July 27, 1883.] 



♦ KNOWI.EDGE ♦ 



>9 



ajottonal (gosisiip. 



My lecture audiences in the Philharmonic Hall, South- 

 ampton, very considerably exceeded the " small dozen " 

 which an astronomical resident assigned as the total number 

 here who take the least interest in astronomy. In fact, 

 they were excellent audiences, both in size and quality. It 

 was particularly pleasing to me to find that the numbers 

 present increased as the course proceeded. I regretted the 

 more that the third lecture was given under considerable 

 difficulties, and, indeed, ought not to have been given at 

 all. I was a passenger by the 7. .50 train from Portsmouth 

 on Saturday morning, which ran into a heavily-laden 

 excursion train, and have felt since (like Pete Jones after 

 his encounter with Bud Means) " consid'able sliuk up." It 

 was a somewhat singular experience to me to lecture under 

 such conditions, and I was interested to find that for the 

 greater part of the time the mere mechanical action of 

 speaking went on, or seemed to go on, almost without 

 thought. But the effort was trying, and I shall be careful 

 how I repeat it before I have recovered my customary 

 working powers. 



Good service may be done occasionally by showing the 

 class of readers who place reliance on anonymous criti- 

 cisms, the shallowness of average criticism, and the dis- 

 honesty of a good deal which is below the average in one 

 sense, but in cleverness often rather above it. A criticism 

 of my Mysteries of Time and Space, by no means un- 

 kindly in tone, though amusingly corrective considering the 

 writer's manifest inexperience, has been sent me by a good- 

 natured friend (never mind the theological participle), for 

 notice, I suppose. It appears in the usually rather caustic 

 pages of the Saturdny Eeviev), but I must admit that the 

 purpose of the writer seems throughout to impart infor- 

 mation, not to cauterise the poor author. This is kindly 

 meant, and as I should imagine from his remarks that my 

 friendly critic really has given an hour or two for every 

 year that I have given to the subjects about which he 

 wishes to set me right, he stands manifestly on higher 

 ground than the average critic. That he has not read my 

 book is clear enough, from his remark that the essay on 

 " Herbert Spencer's Philosophy " — which introduces most 

 stupendous " mysteries of time and space " — has no busi- 

 ness in the book at all, and from his reference to Mr. 

 Spencer's special law of the " Persistence of Force," which 

 might be erroneous, yet his philo.'iophy sound. But it is an 

 exceptionally honest critic who reads everything on which 

 he comments, and my critic really is very fairly honest. 

 Nine-tenths of his corrections present only misapprehen- 

 sions of his own. 



What I wish specially to note in this criticism is the 

 following remark on my essay, " A Survey of the Northern 

 Heavens": — "Mr. Proctor, who has investigated the 

 matter very carefully, maintains that at the end of his life 

 Herschel gave up all belief in either of his two methods 

 of ' star-gauging ; ' V)ut we could wish that he had noticed 

 the arguments on the opposite side which have been lately 

 put forward by Professor Holden in his short ' Life and 

 Works of Sir William Herschel.'" 



I BELiEVK that I have given to the study of Sir W. 

 Herschel's papers more time and attention than anyone 

 else has yet bestowed on them, not excepting William 

 Struve, wlio however is a long way ahead of all others in 

 this respect. His conclusions and inferences are almost 

 exactly the same as mine, neither of us, by the way, having 

 ever suggested any sucli absurdity as that which the 



critic attributes to me. Herschel never "gave up all 

 belief in either of his two methods of star gauging," but 

 he did give up the theories he had based on them. 

 But if I had not been content with my own and W. 

 Struve's study of Herschel's papers, it is at least not 

 likely that I should notice arguments respecting them put 

 forward by Professor Edward Hoklen, formerly of Wash- 

 ington and now of Ann Arbor, Mich., celebrated for years 

 past as the man who has most notably surpassed the usual 

 achievements of book-reviewers. They have sat in judg- 

 ment sometimes on books they have not read, and it is 

 whispered that one or two of them have sat in judgment on 

 books they have not even seen. But Prof. Holden, aiming 

 only at the latter achievement, unfortunately shot so far 

 beyond his mark as (unwittingly) to pronounce judgment 

 on a book which — though announced for early publication 

 two years before — had not been completed, and has not 

 been published yet ! Ilia remarks on the long and diffi- 

 cult series of papers written by Sir W. Herschel must be 

 worth noticing indeed ! 



There is a good illustration in a recent number of Nature 

 of the risk arising from the constant custom of putting a 

 comma before " which." In an article on cholera, a writer 

 is made to say " that the disease has, in this country, been 

 mainly associated with the use of water supplies, which 

 have been subjected to the risk of receiving special infec- 

 tion." I daresay the compositor supposed that in throwing 

 in the comma he was correcting slipshod punctuation. As 

 a matter of fact he made the author he was correcting 

 teach that we should refrain from the use of water supplies 

 (which would be awkward), and for the reason (which would 

 be rather scaring, if true) that our water-supplies have one 

 and all been subjected to the risk of receiving special 

 • •ifection. 



I AM glad to see that our musical critics, who usually 

 waste a good deal of their ink in writing fanciful nonsense, 

 have begun to notice the evil habit which some of our 

 operatic singers have of showing off their voices at the 

 expense of their parts. Albani is a great offender in this 

 respect. With a magnificent voice (the musical critics will 

 smile at such a word as " voice " being used, instead of the 

 impressive "organ"), Albani sometimes gives pain to hearers 

 who really love music by introducing into some expressive 

 phrasing a marvellous bit of trilling, as utterly out of place 

 as a somersault would be towards the close of Hamlet's 

 suicide soliloquy. If Nilsson or Patti, who, we know, can 

 achieve all that Albani does, were to lose no opportunity 

 of doing so, they would not hold the place they do in the 

 hearts of all who prefer singing to musical gymnastics. 



By-the-way, might not something be done to teach 

 audiences how and when to applaud. Perhaps some of our 

 singers, especially at concerts, are more to be blamed than 

 the'^audience, for often by their action they suggest that 

 the right time to applaud is when their own voices cease to 

 be heard. Be this as it may, much sweet music is lost 

 through the stupid habit of those listeners who think only 

 of the voice, and drown what Beethoven, Mozart, or 

 Rossini (who perhaps knew rather better than these noisy 

 ones) thought an essential part of the performance. One 

 often feels that concerts and operas could only be properly 

 enjoyed if none were admitted to hear them who did not 

 know something and care something about music. As it 

 is, more than half our audiences seem to be of the opinion 

 of Lord Foppington, that listening to the music, though 

 " pardonable in the country," is " a monstrous inattention 

 in a polite assembly." But this is a very old trouble. 



