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could start a magazine and avoid these subjects . There are tales also , and the beginning of a [ sketch of Sir Philip Sidney , and a review of " Hiawatha . " Altogether there is talent and promise enough to justify the young men proceeding in their efforts .
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ARAGO'S POPULAR ASTRONOMY . Popular Astronomy . By Francois Arago . Translated from the original , and edited by Admiral W . H . Smyth and Robert Grant , Esq . In two volumes . Vol . I . Longmans . The magnificent edition of Arago ' s works which is now in course of publication by Messrs . Longman , is very unlike the editions of foreign authors usually issued . Each volume is under the superintendence of some name eminent in the science of which it treats . In the work before us , we have not only Aeago , but Arago guaranteed and occasionally corrected by Admiral Smyth , whose " Cycle of Celestial Objects" and other scientific works have made his name , and by Mr . Robert Grant , whose " History of Physical Astronomy " is known to every one occupied in such matters . The editors have , it is true , " been somewhat sparing of their notes , not wishing to obtrude themselves ; but their few rectifications are very serviceable , and their silence is a sort of guarantee .
The " Popular Astronomy" will probably be the most popular of all Arago ' s writings . Popular it is , too much so in our judgment ; for we cannot escape the conviction that , if Arago had thought less of the ladies and the stupid hearers who crowded to his lectures , and had set himself to the task of a systematic exposition of the science in popular language , he would have produced a work of more substantial benefit . He has ranged through the heavens and the literature of the heavens ; he has enlivened the work with anecdotes and piquant facts , and conveyed a mass of information in language no one can find unintelligible ; but he has done this in a fragmentary " article-like" manner , not in a style which can furnish the student with a general conception of the science . In a word , the book is not an exposition of the Science of Astronomy , but a series of articles on astronomical topics . To the ordinary reader this will , perhaps , be its charm . To those who wish to see the scientific education of the mass furthered by the writings of the great teachers , it will be a serious defect .
upon which fifteen figures have been engraven in a circular space of fourteen millimetres in diameter . These figures are not all visible to the naked eye . ( Dutens 2 nd edit . torn . ii . p . 224 . ) Cicero makes mention of an Iliad of Homer written upon parchment ,, which was comprised in a , nutshell . ( Pliny , Hist . Nat , lib . vii . cap . 23 . ) Pliny relates that M yrmecides , a Milesian , executed in ivory a square figure which a fly covered with its wings . ( Pliny , Mist . N ' a . t ., lib . vii . cap . 21 . ; Elien , Hist ., lib . i . eap . 17 . ) " Unless it be maintained that the powers of vision of our ancestors surpassed those of the most skilful modern artists , which , could , be disproved by a multitude of astronomical observations , these facts establish , that the magnifying property of lenses was known to the Greeks and Romans nearly two thousand years ago . We may besides advance a step further , and borrow from Seneca a passage whence the same truth will emerge in a manner still more direct and decisive .
In the " Natural Questions" ( lib . i . cap . 6 ) , we read : '' However small and obscure the writing may be , it appears larger and clearer when viewed through a globule of glass filled with water . " Dutens has seen in "the Museum of Portici ancient lenses ( des loupes anciennes ) which had a focal length of only nine millimetres . He actually possessed one of these lenses , but of a longer focus , which -was extracted from the ruins of Herculaneum . ( Dutens 2 nd edit . torn . ii . p . 224 . ) Duten 3 would have been more correct if he had said , "I have seen at the Museum of Portici spherules of glass . " The word loupe implies , in fact , optical practices ; and the small spheres of Pornpeia and Herculaneum were destined solely as a substitute for precious stones in . the dresses of ladies of only moderate opulence . The remark of Dutens , and the relic to which it refers , do not acquire a real valtie but by viewing thein in connexion with the passage of Seneca . It may be admitted , that if the last-mentioned philosopher has alluded only to the effects of spheres of -water , this arose from the circumstance of his having been then replying to the objections against his own theory of the rainbow .
At the meeting of the British Association , held at Belfast in the year 1852 , Sir David Brewster showed a plate of rock crystal worked into the form of a lens , ¦ which was recently found among the ruins of Nineveh . Sir David Brewater , so competent a judge in -a question of this kind , maintained that this lens had been destined for optical purposes , and that it never was an article of dress . The book is very handsomely printed , -anil profusely illustrated . Though not at all realising our idea of a " Popular Astronomy , " we know of nothing to be compared with it . In the next volume , we hope the editors will be somewhat more severe in their revision of the translation , which is frequently more French than English in . its idiom . Arago ' s manner may be preserved , but English must be the medium .
It is , in some respects , a cyclopaedia of astronomy . It begins with a book containing a succinct exposition of those geometrical'ideas which are indispensable for the rudimentary intelligence of astronomical phenomena . This is accomplishe"dr in five-and-twenty pages . It . is followed by an equally succinct account of the principles of mechanics and horology , and by one somewhat longer on opticsj including telescopes . TheVorkmay then be said fairly to begin . The first question which he enters upon is the Visibility of the Stars ; the second , The Diurnal Motion ; the third , The Apparent Motion of the Sun ; the fourth , The Constellations j the fifth , Isolated Stars ; the sixth , Multiple Stars ; the seventh , Nebula ; the eighth ^ The Milky Way j the ninth , The proper Motions of the Stars ; the tenth , The Sun ; the eleventh , Zodiacal Light- ; the twelth , Movements of the Planets ; the thirteenth , The Comets ; the fourteenth , Mercury ; the fifteenth , Venus : and for the rest we await volume the second .
The topics just enumerated in the order they' here present will show our readers how unsystematic and how encyclopaedic the work is , and as a specimen of the light agreeable way in ' which even the erudition of the subject is conveyed , we may cite the following remarks forming the entire chapter entitled ,
THE ANCLENTS WERE ACQUAINTED WITH GLASS . There are learned individuals who refuse to the ancients a knowledge of magnifying 'lenseB , and a fortiori that of refracting telescopes , since , according to them , the Greeks and Romans had only very imperfect notions with respect to the fabrication of glass . I must hasten to expose the palpable fallacy of this latter opinion . . I shall not cite here a passage from Aristophanes ( from which it is plain that globules of glass were sold at the shops of the grocers of Athens , in the time of that comic author ) . My citations will be more explicit , more precise , if JLt were possible . Pliny states that the immense theatre ( it was" capable of containing eighty thousand persons ) erected at Rome by Scaxirus , sou-ia-law of Syllu , was three stories in height , and that the second of these stories was entirely inlaid with a mosaic of glass .
We read in the seventh book of the " Recognitions " of St . Clement , that St . Peter , having repaired to the Isle of Aradus , saw there a temple , the columns of which , all in glass , and of extraordinary magnitude , excited his admiration more than tho beautiful statues of Phidias , with which the templo was adorned . Seneca , in his M < Natural Questions , " speaks of phenomena of colour which are perceived when objects arc- viewed very obliquely through glass . According to Pliny , during tho reign of Nero , vases of white plaas wore used at table , which rivalled in trnnaparonoy cupa of rock crystal . It was upon glass globon that tho constellations of the celestial sphero wore frequently traced about tho eamo time . Finally , fow ancient tombs have boon opened without finding lachrymal urns termed lachrymatories .
Ptoleany in his " Optics " has inserted a table of tho refractions which light experiences under different angles of incidence , in passing from air iwto glass . I he values of these angles , which differ only iu a slight degree from thoso obtamod in tho present day by moans of similnr experiments , prove that tho glass oi tho anoionts differed very little from thnt manufactured in our own times . Here also is another entire chapter : — < WERE THE ANOMNTQ ACQUAINTED WITH TKE MAGNIFYING EFFECTS OP CURVED rr ., L . ..... GLASS ? Iho question which I propose in tho title of this clinptor may bo attacked and rosolvocl in two different way fl . We B hall first oxaitxlno whether , among tho productions of tho . industry and tho arts of ancient nations which have como down to us , them oxiat any which could not have boon executed without tho assistance of W ™* " * glnsBOH . Certain passages extracted from authentio sources will aervo to teat tho rosuUs of tho first investigation . There iu in our Cabinet of Medals a seal said to have belonged to Miohaol Angela , the fabrication of which , it is said , aaoondo to a very remote epoch , and
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A « r . G . " IN . THE CRIMEA . Inside Sebastopol , and Experiences intJie Camp . Being the Narrative of a Journey to tlie Ruins of Sebastopol , by way of Gibraltar , Malta , and Constantinople , andbackby way of Turkey , Italy , and France . Accomplished in the Autumn and Winter of 1855 . J y ' * ' Chapman and Hall . This long title covers the ' first page of a large octavo volume issued by Chapman and Hall . It is handsomely bound , and admirably printed on strong paper . From the beginning to the end there are three hundred and eightytwo pages ; there is a map at the beginning and a map at the end , fliere is a little preface—in short , the usual physical limbs and lineaments of a book ' : —
" The rest is nought but leather and prunella . " The reader sees the taking title , " Inside Sebastopol . " Will he believe thai the writer of this volume was only eight , days , in the Crimea ; that out of these he spent three days only among the ruins ; that the portion of the book * devoted to " Inside Sebastopol" is less than one-third , arid that the remaining two-thirds are taken up with the diary written by the author on his way to and from the Crimea ? Here is a writer who calls " the Narrative of a Journey to the Ruins of Sebastopol , &c , " " Insitle Sebastopol and Experiences in the Camp : " as if we should describe a journey from the Temple to
St . Paul's by Fleet-street and back by Holborn , as " Inssde St . Paul's and Experiences in the Churchyard . " The presumption of the hook is all the more flagrant , inasmuch as in his preface the self-complacent writer boasts that he has V ventured to tell the true story of the repulse at the Redan , " and adds , in melodramatic accents , that if peace be made without another act of warfare " that shrewd and fortunate man , Napoleon the Third , " will have what ?— " revenged Waterloo 1 ' * Does not that , in some measure , furnish the reader with a gauge of the writer ' s capacity ; and , taken in connexion , with the fact that although he had been only eight days in the Crimea , he talks of gathering " the general opinion of the camp , " does it not furnish some mensure of his cool presumption ? Perhaps we should read for " general opinion , " that he gathered the " general shaves" of the canip 3 and a fine crop they are .
The wonder of it is that the author is a barrister j , that may account for the long-windedness of the volume , but certainly not for the disregard oi evidence with which he tells a " true story . " He starts from London spasmodically on the 11 th of August ; leaving Gvavcsoiul in the "W . S . Lindsay , " for the Crimea , on the following < lay . In one hundred nnri thirty-nine pages he gets to Balaklava ; in one hundred and five pages lie gets through the Crimea ; and in one hundred and thirty-eight pages lie brings us home again . The sort of reading you get in these pages has that kind of lively air , which a very young man assumes , who is particularly wellsatisfied with himself , and perfectly certain that everyone else is dying to lieiu his flippant descriptions of what he has seen , thought , and done . We suppose that every travelling "junior" thinks that what fcothen did , the sau junior ctm do / and docs not find out his mistake until his publisher sends n his bill . Voyages to Constantinople , " Voyages en Orient , ' have been de scribed bv so innnv scores of pens , thnt nothing short of the highest ongi
nality of mind and * style , like that of Eotben , or of position like that of Lon Carlisle , enn justify n mnn making the journey in inflicting the tedious nav rativc of his everyday life l > y land and sea upon the public . But our tra veiling barrister , or " " Travelling Gent , " as he tells us the genus is termed i the Crimea , has evidently a different impression . Ho is under the conyictio * from which one day he may be painfully awakened , that his book will pa ; j The closing words of the -volume me these : " I was awsvy eleven weeks , an
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January 19 , 1856 . 1 T H E LEAPEB . ¦ 65
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Leader (1850-1860), Jan. 19, 1856, page 65, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2124/page/17/
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