378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The graceful pleasantry which Shakespeare, following the Italians, 

 has freely and deftly interwoven with the incidents of the original 

 tale, avouches his realization of the radical change which had been 

 wrought upon it by the unavoidable introduction of the mock court. 

 He not only garnished it profusely with humorous passages, but, as Mr. 

 Conway reminds us, produced it as a pi-onounced comedy in his own 

 theatre. The fact that, notwithstanding this, the world has finally 

 settled down upon a serious or pathetic interprefation of Shylock's 

 character, and of the trial-scene, and exhibits a disposition, by repu- 

 diating the last scene of the play and by a variety of other expedients, 

 to exorcise the comedy element, is certainly a high tribute as well to 

 the irrepressible charm and dramatic quality of the old form of the 

 story as to the overmastering power with which Shakespeare has told 

 it. Whatever may be the merits of the reactionary or tragic interpre- 

 tation, it has been largely facilitated by a vague assumption that Por- 

 tia, though a usurper of the judicial office, might be, and, within the 

 spirit of the play, ought to be regarded as a reasonably sound exposi- 

 tor of the Venetian law, and it is doubtful whether it would have been 

 possible, had the public generally known as well as did Shakespeare and 

 the Italians, that the mock court was improvised only because the time 

 had long since passed when the law of the case could be plausibly cred- 

 ited with recognition in a legitimate tribunal. For, this being so, old 

 Shylock, in the drama, through all the absorbing vicissitudes of the 

 trial-scene, is as certainly the victim of a clever and frolicsome decep- 

 tion as was poor Christopher Sly, when, with manifold misgivings, he 

 suffered himself to be persuaded that he was a lord, indeed, and not a 

 tinker. It must, therefore, be admitted that the comic cast given 

 to Shakespeare's Shylock by his early impersonators was not entirely 

 inappropriate to so gullible an old Israelite as he proved himself to be. 



THE BUNSEN LAMP. 



By II. P. AEMSBY. 



THE great convenience of gas as an illuminating agent, due to its 

 cleanliness and immediate availability in any desired quantity, 

 soon led to its use as fuel ; and to-day we have apparatus of all de- 

 grees of size and complexity, from the simple burner of the chemical 

 laboratory to the gas-stove with which the meals of a large family 

 may be cooked, or the gas-furnace capable of melting iron or satisfy- 

 ing the demands of the gold and silver assayer, all using gas as fuel 

 not to speak of the numerous applications of the waste gases from 

 blast-furnaces and the like, or of the Siemens gas-furnace, using gas 

 made especially for it, and in which the degree of heat that can be 



