Clifton College Scientific Society, 51 



refeiTed especially to discoveries in electrical science, mentioning the 

 earliest on recoid, that of Tliales, one of tlip seven sages, to whom 

 has been attributed the discovery of the electric properties of amber. 

 I'lXeKTpov. 



As an illustration of the progress of civilization, Mr. Fry contrast- 

 ed the passage of Mount Cenis, A.D. 312, by Constantine, and his 

 legions, on his victorious march from Gaul to Rome, with the trial 

 trip on the Fell railway, over the same pass, in August, 1867, At 

 Susa, at the foot of the pass on the Italian side, is an old Roman arch, 

 built in honour of Augustus. Hard by there are now a railway station 

 and telegi'aph office. Nature had not changed in the fifteen and a 

 half centuries, between the sacking of the toAvn by Constantine, and 

 the festive celebration of the opening of the mountain railway. The 

 snow on the mountain peaks glitters now, as dazzlingly white in the 

 sunnner's sun, as it did then, — the torrent, from its icy bed, rushes on, 

 as madly as ever, to its ocean home, — the lightning flashes in the 

 storm, — the wild birds scream, — and the same flowers, peeping from 

 under their coverlid of snow, turn their many-coloured petals to the 

 same sun, now as then. 



The lecturer also contrasted the voyage of Columbus, with his Spanish 

 caravels, and 120 sailors, in 1492, when the great naviga or left the old 

 world to sweep the waste of waters, where no sail had ever been, in 

 search of the new ; with the voyage nearly 500 years after, of the Great 

 Eastern steamship, that huge forge-born monster, 24,t)00 tons burthen, 

 with some 500 souls on board, and, in its hold, coiled like a snake, 

 4,000 tons of wire rope — a thread, to tie together that old world and 

 the new. 



You are classical students, and cannot read the poets and philosophers 

 of Greece and Rome without feeling a deep interest in their myths, in 

 their yearnings after the true and the beautiful. 



Grand was the idea that the shining orbs of night were set in crystal 

 spheres, making soft music in their revolution, on imseen axis, round 

 the world. 



" And comes the world's wide harmony in vain upon thine ears, 

 The stream of music borne aloft fi'om yonder choral spiheres ? 

 And fcel'st thou not the measiu-e that eternal nature keeps, 

 The whirling dance, for ever held in yonder azure deeps ': " 



Beautiful again, was the conception of Iris, messenger of the gods, 

 descending to earth on the rainbow, her pathway vanishing as soon as 

 her mission is accomplished. But in your long vacation rambles, as 

 you climb the Alps, towards the eternal snows, and see the glorious 

 vision of Iris, with her many-coloured garments, woven of sun- 

 beams, dancing on the spray of the ice-fed cataracts, — will it mar the 

 vision to know that it is to the shaft of far darting Apollo, tcaTi^jjoXoy 

 'AnoWwvoi: the simbeams vibrating millions of miles, entering the 

 crystal cell of the dewdrop and shivered there, that Iris owes her 

 colours, and the bow, set in the clouds, its glory ? 



