584: 



OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (BLACK.) 



He invented a suspended saloon for passenger 

 steamers for the avoidance of seasickness, which 

 was controlled by a hydraulic apparatus. In asso- 

 ciation with Sir E. J.' Reed he had a great paddle- 

 wheel steamer made on this plan to run across the 

 English Channel. In the first trip in 1875 it ran 

 into the pier at Calais, and in the following year 

 the vessel was sold and the swinging cabin was taken 

 out, as it had not proved successful. Sir Henry 

 Hessemer, who received the honor of knighthood 

 in 1879, retired from active business on the advice 

 of his physician. He then returned to mechanical 

 invention as a recreation and employed his time in 

 making reflecting telescopes. He proposed to make 

 reflectors 8 or 10 feet in diameter by mounting 

 sheets of plate glass in heavy iron castings to which 

 they would be held fast by atmospheric pressure, 

 the surface of both being perfectly flat and the air 

 between them pumped out. The surface of the re- 

 flector he expected to shape into the right curve by 

 means of a great lathe. He also invented hydraulic 

 apparatus for adjusting telescopes. 



Black, William, an English novelist, born in 

 Glasgow, Scotland, in November, 1841 ; died in 

 Brighton, England, Dec. 10, 1898. In 1877 he 

 wrote a short autobiographical sketch, which is as 

 follows : " I am informed, on what I hold to be ex- 

 cellent authority, 

 that I was born in 

 Glasgow on either 

 Nov. 13 or 15, 1841 

 the precise day is 

 not a point likely 

 to drive the world 

 into convulsions of 

 dispute. I never 

 had any systemat- 

 ized education to 

 speak of, but I man- 

 aged to pick up a 

 vast array of smat- 

 terings a crude 

 and confused jum- 

 ble of hydraulics, 

 Latin verbs, vege- 

 table physiology, 

 Czerny : s exercises 



for the piano, and a dozen other things ; a perhaps 

 not unnatural outcome of all which was that I 

 found myself engaged, at one and the same time, 

 on a translation of Livy, which was to excel in 

 literary accuracy anything the world had ever seen 

 before ; on the formation of a complete collection 

 of British flowering plants the grasses and crypto- 

 gams were a trifle beyond me : and on the con- 

 struction on paper of a machine which should 

 demonstrate the possibility of perpetual motion. 

 The translation 01 Livy did not get beyond half 

 a book or so ; that monument of learning is at the 

 disposal of any publisher who will pay for it. The 

 perpetual-motion machine was never forwarded to 

 the Royal Society, but its phantom on paper at 

 least succeeded in puzzling a good many worthy 

 persons, who could only bring against it the objec- 

 tion that in time friction would destroy the mechan- 

 ism a puerile and vulgar argument. The scant 

 herbarium remains to this day; a poor enough 

 treasure house of botanical lore, but a rich treasure 

 house of memories of innumerable and healthful 

 wanderings by hill and moorland and seashore, 

 through the rain and sunlight and beautiful colors 

 of the western Highlands. But the chiefest of my 

 ambitions was to become a landscape painter, and 

 I labored away for a year or two at the Government 

 School of Art, and presented my friends with the 

 most horrible abominations in water color ami oil. 

 As an artist I was a complete failure, and so quali- 



fied for becoming in after life for a time an art 

 critic. My first essay in literature took the form 

 of a series of elaborate articles on the chief writers 

 of the day, and these I forwarded anonymously to 

 the editor of a Glasgow daily newspaper, which is 

 now dead. They appeared, so far as I can recol- 

 lect, in large type and in a prominent position ; and 

 no doubt the public came to the conclusion that 

 there was something gravely wrong about this or 

 that theory of Mr. Ruskin, or some hidden virtue 

 never before discovered in this or the other passage 

 of Mr. Charles Kingsley, when this important critic 

 pointed these things out. I think I was then about 

 seventeen or eighteen. I do not know whether 

 Mr. Ruskin ever amended his ways in obedience 

 to my serious remonstrances, and I am afraid Mr. 

 Carlyle never heeded the protests I made, in Carly- 

 lese, against Carlylese. But the public was doubt- 

 less impressed. My next departure was a series of 

 sketches of rambles in the country, written in imi- 

 tation of Christopher North. These were con- 

 tributed to 'The Weekly Citizen,' then and now 

 conducted by Mr. James Hedderwick. author of 

 ' Lays of Middle Age,' and a charming essayist. L] 

 subsequently joined the staff of ' The Citizen ' and 

 went through the ordinary curriculum of becoming 

 in turn dramatic critic, musical critic (I could 

 play ' The Blue Bells of Scotland ' with both hands), 

 reviewer, and assistant subeditor, while on one oc- 

 casion though I am really ashamed to make thr.. 

 confession I wrote a leading article on the Ameri- 

 can civil war, and severely condemned the misera- 

 ble tactics of a particular general, I forget whom. 

 I left Glasgow for London in 1864, and very soon 

 became a facile manufacturer of leading articles. 

 In 1866 'The Morning Star' sent me out as its spe- 

 cial correspondent to describe the Prusso-Austrian 

 war, my chief qualification for the task being that 

 I knew about enough German to enable me to ask 

 for a railway ticket, and that I had attentively 

 studied the wars of the Jews in the history of Jo- 

 seph us, that being the only secular book which we 

 children were allowed to read of a Sunday even- 

 ing. I never saw any fighting, but I managed io 

 get forward in time to see the dead bodies lying on 

 the field of Koniggratz and a very pretty sight 

 that was. My subsequent connection with journal- 

 ism may be briefly summed up. I was for about a 

 year editor of ' The London Review,' and afterward, 

 for a short period, of ' The Examiner.' Then for 

 three or four years I was assistant editor of ' Tho 

 Daily News.' My career as a journalist ended in 

 1875. Now I come to my novels. I had written 

 and published in Glasgow* a short story in one vol- 

 ume; there was nothing in it. In 1868 I publish^; 

 ' Love or Marriage' in three volumes. Not haviiu.; 

 read this story since, I have only a vague im 

 sion that it aimed at the reconstruction of the whole 

 social system ; that it was largely flavored with 

 Feuerbach's 'Essence of Christianity,' and thai i 

 deified the Prussian nation. A young author who 

 has no established public to whom he directly ap- 

 peals naturally turns to the middlemen the re- 

 viewers to learn if there is any merit in his book. 

 He can not, of course, accept the judgment of hi* 

 friends, because his friends apart from the inevi- 

 table mild praise are generally possessed by the de- 

 lusion that they know the originals of his char- 

 acters, and are otherwise cleverly familiar with th' 

 'materials' which he has 'worked up.' Hut I 

 never could quite make out what the reviewer' 

 thought of ' Love or Marriage,' for one said it v;n 

 a striking example of the destructive etlVrt on 

 fiction of Herbert Spencer's philosophy, and an- 

 other said that it conveyed a nigh moral lesson in 

 showing the awful results in allowing a skeptical 

 person to be introduced into an orthodox family. 



