EDITORIAL NOTES. 



195 



EDITORIAL NOTES. 



We have given considerable space in this 

 number of the Review to the article on 

 "Tornadoes," by Sergeant John P. Finley, 

 of the U. S. Signal Service, for two reasons : 

 The paper is extremely opportune in view of 

 the great number and violence of the torna- 

 does this year, nine tornadoes having already 

 occurred. It is also a valuable contribution 

 to science, and probably contains more scien- 

 tific and practical information on this subject 

 than can be found in any other similar pub- 

 lication. Under the direction of the Signal 

 Service Bureau, Sergt. Finley has devoted 

 five years to the special study of tornadoes. 

 He has carefully gathered on the field the 

 data of between six and seven hundred tor- 

 nadoes, using pen and pencil in making up 

 his note-books. Sometimes he has followed 

 in the path of the tornado five and six hun- 

 dred miles carefully placing on record the 

 reports of all ocular observers, and has put 

 himself in correspondence with thousands of 

 observers of tornadoes in various portions of 

 the country. This immense mass of material 

 has been digested, and the substance has 

 been compacted in this valuable paper. 



In the death of Henry W. Longfellow, 

 America has lost a poet who takes very high 

 rank in the republic of letters. His death 

 marks the close of the first important epoch in 

 American literature. The life of literature, 

 like all other kinds of life, is one of pulsa- 

 tion ; it has its ebbs and flows, its seasons of 

 activity and inactivity. Chaucer and Gower 

 were identified with the first forceful throb 

 in English literature, after which came a 

 barren epoch which was completely extin- 

 guished by the glory of the Elizabethan Age. 

 Seldom does a nation experience more than 

 one grand era in its history of literature. 

 Such an epoch results from the crystallization 

 of a nation's thought, and when the material 

 is exhausted there must be time for the nation 



to gather new material, and receive new in- 

 spiration. When Bacon, Shakespeare and 

 their contemporaries had passed from the 

 scene the harvest had been gathered, and 

 the nation's intellectual life was marked by 

 feeble pulsations. Before the time of Bryant, 

 Holmes, Whittier, Motley, Bancroft, Prescott 

 and Irving, American literature can hardly be 

 said to have demonstrated its own existence, 

 or to have any real character. Of all writers 

 of his age, and ot all ages, Longfellow is dis- 

 tinguished for his purity of thought and 

 beauty of diction. If poetry is the apprehen- 

 sion and expression of the sesthetical, Long- 

 fellow ranks among the best poets of this or 

 of any past age. Longfellow was a man of 

 the greatest personal worth, he was fairly 

 womanly in the refinement of his sensibilities, 

 his whole nature was as bright and joyous as 

 a morning in May, and his inner being re- 

 sponded with youthful enthusiasm to every- 

 thing beautiful or true in Art or Nature. 

 His life was rounded out to the full period al- 

 lotted to man on the earth, and the celebra- 

 tion all through New England and elsewhere 

 of his seventieth birth-day was a golden frui- 

 tion seldom accorded to the most favored ones 

 of earth. We are painfully reminded that the 

 golden era in American letters has closed, 

 and we do not know how long it may be be- 

 fore the Nation may come to another fruit- 

 age. 



By the death of Charles Darwin natural 

 science has lost its best observer. No work 

 in science has been written about so much, 

 or called forth so much criticism as the 

 " Origin of Species." That work was writ- 

 ten twenty-three years ago, and the effect of 

 the new theory of evolution was prodigious. 

 Many editions of the work in England and 

 America have been published, and transla- 

 tions into all the chief foreign languages 

 have been made. A catalogue was published 



