182 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[June 1, 1888. 



of original matter singularly small compared with the 

 number of statements ; and, lastly, the ratio of tlie true to 

 the new even more startlingly insignificant. The most 

 striking statements in the work are that the sun is much 

 hotter than any except Ericsson, Secchi, and ZiUlner have 

 imagined, and the moon under her midday sun much colder, 

 for neither of which statements is a particle of evidence 

 vouchsafed (probably because " that part of the educated 

 public on whose support, itc," is not supposed to be capable 

 of understanding anything so highflown as evidence). We 

 Aentui-e to maintain the superior probability of the accepted 

 doctrine on both points, though as Professor Langley pro- 

 fessedly eschews mathematics and expresses even contempt 

 for them, we cannot explain our reasons for preferring the law 

 of Dulong and Petit to that of Newton (where the excess 

 of temperature of the radiating body is considerable). 



By the general piiblic in America, the style of writing 

 ado]ited by Professor Langley is, we understand, considered 

 pleasing and attractive. We take a passage at random to 

 illustrate American tastes (if we are rightly informed) in 

 such matters. INIr. Langley is talking about the November 

 falling star.s : — 



" If the reader will admit so rough a simile, we may com- 

 pare a flight of these bodies to a thin swarm of swift-flying 

 birds — thin, but yet immensely long " (strange birds !), " so 

 as to be, in spite of the rapid motion, several years in pass- 

 ing a given point " (still, we must repeat, these are strange 

 birds l), "and whose line of flight is cut .across on the 1.3th 

 of November, when the earth passes through it " (that is, 

 through the line of flight of a flight of these bodies). " We 

 are only there " (where?) "on that day, and can only see 

 it" (what?) "then, but the swarm is years in all getting 

 by " (sic), " and so we may pass into successive portions of 

 it on the anniversary of the same day for years to come. 

 The stars appear to shoot from Leo only because that con- 

 stellation is in the line of their flight when we look up to 

 it" (but whether "it" is the constellation, or the line, or 

 the flight. Professor Langley does not say), "just as an 

 interminable train of parallel flying birds would appear to 

 come from some definite point on the horizon." (t'an we 

 confidently conclude that an interminable train of parallel 

 birds, whatever parallel birds may be, would necessarib/ 

 appear to do anything in pai'ticular, unless something more 

 definite about their interminable trainery is indicated for 

 our guidance ?) 



One of the strangest things in this treatise on " The New 

 Astx'onomy " is, that whereas the subject would seem too 

 large even for a work as capacious as Herschel's " Outlines 

 of Astronomy," in this work, which contains less than a 

 fourth as much letterpress as that noble treatise (though it 

 is priced at half as much again), the author seems constantly 

 concerned lest each single thing he has to tell " that educated 

 part of the pviblic on whose support, &c.," should not occupy 

 an adequate amount of space (not to mention his anxiety to 

 introduce matter wholly in-elevant). Here, for instance, is 

 the way in which he spins out the stale old story of Galileo's 

 anagram about Saturn (we can afibrd no larger type) : — 



" When Galileo first tumedibls glass on Saturn, he saw, as he thought, that it con- 

 sisted of three spheres close together, the midiUe one being the largest. He was 

 rot quite sure of the fact, and was in a dilemma between his desire to wait longer 

 for further observation, and his fear that some other observer might announce the 

 discovery if he hesitated. To combine th&se incompatibilities " {^ic), " to amiouDce 

 it so as to secure the priority, and yet not announce it till he was ready, might 

 seem to present as gi-eat a difficulty as the discovery itself " {we are not joking : 

 every word of this is in the text ! ) ; " but Galileo solved thi", as we may remember, 

 by writing it in the sentence, ' Altissimum planetam, tergeminum observavi ' (' I 

 have observed the highest planet to be triple'), and throwing it, in the printer's 

 phrase, ' into pi,' or jumbling the letters which made the sentence into the 

 monstrous word — 



8>L\JSMRMJLMEB0ETALEVMJPVNKSVGTTAVJRAS, 



pnd publishing ItiL^, which contained his discovery, but under lock and key.* He 

 bad reason to congratulate himself on his prndence, iSic, Sic." 



* Mr. Proctor in " Saturn and His System " had a whole volume 

 as large as " The New Astronomy ") to give to Saturn, yet we find 



Even this, however, is far from being the worst example 

 of attenuative expansion in this ingeniously constructed 

 work. As to space-filling, we have full-page pictures of a 

 cracked glass globe, a shrivelled hand, a falling man, a 

 lightning flash, a scene from the Bes.semer works. Pro- 

 fessor Langley's camp at Alount Whitney, Vesuvius during 

 eruption, and other non-astronomical matters. Thiity-one 

 full-page pictures in the book are printed as plates (most of 

 them being quite unworthj' of any such distinction), yet 

 counted in the paging. But for this ingenious device 

 (which we have never seen in any book of the sort printed 

 out of America), Professor Langley's book, which seems to 

 contain 2.50 pages, would show but 188. 



Professor Ijangley is an excellent observer in certain 

 departments of physics (despite his weakness — and worse — 

 in matters mathematical), and has done work which has 

 been highly and justly valued; but he has not treated his 

 public with resiiect, or the publishers of the " Century 

 Magazine " (for whom the essays gathered into this volume 

 were written) with fairness. There are five or six good (but 

 by no means new) pictures in his " New Astronomj'," and 

 about two pages of matter at once sound and originally 

 suggestive ; all the rest might have been presented in aliout 

 fifty pages, including cuts. 



'The " New Astronomy " is strongly though not hand- 

 somely bound, and well printed on singularly stout and 

 glossy paper — but, on the whole, we feel sorry for " that 

 educated part of the public " (presumably the American 

 public is meant) " on whose support, &c. &c.," if the opinion 

 which Professor Langley and his Boston publishers appear 

 to have formed of their capacity is just. We believe, how- 

 ever, that the general public in America, as well as in 

 England, want the cream of science, and will not be content 

 with a sky-blue dilution ; and we are sure that no devices 

 of printing and binding will make Brother Jonathan regard 

 a little treatise as a large one, though it be " fixed " as a 

 large volume. 



SHAKESPEARE AND DONNELLY. 



AI'OLLO AND THE MUD-DAUBER. 



R. DONNELLY has enabled even the dullest 

 to see what sort of value is to be attached 

 to his critical comments on Shakespeare's 

 work and personality. For at length he has 

 jjublished some of the products of his crypto- 

 gamic cyphering — products with which 

 neither Shakespeare nor Bacon, but Ignatius 

 Donnelly alone, has had anything to do. 



With regard to the legitimate criticism in Mr. Donnelly's 

 book, we note only that it contains no new idea from begin- 

 ning to end. The argument based on parallel passages is too 

 puerile for comment, though we can believe that any one 

 knowing little of Elizjibethan literature may honestly believe 

 that the resemlilances are striking. The now notorious 

 cypher, like all such inventions, is one by which anything 

 whatever could be pro\ed. With four root numliers any 

 one of which may be taken, as many modifiers, the power of 

 counting words on any column of any page, from the top or 

 from the bottom, with or without bracketed words, with 



that all the story told by Mr. Langley from "He was not quite 

 sure" to " under lock and key " (134 words, counting the anagram a.s 

 4) is conveyed in 53 words as follows : — " He announced the 

 supposed discovery to the world of science in the form of an 

 anagram produced by transposing the letters of the sentence : 

 • Altissimum,' &c., 'I have observed that the most distant planet is 

 triform,' adopting this fanciful plan to prevent other astronomers 

 from claiming the honour of the discovery." 



