others. Snails, of a light brown color, are | Hornby and a male friend then stopping with very much eaten here by the Greeks, and him; but they had gone to Constantinople. huge baskets of them are sold every morning. Looking out at window, she saw another Sometimes one sees an unfortunate tortoise gentleman in the garden, and nothing would carried along by a wisp of straw or grass. satisfy her but his introduction. To this proHe is to be made soup of on a Greek fast-day, posal, however disagreeable, Mrs. Hornby and has been found fast asleep in a vineyard. was positively forced to consent, on the conThe melon-stalls are usually the most crowded, dition of Mr. Rumball standing outside the and immense piles of every shape and color half open door, and the lady with her attendare quickly sold. Brown bread, melons, and ants remaining veiled. A story of apprehengrapes, seem to be the principal food of the sion told by the daughter of her Armeniar. poor; coffee, yahoort, (a kind of sour milk,) landlady exhibits the Turkish ladies of rank lemonade, and sherbet, are sold in every in the aspect of the old comedy of intrigue. corner of the street for them. The buying The reduced circumstances of the landlady's every thing prepared in public no doubt family arose from the authorities having makes the eastern women so helpless and so fleeced them on their father's death; for he little domestic. One sees even the caïquejees had died comparatively rich. and hamals eating their pilauf, and sipping their coffee at the cafanées, or smoking on comfortable divans inside, or on benches by the door. In fact, it is quite club life' for the men, and a neglected, idle, and useless one for the women-at least according to our notions."

In addition to her own means of observatian, Mrs. Hornby was, owing to the position of her husband, brought into connectien with a good many Europeans and some natives. She thus beard many opinions touching the management of the war, which are little more than echoes of what we have heard already. She has formed the usual opinion of the corruption, profligacy, and total want of common honesty among the ruling or rather official people in Turkey, and a very high one of the poorer classes. She writes" one thing which strikes you here is the vast superiority of the poor over the rich. The poor are really the aristocracy of the country both physically and morally. For his dignified bearing and manners a poor man might be an emperor: he is honest, laborious, and most abstemious." From other remarks it would seem that the poor Turk is respectable, because he has neither means nor opportunity of being vicious. Give him but a chance, and he will soon become as bad as the richest. Mrs. Hornby visited one or two harems of the highest class where the furniture, attendance, dresses, and jewels, were of a richer kind than we have heard of in lately described visits. Mrs. Hornby speaks well of the Turkish women of the upper classes she has seen, for their gentleness, simplicity, and kindness of manner; exceedingly well of the Turkish little girls. Whether the merits of the high ladies go beyond manners may be questioned. Some of the middle class seem forward enough. The wife of a Turk professing enlightenment, whom Mrs. Hornby had visited, returned the visit. After examining everything in a "free and easy" way, the lady wanted to see Mr.

"Talking still quietly of their fallen fortunes, as we listened with interest, poor Dhudu went on to relate a new trouble. It seems that her younger brother, who is remarkably good looking, and showed a great talent for music, was sent to Vienna in their prosperous days for his education. His pianoforte-playing is thought much of here; and being so poor, and the Sultan having set the fashion of Turkish ladies learning music, he now gives lessons to the wives and daughters of several Pashas on the Bosphorus. He is married, greatly attached to his wife, and has two pretty children; added to this, he is a grave, shy young man. Well, Dhudhu's trouble for her brother is this. He goes quietly in the morning to give his lesson. Perhaps there are two or three veiled ladies in the room into which he is ushered by the attendants. Sometimes the Pasha himself is there, but very seldom; there are always two or three black attendants. The lesson begins,' says Dhudu, in a melancholy voice, and they are generally rather stupid. The men who guard them soon grow tired of looking on, and stroll away to their pipes. They are hardly outside the door, when down goes the yashmak of one of the ladies. She is very pretty, but very tiresome: my brother is afraid to look at her. What should he do if the Pasha were suddenly to return, or one of the slaves to enter and report this to him? So he turns his head away, and tries to induce her to go on with her lesson. Would you believe it,' says Dhudu, still more indignantly, the other day, she took hold of his chin, and turned his face to hers, and said, laughing, Why don't you look at me, you pig? What can my brother do? The Pasha would never believe that it is not his fault. Sometimes one of them will creep under the pianoforte, and putting her finger into his shoe tickle his foot. Yesterday they slipped two peaches into his pocket, tied up in muslin with blue ribands, clapping their hands and laughing when he found it out. You know what

We

those peaches mean? They mean kisses,' | pushing every one right and left, like policesaid Dhudu, coloring; and it made my men when the Queen is dining in the City; brother so nervous, for the men were in the just as if they thought that the ladies were outer room, and might have heard all about going to carry off the Sultan at once. it. He would be sorry to have them pun- were close to the throne, and got a terrible ished; yet they make his life miserable. squeezing. My lace mantilla was caught i That pretty one is the worst of all, she is so a Pasha's sword, and I thought that nothing daring. I visit at that Harem, and went with could save its being torn to pieces: however, my brother one morning. Knowing them so Lord Dunkellin very kindly rescued me, and well, I took him in at the garden entrance, thanks to his strong arm, I was able to keep the way I always go myself. We heard some- my place and see Miss Mary Canning and body laugh, a loud, merry laugh, and-oh, the Ministers' wives presented to the Sultan. what a fright I was in !-there she was up in A quadrille was formed as well as the crowd a peach-tree. My brother turned his head would allow, which the Sultan watched with away, and walked on very fast; she pelted great interest, and then a waltz. After that peaches at him, then got out of the tree, and his Majesty walked through the rooms, took would have run after him if I had not stopped an ice, and then departed." her.' And here poor Dhudu fairly cried. What can my brother do?""

Mrs. Hornby went to various parties and saw various celebrities. The most striking of the whole was undoubtedly Lord Stratford's great fancy ball at which the Sultan was present, and which was splendid and successful in a high degree. We take only the appearance of the Grand Seignior.

"We were noticing and admiring all this, and had shaken hands with M. de Thouvenel and spoken to the few of the crowd whom we knew, when it was whispered that the Sultan was coming. Every one of course made way, and Abdul Medjid quietly walked up the ballroom with Lord and Lady Stratford, their daughters, and a gorgeous array of Pashas in the rear. He paused with evident delight and pleasure at the really beautiful scene before him, bowing on both sides, and smiling as he went. A velvet and gold chair raised a few steps, had been placed for him in the middle of one side of the ball-room; but on being conducted to it he seemed too much pleased to sit down, and continued standing, fooking about him with the undisguised pleasure and simplicity of a child. He was dressed in a plain dark blue frock-coat, the cuffs and collar crimson, and covered with brilliants. The hilt of his sword was entirely covered also with brilliants. Of course he wore the everlasting fez. There is something extremely interesting in his appearance. He looks languid and careworn, but when spoken to his fine dark eyes brighten up, and he smiles the most frank and winning of smiles. "I am quite charmed with the Sultan, so different to most of the Pashas by whom he is surrounded, so touchingly kind, and simple, and sorrowful! The Pashas behaved very badly, forcing themselves violently in a double row on the Sultan's right-hand, and

As a contrast to the monarch, the Greek maid in attendance on Mrs. Hornby may be exhibited-not the only Oriental on whom the scene had made a profound impression.

"Edmund and Herbert Siborne left me at

the foot of the staircase. A few steps up
the highest state of delight; had seen the
was perched Mistress Espinu. She was in
Sultan both arrive and depart; thought the
English soldiers a thousand times bono';
never believed that there were such dresses
and diamonds in the world as she had seen,
or dreamed of such music, or of such a large
house. The housekeeper had asked her to
go down and eat, (one of the housemaids was
Greek,) but the house was so large that she
was possessed with the idea of never finding
me again if she once let go the balustrades,
or let out of her mind the way to my room.
So there she had been all night, but was nei-
ther cold nor hungry. She told me that an
officer with white hair and a star on his
heart' had come up the stairs about midnight.
He spoke in English and asked who she was,
she supposed; so she said,Inglis Hornby,'
and he nodded and passed on.
This was
Lord Stratford who retired early. I made
this out partly from poor Espinu when I got
to my room, shocked at her state of starva-
tion, and partly when Vassili arrived the next
morning with the white horses and teleki to
take us back to Orta-kioy. She herself was
highly delighted. The sight of the Sultan
and the English officers seemed to have
warmed and fed her even on a cold stone
staircase; and she will no doubt talk of the
Sultan's first ball' to the day of her death."

Mrs. Hornby paid a flying visit to the Crimea after the peace; but she has nothing new to impart unless it be the impression the scene made on the feminine mind.

t

From Household Words.
THE ETHER.

The

that tendency. It might be weight, or electricity, or magnetism, or chemical affinity; he WHAT is there in the open space which did not pretend to say what it was; but his intervenes between the earth and the rest of Attraction abolished Descartes' whirlpools, the planets? What is there in the immeas- the firmament was swept clean of the subtle, urably greater interval which extends in all all-pervading matter, and the planetary interdirections, right and left, before and behind, vals were reduced to empty space. Moreupwards and downwards, between us, the over, Newton's hypothesis of a vacuum was planets, and the stars called fixed? Is the justified by an astronomical fact, which appargulf which separates one heavenly body from ently settled the question in his favor. another, a plenum? that is, is it occupied, planets, whose proper movement had been and so far filled with any material fluid, how-calculated on the supposition of the complete ever rarified may be its substance? Or is emptiness of celestial space, had always the said wide gap an absolute vacuum, per-punctually kept the appointments which asfectly empty of every, the thinnest, the most tronomers had made for them beforehand, on fine-spun expansion or dilatation of gas; is it the assumption of a vacuum. The plenum void even of matter in a state of atomic sub- was unanimously rejected on the faith of an division, in comparison with which the residu- established fact. Vacuum remained master ary contents of the receiver of an air-pump, of the field. after we have pumped our utmost, and can But there is a little comet which whisks pump out no more, would be regarded as a round the sun very rapidly and very eccenmedium gross and dense? Such is the mys-trically, completing its revolution in three terious question which has vexed natural philosophers for centuries.

Descartes, and after him Fontenelle, supposed that the planets were maintained in their orbits by whirlpools of an extremely subtle, transparent matter, which, eddying rapidly round the sun, carried them with it in its impetuous vortex. Similarly, each planet had a smaller etherial vortex to itself, sweeping around its own proper sphere as a centre, which thus caused the attendant moon or moons to revolve around their respective principals. In those days, therefore, a plenum was the hypothesis in vogue.

Descartes' theory was all the more plausible, because of the support it received from the palpable fact that the earth, as well as the majority of the planets, is surrounded by an atmosphere. Nevertheless, rational as it seemed, it was upset by Newton, who made the sun the seat of a force of attraction, or a centripetal force, capable of retaining each planet in its orbit; that is to say, the centripetal force was exactly counterbalanced by another force, the centrifugal, the force which makes bodies fly off from the centre at a tangent to the circle in which they revolve, or rather to obey a law of motion by continuing to move in a straight line forwards, like the drops of water from a twirling mop, or the splashes of mud from a carriage-wheel. The sun's attractive force on a planet varies inversely as the square of the distance of that planet's orbit from the sun. That was the law which Newton discovered; but the source, or cause, or origin of the force, remained to him a mystery. He only professed to make use of the word attraction, to signify generally any force in consequence of which bodies tend towards each other, whatever should hereafter be discovered to be the cause of

years and four months; it appears in the heavens like a milky cloud, like a dim nebulosity through which the stars are seen to shine without the least diminution of their brightness. Nevertheless, this speck of white vapor has a diameter of some twenty-two thousand miles. It was first observed in 1686, and found again in 1795, in 1805, and in 1819. Astronomers, noticing its continual change of form and position, believed they had discovered four different comets; but Monsieur Encke, of Berlin, whose name it now bears, proved that their observations were simply applicable to four different revolutions of the same body, and predicted its return for 1822.

A

Encke's comet did return; but in a situation where nobody expected it. The same thing happened in 1825 and in 1828. portion of its variation was caused by the influence of the planets. But the amount of perturbation due to them is calculable; there remained another influence to account for, perfectly independent of the planets, which led to the discovery, or the assumed discovery, of one of the most important phenomena connected with the mechanism of the heavens. Cautious reasoners will certainly doubt, and have a fair right to be allowed to doubt, whether the superstructure which has been raised on this observation of the shortened period of Encke's comet be not of rather disproportionate magnitude with its basis, a small and isolated fact. The fate of other deductions and of previous systems warns us not to shout too loudly that we have, at last, found out the veritable and undeniable and final truth.

Monsieur Encke, on comparing the intervals of time between several complete circuits of his comet and the sun, discovered that the

length of the eclipse described by its orbit theless contains a profound truth, precisely was shortened in a slow but regular manner; at every successive return, from 1819 to 1832, its actual position has been remarked to anticipate, ceaselessly and uniformly, its calculated position by about two days; that is, its return happened two days sooner than it should have done according to the strictest calculations. Its orbit, therefore, is diminishing; its mean distance from the sun is constantly decreasing, and it must finally fall into that luminary, were it not for the repulsion exercised by incandescent surfaces, which repulsion will probably shoot it off again in the form of an excessively rarified vapor.

The perturbation experienced by the comet could only be attributed to the existence in the celestial space which it traverses of a highly-divided very subtle matter which constantly impedes the rapidity of its progress. The resistance which this rare medium opposes to the progress of the comet, would also diminish its centrifugal tendency by the very act of diminishing its velocity, and would therefore increase the sun's power of drawing it towards itself.

enunciated, although in a metaphorical form. We may now very naturally inquire,what, in short, is this wonderful ether? Is it a fluid, transparent, impalpable body, which penetrates throughout and everywhere? Is it composed of matter which is equally subtle and rarified at all the points which it occupies? Is it exactly the same in the neighborhood of a voluminous planet as in the midst of an immense open space entirely empty of solid bodies? In a word, does it differ essentially from the most rarified portion of the planetary atmospheres ? All these points are open to controversy. In the opinion of learned men, whose expressed belief merits deference and attention, the ether differs only in its extreme subtilty, from the much more highly condensed matter which constitutes the atmospheres of the planets, a definition that has been ventured is, the ether is the simple of which atmospheres are the compound; in other words, atmospheric matter results from the condensation of a certain amount of etherial matter; or, finally, ether is the elementary matter of which all other things are formed.

From the ever-abbreviated course pursued by Encke's short-perioded comet, Arago This notion is not very far removed from argued that a new element ought hencefor- that entertained by Mr. Grove, who believes ward to be taken into consideration: namely, that the ether possesses all the qualities of the resistance which an excessively rare gase- ordinary gross matter, and particularly the ous substance which fills celestial space (and quality of weight. If this matter, on account which it has been agreed to denominate The of its extreme rarification, can only manifest Ether, and which, of course, is perfectly dis- the properties with which it is endowed on a tinct from the ether of the chemists) offers to scale of infinite minuteness, on the other the passage of bodies which traverse it. This hand, at the surface of the earth it attains a resistance produces no appreciable effect on degree of density which we are able to meathe planets, on account of their considerable sure by experiment. The ether, or the exdensity; but the comets being, for the most tremely rarified matter which fills the interpart, mere heaps of the lightest vapors, may planetary spaces, is thus believed to be an be notably retarded in their progress through expansion of all or several of the atmosspace. Το prove the justness of the distinc-pheres of the planets, or of their most volation here made between dense and rare tile elements, and would thus furnish the bodies, in respect to resistance, it is only material necessary for the transmission of necessary to compare the inequality of the those modifications of motion which we desdistances traversed through the air by three balls of lead, of cork, and of eider-down, even in the case when projected from a gunbarrel by equal charges of powder they would have the same initial velocity.

ignate by the names of light, heat, and so forth. And it is held to be far from impossible that attenuated portions of these atmospheres, by gradual changes, may pass from one planet to another, thus forming a link of material communication between the distant monads of the universe.

In the last century, the presence of the ether in the midst of the celestial spaces was strongly suspected; at the present day, it is The ether, then, is an imponderable, or unconsidered impossible to maintain the New-weighable, or, rather, an unweighed fluid, tonian theory that the heavenly bodies per- endued with perfect elasticity. It fills not form their orbits in the isolation of an enor- only the planetary spaces, but also the intermous vacuum. Mr. Grove, in his able vals between the elementary molecules of Correlation of Physical Forces, remarks that solid bodies, and even the molecules themthe tendency of matter to diffuse itself is so selves, as those of the gases which are asgreat, as to have given rise to the adage, sumed to be hollow and spherical. In short, Nature abhors a vacuum; and, that the the ether pervades every thing, and is everyaphorism, which has been made the butt where; in the most elaborately-formed vacof a considerable amount of witticisms, never-uum, as well as in the densest substances.

are insufficient for its solution. It may be remarked, however, that, according to the law laid down by Boyle, the luminous medium is incomparably denser than our atmosphere would be were it extended to the interplanetary spaces. The ether may also be perhaps regarded as the propagating agent of electricity and magnetism as well as of light. At the beginning of the present century, the discoveries of Young, of Fresnel, of Malus, and Arago, proclaimed to the world several optical phenomena which were inexplicable on the supposition that light was the effect of luminous corpuscules shot out from the sun with immense velocity, while they were easily explained by the admission that celestial space is filled with an excessively-rarified elastic gas.

But the mind cannot admit the existence | sity of the luminous ether at any given point of an imponderable fluid; for, if it is a fluid, of space? But the data hitherto attainable it is a body. Now, all bodies are ponderable; therefore, the ether is ponderable. We certainly know that the ether has not been weighed, but we have no right to assert that it has no weight. The ether is the essential principle of all bodies; it is their primordial state; it is matter in a condition of extreme tenuity, which prevents its being palpable, seizable, or weighable. Hydrogen is the first material body, in respect to density, of which we are able to take cognizance, hydrogen is ether condensed, tangible, and ponderable. Dr. Prout propounded the hypothesis that matter is uniform in its nature, and that all atomic weights are multiples of the weight of hydrogen. It would now appear that the weight of hydrogen is a multiple of that of the ether, or of unknown intermediate bodies, which are themselves multiples of ether. Several gases have been reduced to a liquid, and even a solid form, by the application of great compression and extreme cold; azote and hydrogen have hitherto resisted the efforts even of a Faraday to make them liquid. The last gaseous substance which will be liquefied by human agency is, doubtless, the ether.

Whence comes the matter of which the heavenly bodies are composed? It is generally called cosmic matter; that is, universal matter; but does this universal matter differ from what may be called universal ether? Many natural philosophers believe that atmospherical matter is produced by the condensation of etherial matter. But if the ether is capable of condensation so as to form the atmosphere, the atmosphere in turn may be capable of condensation so as to form solid globes such as the planets with the animals and plants which live on them. But the existence or non-existence of the ether derives its great importance from its intimate connection with the speculations that have been put forth respecting the nature of light. It is the all-pervading presence of a medium which forms, throughout space, a material communication to the very distantest visible bodies, which serves as the fundamental hypothesis of the theory of undulations. Whether this medium be (as seems probable) or be not, a continuation of our own proper atmosphere, the fact that there is such a medium derives great support from the powerful arguments which are now brought forward in maintenance of the undulatory theory. It would be desirable to solve the problem, What is the absolute den

In this latter case, the sun not having to dart in all directions molecules of light and heat which are to travel with inconceivable swiftness, may cease to be regarded as a monstrous planet everlastingly devoured by fire. The part which the sun has to play, on the modern hypothesis, is simply to impress on the matter which fills all space, a powerful vibratory movement which extends, in the form of luminous waves, as far as the most distant planets and farther, thereby supplying them with light and heat. These luminous waves, or undæ, are the reason why the system is called the undulatory theory.

The views respecting the nature of the ether, of which we now conclude our sketch, are what are entertained, to a greater or less extent, by almost all the scientific pioneers of the day; notwithstanding which, it is not yet completely proved that the ether itself has any real or actual existence in nature. The grand quarrel of Plenum versus Vacuum, which mounts to a respectable antiquity and had already attained importance in the time of Pythagoras, can scarcely be said to be even yet a settled question. There is little more than circumstantial evidence in proof of the allegation. It is constantly still so interesting a subject of debate, that the five classes of the Institute of Paris, at their annual meeting in August, 1856, decreed their grand triennial prize to M. Fizeau, whose works have for their object the demonstration of the falsity of the hypothesis of a vacuum, the establishment of the presence of the ether throughout heavenly space, the proof of the undulatory theory and the measurement of the velocity of propagation in light.