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formation of all the luminous bodies in the heavens? It is only fair to say that recent revelations of the almost incredible number of meteors and meteor swarms which exist in space are sufficient to startle even the most stolid imagination. Professor H. A. Newton and others have calculated that, making all proper corrections, the number of meteorites which might be visible over the whole earth would be a little greater than ten thousand times as many as would be seen at one place. From this we gather that not less than twenty millions of luminous meteors fall upon our planet daily, each of which on a dark, clear night would present us with the well-known phenomenon of a shooting star. If the number of invisible meteorites were added, it would be increased at least twentyfold; this would give us four hundred millions of meteorites falling on the earth's surface daily in her path through space. [Taking their velocity as equal to that of comets, Professor Newton calculates, in round numbers, that the meteorites are distributed each two hundred and fifty miles away from its neighbors. In meteor swarms the distance may be considerably less.] So much for the path of the earth. Mr. Lockyer adds: "If, then, these observations may be accepted as good for any part of space, we may, and indeed must, expect celestial phenomena which can be traced to meteorites in all parts of space."

It is not improbable that Mr. Lockyer's indefatigable work among the meteorites will leave some substantial and valuable results behind; and in any case, his col. lection of data, whatever the interpretation which may for the moment be put upon them, are a great gain to the science of the chemistry of at least some of the heavenly bodies. But unfortunately for the larger and all-embracing meteoritic theory, Mr. Lockyer, throughout the whole course of his enormous number of ingenious experiments with meteorites in the laboratory,

has staked almost everything upon the coincidence of the chief line in the nebulæ with that of the magnesium spectrum. This too confident assumption has been insisted upon by him with increasing urgency, until Dr. Huggins, who has, perhaps, the best title among English spectroscopists to speak for the gaseous character of the nebulæ, has felt that a re-examination of the line in question by some other observer than himself would be desirable. The result of this re-examination, as conducted with the splendid resources of the Lick observatory, has now been made known.

The coming unification of our knowledge of the vast and varied phenomena of the heavenly bodies will not, it may safely be said, be achieved by the meteoritic theory. In addition to the adverse evidence with respect to the magnesium line in the nebulæ, there is reason to doubt the assumption that the Orion nebula is at a low temperature, the fineness of the lines of hydrogen pointing, in fact, to a high temperature and a condition of great tenuity of the hydrogen from which the light was emitted. Judging from the aid which photography is now giving to the study of the nebulæ, and the interesting forms and structures which are seen in the photographs of the Orion nebula taken by Mr. Common and Mr. Roberts, some of which remind the observer vividly of the branching structures in the solar corona, we are on the eve of some safer inductions in this direction of inquiry than any that have yet been made.

The labor involved in spectroscopic work upon and hand required, may be inferred from Dr. Hugthe heavenly bodies, and the extreme delicacy of eye gins's achievements in photographing the spectrum of tinual minute adjustment exactly projected upon the Vega. The image of the star had to be kept by consiit of the spectroscope one three hundred and sixtieth of an inch in width, during nearly an hour, in order to give it time to imprint the character of its analyzed light upon a gelatine plate raised to the highest pitch of sensitiveness. (Phil. Trans., vol. clxxi. p. 669.)

THE RESIDENCE OF THE JEWISH RABBI.On the vexed question of the place of residence of the chief rabbi, a matter which has been keenly discussed by the Jewish community in London for months past, a definite arrangement has at last, we learn, been concluded. The exact terms of the agreement are not yet known, but as Lord Rothschild, who has all along favored residence in the East End, has expressed satisfaction with it, it may be safely inferred that this is the district decided upon. There the mass of the

Jewish population reside and work; there also are the majority of their educational institutions, as well as the Jewish board of guardians. The proposal for a Jewish Toynbee Hall for East London has also been warmly taken up, and offers fair prospects of success. As the East End must thus become the central point of religious, philanthropic, and educational activity among the Jews, it seems the natural place of residence for the chief rabbi.

Daily Chronicle.

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For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

LIGHT: AN EPICEDE.

TO PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.

LOVE will not weep because the seal is broken That sealed upon a life beloved and brief Darkness, and let but song break through for token

How deep, too far for even thy song's relief,

Slept in thy soul the secret springs of grief.

Thy song may soothe full many a soul hereafter,

As tears, if tears will come, dissolve despair;

As here but late, with smile more bright than Jaughter,

Thy sweet strange yearning eyes would seem to bear

Witness that joy might cleave the clouds of

care.

Two days agone, and love was one with pity When love gave thought wings toward the glimmering goal

Where, as a shrine lit in some darkling city, Shone soft the shrouded image of thy soul: And now thou art healed of life; thou art healed and whole.

Yea, two days since, all we that loved thee pitied:

And now with wondering love, with shame of face,

We think how foolish now, how far unfitted, Should be from us, toward thee who hast

Pity

run thy race,

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toward thee, who hast won the pain- THE sun shone warm; the morning breeze

less place;

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Came laughing through the spreading trees
There fell a sudden joyous gleam
On two who kissed beside a stream.

The day's decline was fierce and hot;
At sunset on the self-same spot
There waited one whose eyes shone bright
And vengeful in the angry light.

Last came the moonlight cold and pale,
And, circled with a cloudy veil,
Showed through the trellis of the wood
A white face floating down the flood.

W. H. POLLOCK.

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From The Contemporary Review.
ALEXANDER VINET.*

ALEXANDER VINET is the leading fig.
ure of French Protestantism in the nine-
teenth century. Others may have had a
more potent or more dazzling eloquence,
a purer style, a more precise or ample
erudition; but nowhere among French-
speaking Protestant authors do we find
one who can be ranked as his equal in
force, and wealth, and originality of
thought. Not one among them has ex-
erted such an influence over his contem-
poraries; not one among them has so
perfectly represented the Protestant spirit
in its best estate. The most convincing
testimony to the value of his work is the
slow but steady progress of his fame.
While many a literary reputation flashes
out on a sudden, blazes for an instant, and
then is gone like a meteor, that of Vinet,
confined at first within the narrow limits
of French Switzerland and Protestant
France, has gradually overlapped these
bounds, till he has found his place, both
as a critic and a moralist, among the
authors who are most read, most quoted,
and, I may add, most plagiarized. While
other authors have owed their success to
the advantages of their position, to the
noisy applause of the press or the salon,
to the place they occupied in the Parisian
world, that sole dispenser and guardian of
earthly fame, Vinet passed his life
away
from France, and found scope for his en-
ergies in the most modest arena -teach-
ing first in the Gymnase and then in the
University of Båle, and afterwards at the
Academy of Lausanne. He did nothing
to create a sensation, or to advertise him-
self; he published little — having, indeed,
no time to give to his work that finish and

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perfection of form of which he had the instinct and the perception rather than the mastery; and almost all his books have been brought out since his death, from his own notes or those of his pupils. Yet, notwithstanding all these unfavorable conditions, and the long neglect he had suffered in France as a semi-alien, or, worse than that, a sort of provincial or suburban author-a neglect from which even the admiration of judges like Chateaubriand, Ste. Beuve, or Michelet had not been able to rescue him- he has at last obtained his place among the great French writers by his own sole merit. The most notable men of the younger generation

MM. Brunetière, Faguet, Desjardins, Chantavoine-speak of him as a master, and a master who teaches how to live as well as how to think. The exclusively Swiss or Protestant reputation he once enjoyed has grown into a reputa tion as wide as France. And it will not stop there; for the value of Vinet's works depends on no accident of form or charm of style; it rests rather on their profundity of thought and truth of feeling, and espe cially on the intimate union between the work and the man, between the teaching and the life.

Miss Lane's book will certainly do much to popularize Vinet in England. The "Studies of Pascal," and the " History of French Literature in the Eighteenth Century," had already been translated into English ; but to appreciate Vinet you must know his life, you must be made acquainted with his character, the character of one of the noblest souls that ever lived; and Miss Lane is an excellent guide. She has read everything that Vinet has writ ten, and everything that has been written about him. She has thoroughly under"The Life and Writings of Alexander Vinet," by stood him, and, what is better, she has Laura M. Lane, with introduction by the Ven. Arch- thoroughly loved him, which indeed is deacon Farrar. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1890. the best way of understanding. For her "Etude sur Alexandre Vinet, critique litéraire," par Louis Molines. Paris: Fischbacher. 1890. "Alexown guidance she has had Rambert's andre Vinet, Histoire de sa Vie et de ses Ouvrages," biography, an admirable book; and she par C. Rambert. 3rd ed. Lausanne: G. Bridel. has not concealed her obligations to it. "Esprit d'Alexandre Vinet: Pensées et Réflexions In many places her work could only be a

extraites de tous ses ouvrages et de quelques MSS. inédits," par J. F. Astié. Lausanne: G. Bridel. E. de Pressensé," A. Vinet d'après sa correspondance inédite avec H. Lutteroth," Revue Chrétienne, 1890.

O. Gréard," Edmond Schérer." Paris: Hachette. 1890.

translation or condensation of Rambert, adapted for the English reader. But, not to speak of the tact and dexterity with which this work of adaptation has been

carried out, the book is, after all, no mere compilation. It not only contains a large number of extracts from the correspondence and writings of Vinet, but it gives a far larger place than Rambert does to the analysis of his works, and indicates far more clearly the gradual changes of his thought, and the hiatuses and imperfections of that rich nature. Thus, her book may be read with pleasure and profit even after Rambert; and this is no slight praise to give.

While Miss Lane was thus offering to the British public a faithful and sympathetic account of the life of Vinet, M. Louis Molines was taking "Vinet as a Critic" for the subject of a thesis for the doctorat-ès-lettres, brilliantly argued before the University of Montpellier. This fact has its importance. It shows how high an estimate the leaders of university education must have of Vinet's position as a critic, that they should count him worthy to be subjected to five hundred pages of serious analysis. It means that he has taken his place among the classics of criticism, and that his place is sufficiently his own to have to be delimited and defined.

Looking at the multiform career of Vinet as a writer, a teacher, a pastor, and a politician, at the very various assem. blage of his works, and the different sorts of influence he exercised, one almost hesitates to say what he was most, and which of these characters it is that gives the fundamental unity to his life and thought. That such a unity is not wanting is proved by the wonderful harmony of idea and opinion which one perceives at once in all he wrote and all he did. But which is the leading character? Is he first of all the literary man or the philosopher, the theologian, the religious reformer, or the ecclesiastical innovator?

Literary he was to the backbone. To the study and teaching of literature he devoted the greater part of his labors as professor and as author. For twenty years he was professor of French language and literature at Bâle; for two years (18441846) he occupied the chair of French litcrature in the Academy of Lausanne; and during his whole life he never ceased to

write reviews for periodicals such as Le Semeur and the Revue Suisse. It is from these lectures and articles that his best known works have been compiled - the lectures on "Blaise Pascal," on the "French Moralists," on the "Poets of the Time of Louis XIV.," on the "Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," and on the "Great Protestant Preachers." It was in the course of his work as a teacher that he compiled his admirable collection of choice excerpts, "La Chrestomathie," of which a twelfth complete edition was brought out by M. Rambert between 1876 and 1883. The collection is divided into three parts, intended for childhood, youth, and manhood, and is furnished with two introductions, which serve to show what Vinet might have done if he had given himself entirely to literature. It also contains a paper on French literature, in which he crowds into the space of eighty pages a complete, precise, and brilliant sketch of the literary history of France, and a letter on the history of language generally, and of the French language in particular, which shows how deep and penetrating had been his study of language and of style. His literary sensibility was extremely fine, and at an early stage of his career it was evidently a question with him whether he should not dedicate his life to literature. "I cannot express," he wrote in 1818, "the exquisite joy I feel in being permitted to give myself, without restraint, to the study of literature. How magnificent is this study, which embraces all that is best and highest, and which is associated by a magic bond with all the faculties of man." Even on his deathbed, he had the "Girondins" of Lamartine read to him. Recognizing, as he did, that “la gloire de l'esprit et du bien dire est un des plus terribles démons,” he nevertheless regarded the love of style as one form of the love of truth. "To put the truth badly," he said, "is to do her an injustice; it is refusing her that which belongs to her." "The lover of truth must be the lover of the beautiful."

...

Yet, large as was the share of literature in the life of Vinet, it was not the object of his life. His love for literature was

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