Fifth Series, } No. 1600.-February 6, 1875.

Volume IX.

From Beginning
Vol. OXXIV.

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CIVITAS DEI.

BY S. W. DUFFIELD.

"For my brethren and companions sakes I will now
say, Peace be within thee !"

CITY of God, grown old, with silent faces
Lying beneath the shadow of the clay,
Thine are the towers built up in barren places,
Thine the great bastions waiting for the day.

Dim through the night stone after stone arises, Bold through the dawn step forth the peaks of flame,

Touched with the splendor of those glad surprises

By which the blessing of the Spirit came.

Toilers of truth are we, who at our labour
Keep the sharp sword still girded at the
thigh,

Heeding no summons of the pipe and tabor,
Fighting and building till the end be nigh.

Thus, then, we build thro' storm and pleasant weather;

Thus, then, we pray by morning and by night;

Heart knit with heart, and hands at work together

Beset by foes until Thou givest light.

City of God! thy peace is our petition;

City of God! our brethren dwell in thee;

In the woods when the winter hoary
Has spread his snowy pall
O'er a lifeless past
That is laid at last
Where the night-dews softly fall,
Where the moon shines fair
Through the branches bare,
And the heavens are over all.
Golden Hours. ISABELLA M. MORTIMER.

THE AFTER-GRASS.

O MEADOW, fresh and green after the mowing, Watered by cooling rills, from depths of woody hills,

With sluggish course through the dank sedges flowing.

I watch the lights and shadows o'er thee fleeting:

All is so calm above, so rich in peace and love,

I marvel, underneath if any pain is beating;

If any keen regret or tender feeling

Recalls spring's budding hours, or summer's wealth of flowers;

And the scythe's cruel wounds that know no healing.

Ah happy meadow in the sunlight shining! Though the first glory pass, green is the after-grass,

And for their sakes, in true and deep contri-Grief's bitterness is gone, and its repining.

tion,

We seek thy good, O dwelling of the free.

IN THE WOODS.

IN the woods when the young leaves budding
Whispered the spring-time near,
When the spirit was light
As the sunbeams bright,
And fancy's sky was clear;
When the young bird's song
Woke an echo long

As the hopes that the heart held dear.

In the woods when the summer's glory
Was wreathed in light and shade,
Through each leafy bough
Clearer sunshine now

With fuller lustre played,

And sweet silence bent

With a glad content

O'er the hush that fulfilment made.

In the woods when the leaves are dropping,

Down dropping one by one

As the hopes that fade

In autumnal shade,

And droop ere their day is done,

And weary of life,

And weary of strife,

Sink down to the rest they have won.

From The Edinburgh Review. NASMYTH'S PHYSICAL HISTORY OF THE

MOON.*

being himself the son and grandson of two eminent Scottish artists, and he fostered this taste under the facilities and THE earth's bright satellite has always training which were at his command in been an object of affectionate reverence the courses of the then recently-formed among the sons of men. In the early school of arts of the Scotch metropolis. days of human history magnificent tem- Not very long after the completion of his ples were reared in expression of this university career he began to give some feeling. In the present age no less attention to the investigations of astroncostly buildings are erected and main- omy, and was very soon deep in the contained at the public charge, where large struction of reflecting telescopes of large bands of carefully-trained and well-ap- size and considerable power. On June pointed ministrants keep watch and cele- 14, 1844, just thirty years ago, he combrate their solemn rites, night after night, municated, as one of the first fruits of his in the same service. But perhaps no labours in this direction, a paper to the more noteworthy illustration of the charm Royal Astronomical Society, describing which this particular devotion has, even "Certain Telescopic Appearances of the for unimaginative and unimpressionable Moon," and exhibited, in illustration of philosophers, could be found in the annals this memoir, a drawing and model repreof human history than is expressed in senting the aspect of a part of the lunar the beautifully illustrated volume which surface as it appeared in his telescopes has just been published under the con- under high magnifying power. The tract joint authorship of James Nasmyth and of the lunar surface which was dealt with James Carpenter, and which really rep-in these illustrations is a broken region resents more than thirty years' almost immediately surrounding the large crater unintermittent study and application on known as Maurolicus, and both drawing the part of a mechanical engineer, who and model were made by a telescope of is distinguished amongst his contempora- twelve inches' aperture magnifying in ries and compeers alike for the hard linear dimensions 360 times, and were practicality of his head, the adroit readi- upon the scale of one-eighth of an inch to ness of his hands, and the finished culti- the mile. About a couple of years after vation of his taste. The James Nasmyth this time, we ourselves had in our posalluded to in this remark, it will scarcely session a copy of a very large drawing of be necessary to say, is the civil engineer some lunar craters, that had been used so well known as the inventor of the by Captain Owen Stanley in one of his steam-hammer and of the steam-machin- lectures, and which was also made by ery for driving piles. In his schoolboy Mr. Nasmyth. This sketch was the prime days, while still attending the classes of original of the remarkable group of crathe high school at Edinburgh, James Nas-jters associated with Theophilus, Cyrillus, myth was led, by an accidental acquaint- and Catharina, which appears among the ance with the son of an ironfounder, to study closely the various processes of casting and forging iron. He had also inherited a strong taste for drawing,

1. The Moon: considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite. By JAMES NASMYTH, C.E., and JAMES CARPENTER, F.R.A.S. 4to. London: 1874. 2. The Moon, her Motions, Aspect, Scenery, and Physical Condition. By RICHARD A. PROCTOR, B.A., F.R.A.S. London: 1873. Par M.

illustrations of the book now under notice. When the memoir on the "Telescopic Appearances of the Moon" was communicated to the Royal Astronomical Society, its author had been already in close observation and study of the lunar disc for some years, in the conviction that it furnished a very admirable and inStructive means of illustrating certain grand features of volcanic operations. In

3. Théorie du Mouvement de la Lune. DELAUNAY, Mémoires de l'Académie de Paris."one part of the memoir he drew pointed Two vols. 1860-67.

4. Fundamenta Nova Investigationis Orbitæ vera quam Luna perlustrat. By Professor P. A. HANSEN.

Gotha: 1838.

attention to the "brimful" crater, which is now presented in the illustrations of the book as Wargentin. The memoir of

1844, which occupied two pages of the | afterwards photographed in appropriate sixth volume of the Monthly Notices of positions in strong sunshine, and from the Astronomical Society, was indeed these photographs the prints that appear essentially the protogerm of the noble in the book were for the most part finally quarto volume now before us. In the made by the heliotype process, in permabrief early memoir there are traces of the nent pigments which are as fixed and leading thoughts that have been devel- enduring as the ink of ordinary copperoped in the finished book. plate engravings. The finest of these pictures actually reproduce to the eye the appearances that are seen in the moon by the aid of high powers of the telescope, applied under the most favourable conditions of lighting and atmosphere. They nearly all of them deal with bold characteristics of lunar scenery, and in many of them the reproduction is so perfect that it seems to an experienced eye as if the old familiar reality were before it when it rests intently upon the pictorial rendering. Even the peculiar frosted-silver texture, and the indescribably delicate frettings and frecklings that start out from the lunar surface in passing instants of the nicest telescopic defi

coin. Ready proofs of this statement may be especially found in the delineations which represent the terraced landslips, and circumambient mottling of froth-craters, that surround Copernicus

Two distinguishing characters mark Mr. Nasmyth's monograph from the hundred and one treatises that have touched upon the same theme. These are, in the first place, the marvellous beauty and accuracy of the pictorial illustrations, which are altogether without parallel in this branch of art; and in the second place, the lucidity and completeness with which the author's views of the moon's physical condition, and probable formative history, have been put into words. The treatment of the subject in this monograph is that of a mind which has been trained in the methods and discipline of mechanical and engineering, rather than of astronomical and mathematical, sci-nition, are there, as mint-marks of the ence, and which has acquired a very firm grasp of the matter on what may be termed its practical side. It is not too much to say that, under the impress of these characteristics, the book is the most complete and intelligible description the lunar Etna of Hevelius-and the of the physical condition of the moon that walled hollows of Aristotle and Eudoxus; has yet been published. the long yawning void chasms that shatIn alluding to the exquisite delineations ter the ground near Triesnecker; the bulof the typical features of the lunar physi-warked floors of Shickard and Wargenognomy with which his volume is illus-tin; the serrated shadows of the sombre trated, Mr. Nasmyth explains that these abyss of Plato, with its sentinel peak are the results of more than thirty years Pico, and its clustered outwork of Alpine of continued study and work. Drawings summits ploughed through by a broad of the various objects here represented flat-bottomed valley; and, perhaps, before were, in the first instance, made at all, the clustered peaks and shadowfavourable opportunities when high fringed chain of the mighty Apennines, powers of the telescope could be satis-with the fissured crackings of the surfactorily and advantageously used, and rounding plain. These particular drawthese drawings were then subsequently ings are certainly as successful an re-examined in comparison with their attempt to present, in a pictorial form, originals, and retouched, corrected, and what the highest powers of the telescope amplified, time after time, until they at reveal in this weird field of investigation, last seemed to the practised eye of the as it is possible for the most sanguine artist as perfect as the equally practised enthusiasm to conceive. The result is in hand could render them. In this com- these instances beyond all praise. The pleted form they were next turned into long, patient, painstaking labour, and the models in bold relief; these models were co isummate skill of the artist, alone can

explain how such marvels of pictorial, occultations of fixed stars by the moon, verisimilitude have been produced by and demonstrated that in every case the photographing artificial modellings.

star was out of sight behind the moon Before entering definitely upon the within two seconds of the time that it consideration of Mr. Nasmyth's views of ought to have been under the circumthe physical condition and history of the stance of the moon being without any moon, it may be well to ask the reader to external investment of a gaseous or vaplace compactly before his mind, in a porous kind which could have bent the broad, general form, an idea of what the rays of star-light as they shot through body is that is concerned in the explana- the transparent space in the immediate tion. The moon, it will be remembered, neighbourhood of the solid limb of the is a solid sphere of material substance moon. If these two seconds of differhaving nearly the intrinsic density of flint- [ence, the utmost allowance that can posglass, and of such size that it reaches to sibly be made in the face of this test, about the forty-ninth part of the volume were entirely due to a thin film of atmos of the earth, and has therefore a surface- phere enveloping the moon, that film area something less in extent than a must be, under the circumstance, two fourteenth part of the surface of the earth, thousand times less substantial and comprising in exact numbers 14,567,000 dense than the atmosphere of the earth, square miles. The size and density of and that would be as rare again as the this sphere, thus apportioned, are of such most perfect so-called vacuum that has amount that the force of gravity upon its ever been artificially produced by the airouter surface must be not more than a pump. Upon this showing, therefore, sixth part of the same force upon the the moon is held to be a virtually airless earth, so that a heavy body shot off from sphere. The absence of water is also the outer surface of the moon by any proved by similar unmistakable evigiven projectile effort would go six times dence. If it were present upon the suras far under the impulse as it would if face of the moon, even in the most limitstarted from the earth's surface in the ed amount, there would of necessity be same way. But the spherical mass thus an envelope of vapour about the sphere circumstanced in the matter of size and that would manifest its presence by the density, is a bare round ball of solid sub- | influence it would exert upon such rays stance, destitute of all trace of atmos-of light as passed through its substance. pheric investment, whether of vapour or The naked moon, with these condiair. The absence of gaseous atmosphere, [tions of volume and mass, is carried in of whatever kind, in the moon is definite- an even sweep around the earth at a disly proved by the simple fact that when- tsnce of about thirty earths' diameters. ever its opaque body passes along in the At this distance any tract of the moon's sky in front of a fixed star, the shining surface twenty-six miles across, or about point is concealed by the passage of the as large again as the county of Middleintervening dark body within an immate- sex, would be visible to the eye as an rial trifle of the time that it ought to be immeasurably small speck or sizeless upon the assumption that the occulting point. With the aid of a telescope such body is bare of all gaseous or vaporous a visible speck would be more or less investment, which, if present, would have spread into perceptible dimensions. If kept the star for some time in sight when the magnifying power of the telescope actually behind the moon, as the sun is were enough to enlarge 6,000 diameters brought into sight by atmospheric refrac- an extreme conception of the case which tion when below the earth's horizon, is now sometimes spoken of as being With a view to the final settlement of this within the possible achievements of optiquestion, among other examinations cal skill. the moon would be looked at which have been made, the astronomer as if it were not more than forty miles royal some little time ago put together away, and even small natural objects the results of 296 carefully observed upon its face, not more than twenty or