the very hour when your poor land of France is smoking with the blood of millions of dead whom the peoples of the world left there, there are still those who in the newspapers of the whole world even now are talking about the next war "the next," as

they call it, in a kind of ghastly abbreviation? Is this not a cause for frank despair? What causes me perhaps a still greater surprise is that those who read these journals find all this quite natural. They do not throw such newspapers down in disgust. You should have seen the papers yesterday. They were filled with the discovery of some German chemist whose genius sufficed to invent a kind of powder a very small amount of which can destroy entire cities. I do not say that this was admired, but at least people lingered with guilty willingness over this discovery. I tell you, if there were any sense in those who govern us, that man would have been hanged high and quickly. There would have been less pity for him than for a counterfeiter.

"These visits that you are making to English writers can only be beneficial to the intellectual bond between the two peoples. But I do not see that anything can save the world from all the bloody follies in which for ten years it has sunk itself. Religion alone has any chance of success in bringing about this union of the people. By religion I mean the religious spirit, but at this moment religion is suffering such shocks, such transformations, that its capacity for action is curiously diminished.

'I believe that we are moving toward the disappearance of dogmas. The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, once so august, has for some generations failed in the magnificent opportunity given it to create the religion of the future. When the NeoCatholics advanced with such con

fidence and tenderness, the Church repulsed them. She made a gesture toward the past. The Church did not understand the Oxford Movement, nor did she understand that in applying the principle of evolution to faith and dogma she would have strengthened the instinctive tendencies of the English soul toward the reintroduction of the liturgy, and that perhaps would not have been the only, or the most important, result of a friendly reception at that moment. By adopting a generous attitude she might have enrolled several millions of agnostics who were waiting. The Church did not do it, and I thought then that perhaps the Roman Church had lost faith in herself and in her mission, because she lacked the radiant confidence that she could receive and assimilate without difficulty the new elements that were offered.

"The Church of England has dignity, strength, and solidity enough, all due to the ancient traditions, so that one might discern possibilities of her transformation. The Church of England enjoys such prestige that she might, in our country, gather up the remnants of morality.

'I dream of an alliance between religions freed from dogmas. The religion which ought to be preserved if the world is not to perish absolutely and which we must achieve if the world is not to perish, an alliance of rationalism and religion, would be created by poetry. People are likely to forget that poetry, pure literature, and religion are three different names for one and the same thing. Poetry, pure literature, and religion are the visible points of the most authentic mental and emotional life, and I am happy to think that this religion without dogmas in which, I think, we may see in advance the religion of the future and by which all of the modern world that can

be saved will be saved may find shelter for its meditation and its songs in the churches of to-day.

"The folly of the war and all the follies which it engendered, the appalling development of selfishness, the cult, if I may say so, of egoism, scientific development linked directly with a corresponding strangling of wisdom, the degrading thirst for disordered excitement, constitute such a menace for civilization that rationalism and religion ought to league themselves without delay to battle against the invading barbarism.'

'Just now,' said I, 'you showed a keen desire to see The Dynasts translated into French. Is that your favorite among your books?'

Mr. Hardy smiled gently.

'I am especially fond of the little poems, which I am trying to make successful to-morrow and in the days that follow. Nevertheless, to speak frankly, I do have a weakness for that rather long-drawn-out work, and especially for the third part. If the whole thing were not to be translated into French, I should prefer to have the third part translated, because I think it superior to the other two. I imagine that the subject and the way in which I have treated it would not be too distasteful to the French public. One of my thoughts in writing the book was to show that in the Napoleonic wars England was not fighting the French people, but their Emperor.'

'It is not possible to escape from literary influences,' said Mr. Hardy in answer to a question, 'but I think that the best are indirect, or, if I may employ a French phrase, à retardement. Thus, at the moment when I was carrying The Dynasts around in my mind, I had occasion to read War and Peace by Tolstoi, whose Anna Karenina I had just finished with keen interest. I had carefully kept from reading it hitherto

because I thought the subject of the book and its orchestration too closely related to what I was trying to do myself. I have not read the French novelists for a long time, either. They are too fascinating, too enveloping, and their influence is bad for you. There is a certain number of English novelists who, I imagine, would not stand being translated into French, because they would find themselves in a land which knew them already, and the French would be surprised at the very considerable borrowing that had been made from them. I have read a good deal of Stendhal, especially his La Chartreuse de Parme. To-day- I must seem very old to you - I am reading especially Corneille, Racine, and Hugo.'

Here Mr. Hardy indulged in a smile of keen irony: 'Someone told me the other day that your young comrades are inclined to despise Hugo a little too much. Believe me, the reason is that they do not know him enough. Hugo is a good, great man, and I have a feeling that in saying that I am stating a too evident banality. After to-day he will defy the centuries.

'Yes, yes, I always read a good deal, and in the evening, when my poor eyes are tired, Mrs. Hardy reads aloud to me. I have just been rereading Hamlet. I read hardly anything but poetry.'

Tea-time had come, but by a delicate attention on the master's part Mrs. Hardy offered us, instead of the traditional tea, French coffee, and in defiance of his doctor's orders Thomas Hardy took a cup and drank with us. (I may say in passing that it was in the salon of Max Gate that I drank the best coffee in England.) I asked Mr. Hardy whether he had met many French writers.

'No,' said he, 'last year I met Romain Rolland. Once I just missed meeting Anatole France - a sudden sickness made it impossible.'

'Do you know,' said I, 'that sometimes you and he are opposed one to the other, and that a good many French writers think they find in your work a franker feeling for humanity, a more generous pity, and, in a word, a keener sense of the tragedy of every day?'

Thomas Hardy bowed his head with an almost bashful air and said:

'I leave others to say that.' There was a silence, and then he went on:

'Anatole France was a great artist. I have read his Histoire comique, which I do not find comic at all, by the way, but of a terrible irony. Have you anyone to replace him have you any great men now? There is a terrible lack of them in England to-day; or if there are any, they have not revealed themselves.'

Our talk went on thus for a long time, and when I rose, ready to bid the master adieu, after he had signed some fine copies of his books for me, he came to the door of Max Gate, the little dwelling that he built himself some thirty-five years ago. The weather was extraordinarily pleasant. The sunthe first sun that I had seen in England

was gleaming in a sky that was almost blue. The wind that reached us was tempered by the little hill that separates Max Gate from the sea. A mile away lay the town of Dorchester, so often depicted under the name of Casterbridge in Hardy's novels, sleepily picturesque with its numerous old churches, its grammar school of 1610, its cemeteries of the Middle Ages. A lad who had no idea what time was showed us the way to the railroad station, where we arrived half an hour too early.

Already I was known. I was the Frenchman for whom the door of Max Gate had opened. The chauffeur must certainly have expressed his surprise. The porter who carried my valises inquired anxiously:

'Why do you come so far to see Thomas Hardy?' I looked at the man in surprise.

'Haven't you read his books?' I asked. 'Yes,' said the porter, 'that's why I'm surprised. Nothing happens in them, not even a gun's shot off in them. They're dull.'

But I gave him his sixpence all the

same.

[SIR OLIVER LODGE's article is based on the new Life of Lord Rayleigh by his son, the fourth Baron Rayleigh.]

JOHN WILLIAM STRUTT, third Baron Rayleigh, was one of the greatest of English men of science. His magnitude was never fully understood by the general public, but it was appreciated by his confrères, who in due time elected him to the presidency of the Royal Society, the highest scientific office in the kingdom. He was a great mathematical physicist, and combined with a singular facility for mathematical reasoning an admirable experimental skill. His experiments were made with comparatively simple materials; the apparatus was usually homemade, constructed in his own workshop, but his profound knowledge of the conditions enabled him to concentrate on the essential features and to leave the unessentials and accessories in a simple and unshowy condition. He was very little dependent on instrument-makers. Very precise and instructive experiments were made with appliances specially adapted to their purpose and subsequently dismantled and used for other researches.

It is a common mistake to suppose that the great mathematicians were not experimentalists. That mistake is sometimes made about Sir Isaac Newton and Sir George Stokes. The power of their mathematical reasoning tends to overshadow their experimental skill.

1 From the Empire Review (London publicaffairs monthly), February

But the skill was there; the experiments were beautifully designed for their exact purpose, and the results were clearly and definitely described. So it was also with Lord Rayleigh; and he left behind six large volumes of his Collected Papers—a storehouse of information for subsequent workers. The characteristic of experimental work of this kind is its extreme accuracy and definiteness; there was very little groping about it. The problem was clearly understood, the difficulties were appreciated; and when unexpected phenomena occurred they were hunted down with clear-sighted skill and pertinacity.

Among the outstanding examples of this kind of accuracy was his determination of the electrical units which are now adopted by electrical engineers all over the world; and Rayleigh's results have been only confirmed and established by the measurements of subsequent workers. The absolute determination of the ohm and the ampere, to many significant figures, is by no means an easy task. The first determination of the ohm by Clerk Maxwell and Lord Kelvin was in error by nearly two per cent, a fact which shows how difficult the determination was. But when subsequently determined by Rayleigh this error was detected, its cause ascertained; and the resulting determination leaves nothing to be desired. The present extreme accuracy of electrical measurements can be traced mainly to his work, the accuracy of which has been fully con

firmed by more elaborate apparatus in the National Physical Laboratory of England.

Again, in chemistry, his determination of the atomic weights of hydrogen and of nitrogen are models of precise weighing. The difficulties of weighing a gas to five or six places of decimals are very great, and only those who have been engaged in similar work can fully appreciate them. The result of his determination of the atomic weight of nitrogen had a dramatic sequel. He weighed nitrogen from various sources, and found that the nitrogen of the air was slightly heavier than that of chemically prepared nitrogen. So, gradually, he came to the conclusion that, while chemically prepared nitrogen was pure, the so-called nitrogen of the air was impure that is to say, it contained an unknown and previously unsuspected gas. What had been called nitrogen of the air was really the inert constituent of the air, the residue after removing the oxygen, carbonic acid, and moisture, which formed the other known constituents; and by burning out from the inert part of the air all that was really nitrogen (by a tedious electrical process devised by the great experimental philosopher of the eighteenth century, Cavendish), a small quantity of heavier residue was obtained, which was evidently a new gas. At that stage he was joined by the highly skilled experimental chemist, Sir William Ramsay, and in their separate laboratories they worked out the properties of the new gas, which they ultimately called argon, because of its inert character. It is decidedly more inert than nitrogen, for nitrogen is well known to be able to enter into combination with many things, while argon combines with nothing: it is a self-sufficient compact molecule of the greatest chemical interest and importance. Its discovery paved the way to

the discovery by Ramsay of a whole series of similar unknown bodies, which formed an entirely new series in the Mendelyeev classification; a series with zero properties, neither positive nor negative, such as formed a nucleus or starting-point for each Mendelyeev octave; the lowest and latest of the series being helion (as it ought now to be called), the others being neon, krypton, xenon, and niton or radium emanation. Hence the discovery of argon was more than the finding of a new element, it was the discovery of the first of a whole new group even than the finding of a new and unsuspected element in the atmosphere. No one had previously imagined that the air we breathed, which had been analyzed again and again, contained an unknown ingredient in quantities far from infinitesimal. A lecture hall, for instance, contains several hundredweight of argon, though the proportion of it in any cubic foot is very small.

more

But that a discovery of this magnitude should result from a laborious series of weighings of atmospheric nitrogen, extending over some years, is a dramatic circumstance, and illustrates the importance of carrying out measurements with extreme and laborious accuracy. It hardly seems possible that the discovery could have been made in any other since the gas way, has no chemical properties, and, at first, hardly appealed to chemists, because of its inert and apparently unchemical character. The discovery was in fact received with some scepticism, although really there was no shadow of doubt about it. And the gas is actually used now for filling the half-watt lamps which constitute an economical source of light, and are articles of commerce; while the subsequent and contingent discoveries of helion and neon have their own well-known uses helion for filling with safety dirigible balloons,