give to the astonishing thing done by genius. The wise and conservative folk look on and smile and praise, but do not commit themselves. Most dangerous it is for a politician to commit himself to a beneficial enterprise; for the people might oppose it!

The facts here referred to are fully attested in indisputable records. There are files of Philadelphia newspapers which contain accounts of Fitch's boat. A line of travel and traffic was established between Philadelphia and Burlington. There was also a steam ferryboat on the Delaware. A second boat, called the "Perseverance," was designed for the waters of the Mississippi; but this craft was wrecked by a storm, and then the patent under which the Ohio river and its confluent waters were granted, expired, and the enterprise had to be abandoned. On the fourth of September, 1790, the following advertisement of the "Pennsylvania Packet" appeared in a Philadelphia paper:

"The Steamboat will set out this morning, at eleven o'clock, for Messrs. Gray's Garden, at a quarter of a dollar for each passenger thither. It will afterwards ply between Gray's and middle ferry, at 11d each passenger. To-morrow morning, Sunday, it will set off for Burlington at eight o'clock, to return in the afternoon."

This Pennsylvania Packet continued to ply the Delaware for about three years. The mechanical construction of the boat was not perfect; and shortly after the date to which the above advertisement refers the little steamer was ruined by an accident. The story is told by Thomas P. Cope, in the seventh volume of Hazard's _Register_. He says: "I often witnessed the performance of the boat in 1788-89-90. It was propelled by paddles in the stern, and was constantly getting out of order. I saw it when it was returning from a trip to Burlington, from whence it was said to have arrived in little more than two hours. When coming to off Kensington, some part of the machinery broke, and I never saw it in motion afterward. I believe it was his [Fitch's] last effort. He had, up to that period, been patronized by a few stout-hearted individuals, who had subscribed a small capital, in shares, I think, of six pounds Pennsylvania currency; but this last disaster so staggered their faith and unstrung their nerves, that they never again had the hardihood to make other contributions. Indeed, they already rendered themselves the subjects of ridicule and derision for their temerity and presumption in giving countenance to this wild projector and visionary madman. The company thereupon gave up the ghost, the boat went to pieces, and Fitch became bankrupt and brokenhearted. Often have I seen him stalking about like a troubled spectre, with downcast eye and lowering countenance, his coarse, soiled linen peeping through the elbows of a tattered garment."

With the breakdown of his enterprise, John Fitch went forth penniless into the world. The patent which he received from the United States in 1791, was of small use. How little can a pauper avail himself of a privilege! Presently his patent was burned up, and a year afterward, namely in 1793, he went to France. There he would--according to his dream--find patronage and fame; but on his arrival in the French capital he found the Reign of Terror just beginning its work. It was not likely that the Revolutionary Tribunal would give heed to an American dreamer and his proposition to propel by steam a boat on the Seine. However, Fitch went to L'Orient and deposited the plans and specifications of his invention with the American consul. Then he departed for London.

In the following year a man by the name of Robert Fulton took up his residence with the family of Joel Barlow, in Paris. There he devoted himself to his art, which was that of a painter. Whoever had passed by the corner of Second and Walnut streets, in Philadelphia while Fitch was constructing his first steamboat, might have seen a little sign carrying these words: "Robert Fulton, Miniature Painter." But now, after nearly ten years, he was painting a panorama in France. While thus engaged, the American consul at L'Orient showed to Fulton Fitch's drawings and specifications for a steamboat. More than this, _he loaned them to him, and he kept them for several months_.

A thrifty man was Robert Fulton; discerning, prudent and capable! Meanwhile, poor Fitch, in 1794, returned to America. On the ship he worked his way as one of the hands. Getting again to New York he determined to make his way into that region of country where he had been a surveyor in 1780. He accordingly set out from New York for Kentucky, but not till he had invented, or rather constructed, a steamboat, which was driven by _a screw propeller_! This, in 1796, he launched on the Collect Pond, in what is now Lower New York. The boat was successful as an experiment; but the people who saw it looked upon its operation and upon the thing itself as the product of a crazy man's brain.

He who now passes along the streets of the metropolis will come upon a vendor of toys, who will drop upon the pavement an artificial miniature tortoise, rabbit, rat, or what not, well wound up; and the creature will begin to crawl, or dance, or jump, or run, according to its nature. The busy, conservative man smiles a superior smile, and passes on. It was in such mood that the old New Yorker of 1796 witnessed the going of Fitch's little screw propeller on the Pond. It was a toy of the water.

After this the poor spectre left for the West. The spring of 1798 found him at Bardstown, with the model of a little three-foot steamboat, which he launched on a neighboring stream. There he still told his neighbors that the time would come when all rivers and seas would be thus navigated. But they heeded not. The spectre became more spectral. At last, about the beginning of July, in the year just named, he gave up the battle, crept into his room at the little old tavern, took his poison, and fell into the final sleep.

We shall conclude this sketch of him and his work with one of his own sorrowful prophecies: "The day will come," said he in a letter, "when some more powerful man will get fame and riches from _my_ invention; but nobody will believe that poor John Fitch can do anything worthy of attention." Than this there is, we think, hardly a more pathetic passage in the history of the sons of men!

TELEGRAPHING BEFORE MORSE.

There is a great fallacy in the judgment of mankind about the method of the coming of new things. People imagine that new things come all at once, but they do not. Nothing comes all at once; that is, no thing. In the facts of the natural world, that is, among visible phenomena of the landscape, the judgment of people is soon corrected. There it is seen that everything grows. The growth is sometimes slow and sometimes rapid; but everything comes gradually out of its antecedents. No tree or shrub or flower ever came immediately. No living creature on the face of the earth begins by instantaneous apparition. The chick gets out of its shell presently, but even that takes time. Every living thing comes on by degrees from a germ, and the germ is generally microscopic! Nature is, indeed, a marvel!

The facts of human life, whether tangible or intangible, have this same method. For example, there has not been an invention known to mankind that has not come on in the manner of growth. The antecedents of it work on and on in a tentative way, producing first this trial result and then that, always approaching the true thing; and even the true thing when it comes is not perfect. It is made perfect afterward. There was never an instantaneous invention, and there was never a complete one! It is doubtful whether there is at the present time a single complete, that is perfect or perfected, invention in the world. They are all of partial development. They show in their history their origin, their growth, their gradual approximation to the perfect form.

All of the marvelous contrivances which, fill the arena of our civilization, making it first vital and then vocal, have come by the evolutionary process. Every one of them has a history which is more and more obscure as we follow it backward to its source. In every case, however, there comes a time when a given discovery, manifesting itself in a given invention, takes a sort of spectacular character, and it is then rather suddenly revealed to the consciousness of mankind.

Of this general law the telegraph affords a conspicuous example. The whole world knows the story of the telegraph of Morse. It was in 1844 that the work of this great inventor was publicly demonstrated to the world. Then it was that the electro-magnetic telegraph in its first rude estate began to be used in the transmission of messages and other written information.

It has come to pass that "telegraph" means virtually _electric_ telegraph. The people of to-day seem to have forgotten that the telegraph is not necessarily dependent on the electrical current. They have forgotten that back of the Morse invention other means had been employed of transmitting information at a distance. They have forgotten that it was by the most gradual and tedious process that the old telegraphic methods were evolved into the new. Note with wonder how this great invention began, and through what stages it passed to completion.

There is a natural telegraphy. Whoever stands in an open place and calls aloud to his fellow mortal at a distance _telegraphs_ to him. At least he telephones to him; that is, _sounds_ to him at a distance. The air is the medium, the vocal cords in vibration the source of the utterance, and the ear of the one at a distance the audiphonic receiver. This sort of telegraphy is original and natural with human beings, and it is common to them and the lower animals. All the creatures that have vocality use this method. It were hard to say how humble is the creeping thing that does not rasp out some kind of a message to its fellow insect. Some, like the fireflies, do their telegraphing with a lantern which they carry. The very crickets are expert in telegraphy, or telephony, which is ultimately the same thing.

After transmitted sound the next thing is the visible signal, and this has been employed by human beings from the earliest ages in transmitting information to a distance. It is a method which will perhaps never be wholly abandoned. Observe the surveyors running a trial line. Far off is the chain bearer and here is the theodolite. The man with the standard watches for the signal of the man with the instrument. The language is _seen_ and the message understood, though no word is spoken. Here the sunlight is the wire, and the visible motion of the hands and arms the letters and words of the message.

The ancients were great users of this method. They employed it in both peace and war. They occupied heights and showed signals at great distances. The better vision of those days made it possible to catch a signal, though far off, and to transmit it to some other station, likewise far away. In this manner bright objects were waved by day and torches by night. In times of invasion such a method of spreading information has been used down to the present age. Nor may we fail to note the improved apparatus for this kind of signaling now employed in military operations. The soldiers on our frontiers in Arizona, New Mexico, and through the mountainous regions further north, are able to signal with a true telegraphic language to stations nearly a hundred miles away.

Considerable progress was made in telegraphy in the after part of the eighteenth century. This progress related to the transmission of visible messages through the air. In the time of the French Revolution such contrivance occupied the attention of military commanders and of governing powers. A certain noted engineer named Chappe invented at this epoch a telegraph that might be properly called successful. Chappe was the son of the distinguished French astronomer, Jean Chappe d'Auteroche, who died at San Lucar, California, in 1769. This elder Chappe had previously made a journey into Siberia, and had seen from that station the transit of Venus in 1761. Hoping to observe the recurring transit, eight years afterward, he went to the coast of our then almost unknown California, but died there as stated above.

The younger Chappe, being anxious to serve the Revolution, invented his telegraph; but in doing so he subjected himself to the suspicions of the more ignorant, and on one notable occasion was brought into a strait place--both he and his invention. The story of this affair is given by Carlyle in the second volume of his "French Revolution." One knows not whether to smile or weep over the graphic account which the crabbed philosopher gives of Chappe and his work in the following extract:

"What, for example," says he, "is this that Engineer Chappe is doing in the Park of Vincennes? In the Park of Vincennes; and onward, they say, in the Park of Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, the assassinated deputy; and still onward to the Heights of Ecouen and farther, he has scaffolding set up, has posts driven in; wooden arms with elbow-joints are jerking and fugling in the air, in the most rapid mysterious manner! Citoyens ran up, suspicious. Yes, O Citoyens, we are signaling; it is a device, this, worthy of the Republic; a thing for what we will call far-writing without the aid of postbags; in Greek it shall be named Telegraph. '_Telégraphê sacre_,' answers Citoyenism. For writing to Traitors, to Austria?--and tears it down, Chappe had to escape and get a new legislative Decree. Nevertheless he has accomplished it, the indefatigable Chappe; this his Far-writer, with its wooden arms and elbow-joints, can intelligibly signal; and lines of them are set up, to the North Frontiers and elsewhither. On an Autumn evening of the Year Two, Far-writer having just written that Condè Town has surrendered to us, we send from the Tuileries Convention-Hall this response in the shape of a Decree: 'The name of Condè is changed to _Nord-Libre_ (North Free). The Army of the North ceases not to merit well of the country.' To the admiration of men! For lo! in some half-hour, while the Convention yet debates, there arrives this new answer: 'I inform thee (_Je t'annonce_), Citizen President, that the Decree of Convention, ordering change of the name Condè into North Free; and the other, declaring that the Army of the North ceases not to merit well of the country, are transmitted and acknowledged by Telegraph. I have instructed my Officer at Lille to forward them to North Free by express.' Signed, Chappe."

This successful telegraph of Engineer Chappe was not an electric telegraph, but a sunlight telegraph. Is it in reality any more wonderful to use the electrical wave in the transmission of intelligible symbols than to use a wave of light? Such seems to have been the opinion of mankind; and the coming of the electric telegraph was long postponed. The invention was made by slow approaches. In our country the notion has prevailed that Morse did all--that others did nothing; but this notion is very erroneous.

We are not to suppose that the Chappe method of telegraphing became extinct after its first successful work. Other references to what we _suppose_ to be the same instrument are found in the literature of the age. The wonder is that more was not written and more accomplished by the agency of Chappe's invention. In the fall of the year 1800, General Bonaparte, who had been in Egypt and the East, returned to Europe and landed at Frejus on his way to Paris, with the dream of universal dominion in his head. In the first volume of the _Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte_, his secretary M. de Bourrienne, writing of the return to France says:

"We arrived in Paris on the 24th Vendemiaire (the sixteenth of October). As yet he (Napoleon) knew nothing of what was going on; for he had seen neither his wife nor his brothers, who were looking for him on the Burgundy Road. The news of our landing at Frejus had reached Paris _by a_ _telegraphic despatch_. Madame Bonaparte, who was dining with M. Gohier when that despatch was communicated to him, as President of the Directory, immediately set off to meet her husband," etc. We should be glad to know in what particular form that "telegraphic despatch" was delivered! But such are Bourrienne's words!

To the American reader the name of Karl Friedrich Gauss may have an unfamiliar sound. Gauss was already a youth of fourteen when Morse was born, though the latter outlived the German mathematician by seventeen years. Gauss was a professor of Mathematics at Göttingen, where he passed nearly the whole of his life. In the early part of the century he distinguished himself in astronomy and in other branches of physical science. He then became interested in magnetic and electrical phenomena, and in 1833, with the assistance of Wilhelm Eduard Weber, one of his fellow-professors, who died in 1891, he erected at Göttingen a magnetic observatory. There he began to experiment with the subtle agent which was soon to be placed at the service of mankind.

The observatory was constructed without the use of iron, in order that the magnetic phenomena might be studied under favorable conditions. Humboldt and Arago had previously constructed laboratories without using iron--for iron is the great disturber--and from them Gauss obtained his hint. Weber was also expert in the management of magneto-electrical currents. Gauss, with the aid of his co-worker, constructed a line of telegraph, and sent signals by the agency of the magnetic current to a neighboring town. This was nearly ten years before Morse had fully succeeded in like experimentation.

It appears that the German scientists regarded their telegraph as simply the tangible expression or apparatus to illustrate scientific facts and principles. It was for this reason, we presume, that no further headway was made at Göttingen in the development of telegraphy. It was also for the additional reason that men rarely or never accept what is really the first demonstration and exemplification of a new departure in scientific knowledge. Such is the timidity of the human mind--such its conservative attachment to the known thing and to the old method as against the new--that it prefers to stay in the tumble-down ruin of bygone opinions and practices, rather than go up and inhabit the splendid but unfamiliar temple of the future.

Gauss and Weber were left with their scientific discovery; and, indeed, Morse in the New World of practicality and quick adaptations, was about to be rejected and cast out. The sorrows through which he passed need not here be recounted. They are sufficiently sad and sufficiently humiliating. His unavailing appeals to the American Congress are happily hidden in the rubbish of history, and are somewhat dimmed by the intervention of more than half a century. But his humiliation was extreme. Smart Congressmen, partisans, the ignorant flotsam of conventions and intrigues, heard the philosopher with contempt. A few heard him with sympathy; and the opinion in his favor grew, as if by the pressure of shame, until he was finally supported, and in a midnight hour of an expiring session of Congress, or rather in the early morning of the fourth of March, 1843, the munificent appropriation of $30,000 was placed at his disposal for the construction of an experimental line between Washington and Baltimore.

The one thing was done. A new era of instantaneous communication between men and communities at a distance the one from the other was opened--an era which has proved to be an era of light and knowledge. Nor may we conclude this sketch without noting the fact that, not a few of the members of the House of Representatives who voted the pittance for the construction of the first line of actual working telegraph in the world, went home to their constituents and were ignominiously beaten for re-election--this this for the slight service which they had rendered to their country and the human race!

When in New York City, turn thou to the west out of Fifth avenue into Twenty-second street, to the distance of, perhaps, ten rods, and there on a little marble slab set in the wall of a house on the north side of the street, read this curious epitaph:

"In this house lived Professor S.F.B, Morse for thirty years and died!"

THE NEW LIGHT OF MEN.

By the law of nature our existence is divided between daylight and darkness. There is evermore the alternate baptism into dawn and night. The division of life is not perfect between sunshine and shadow; for the sunshine bends around the world on both horizons, and lengthens the hemisphere of day by a considerable rim of twilight. To this reduction of the darkness we must add moonshine and starlight. But we must also subtract the influence of the clouds and other incidental conditions of obscuration. After these corrections are made, there is for mankind a great band of deep night, wherein no man can work. Whoever goes forth at some noon of night, when the sky is wrapped with clouds, must realize the utter dependence of our kind upon the light. How great is the blessing of that sublime and beautiful fact which the blind Milton apostrophizes in the beginning of the Third Book of _Paradise Lost_:

"Hail, holy Light! offspring of heaven first-born!
Or of Eternal coëternal beam,
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou rather, pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,
Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite."

How then shall man overcome the darkness? It is one of the problems of his existence. He is obliged with each recurring sunset of his life to enter the tunnel of inky darkness and make his way through as best he may to the morning. What kind of lantern shall he carry as he gropes?

The evolution of artificial light and of the means of producing it constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in the history of our race. Primeval man knew fire. He learned in some way how to kindle fire. The lowest barbarian may be defined as a fire-producing animal. The cave men of ancient Europe kindled fires in their dark caverns. The lake dwellers had fires, both on shore and in their huts over the water. Wherever there was a fire there was artificial light. The primitive barbarian walked around the embers of his fire and saw his shadow stretching out into the gloom of the surrounding night.

With the slow oncoming of a better estate, the early philosophers of mankind invented lamps. Very rude indeed were the first products in this kind of art. Note the character of the lamps that have survived to us from the age of stone. Still they are capable of holding oil and retaining a wick. Further on we have lamps from the age of bronze, and at last from the age of iron. Polite antiquity had its silver lamps, its copper lamps, and in a few instances its lamps of gold. The palaces of kings were sometimes lighted from golden reservoirs of oil. Such may be seen among the relics preserved to us from the civilizations of Western Asia. The palace of Priam, if we mistake not, had lamps of gold.

The Great Greeks were the makers of beautiful lamps. In the age of the Grecian ascendancy the streets of Athens and of some other Hellenic cities were lighted by night. The material of such illumination was oil derived either from animals or from vegetable products, such as the olive. In the forms of Greek lamps we have an example of artistic beauty not surpassed or equaled in modern time; but the mechanical contrivance for producing the light was poor and clumsy.

Rome lighted herself artificially. She had her lamps and her torches and her chandeliers, as we see in the relics of Herculaneum and Pompeii. A Roman procession by night was not wanting in brilliancy and picturesqueness. The quality of the light, however was poor, and there was always a cloud of smoke as well as of dust hovering about Roman processions and triumphs.

The earlier Middle Ages improved not at all; but with the Renaissance there was an added elegance in the apparatus of illumination. Chandeliers were made in Italy, notably in Venice, that might rival in their elegance anything of the present age. The art of such products was superior; but the old barbaric clumsiness was perpetuated in the mechanical part. With the rise of scientific investigation under the influence of inductive philosophy, all kinds of contrivances for the production of artificial light were improved. The ingenuity of man was now turned to the mechanical part, and one invention followed another with a constant development in the power of illumination.

We can but remember, however, that until the present age many of the old forms of illuminating apparatus have been retained. In the ruder communities such things may still be seen. Civilization in its progress from east to west across our continent followed a tallow candle. The light of it was seen by night through the window of the pioneer's cabin. The old forms of hanging lamps have hardly yet disappeared from the advance posts of the marching column. But meanwhile, other agencies have been discovered, and other forms of apparatus invented, until the branch of knowledge relating to illumination has become both a science and an art.

Within the memories of men still living, a great transformation has occurred. Animal oils have virtually ceased to be employed as the sources of light. The vegetable world is hardly any longer drawn upon for its products. Already before the discovery of petroleum and its multifarious uses the invention by chemical methods of illuminating materials had begun. Many kinds of burning fluid had been introduced. The reign of these was short-lived; coal oil came in at the door and they flew out at the window. Great was the advantage which seemed to come to mankind from the use of kerosene lamps. Those very forms of illumination which are now regarded as crude in character and odious in use were only a generation ago hailed with delight because of their superiority to the former agents of illumination. Thus much may suffice for all that precedes the coming of the New Light of men. The new light flashes from the electrical glow. The application of electricity to purposes of illumination marks an era in human progress. The electrical light is, we think, high up among the most valuable and striking stages of civilized life in the nineteenth century. It is best calculated to affect favorably the welfare of the people, especially in great cities. The illumination of a city by night, making its streets to be lighted as if by day, is a more interesting and important fact in human history than any political conflict or mere change of rulers.

About the beginning of the eighth decade of this century the project of introducing the electric light for general purposes of illumination began to be agitated. It was at once perceived that the advantages of such lighting were as many as they were obvious. The light is so powerful as to render practicable the performance of many mechanical operations as easily by night as by day. Again, the danger of fire from illuminating sources is almost wholly obviated by the new system. The ease and expedition of all kinds of night employment are greatly enhanced. A given amount of illumination can be produced much more cheaply by electricity than by any means of gas lighting or ordinary combustion. Among the first to demonstrate the feasibility of electric lighting was the philosopher Gramme, of Paris. In the early part of 1875 he successfully lighted his laboratory by means of electricity. Soon afterward the foundry of Ducommun & Co., of Mulhouse, was similarly lighted. In the course of the following year the apparatus for lighting, by means of carbon candles was introduced into many of the principal factories of France and other leading countries of Europe. It may prove of interest in this connection to sketch briefly the principal features of the electric light system, and to trace the development of that system in our own and other countries.

Lighting by electricity is accomplished in several ways. In general, however, the principle by which the result is accomplished is one, and depends upon the resistance which the electrical current meets in its transmission through various substances. There are no perfect conductors of electricity. In proportion as the non-conductive quality is prevalent in a substance, especially in a metal, the resistance to the passage of electricity is pronounced, and the consequent disturbance among the molecular particles of the substance is great. Whenever such resistance is encounted in a circuit, the electricity is converted into heat, and when the resistance is great, the heat is, in turn, converted into light, or rather the heat becomes phenomenal in light; that is, the substance which offers the resistance glows with the transformed energy of the impeded current. Upon this simple principle all the apparatus for the production of electric light is produced.