TO DEWDROP.

ALBUM VERSES.

(Written in a fit of fascination.)

You bid me write, a promise to redeem,
I lack not will but only choice of theme;
Say, shall I follow those who, wandering far
Call inspiration from the distant star?
Or join the throng whose deeper accents roll
In heavy dulness on the "Human Soul."
Or yet with others linger o'er the dead
And moralize on what they did and said,
Ah! No, let others such dull subjects choose,
To sweeter strains shall wake my youthful muse,
Of thee I sing. Thy charms shall lend a grace
To all that mind can think, or hand can trace.
Thy pensive smile shall every thought inspire,
To win that smile shall be my one desire.

Why look to distant stars while thy bright eyes
Beam nearer earth in far more heavenly skies.
Or why of soul in words the meaning seek,
While blushes mantle o'er thy damask cheek.
Or why resort to what the dead have sung
While living cadence ripples from thy tongue?

Thou art, so runs the thread my fancy weaves,
A sparkling dewdrop, glistening on the leaves
Of life's fair budding rose, with thrilling glance
Reflecting far the beams of sweet romance
Which, shed from thy pure spirit's sun of love
Gild all thy thoughts with radiance from above,
While winsome beauty from thy life is thrown
To every happy spot where thou art known.

But sad the thought the dewdrop soon must pass,
And soon the rose fall withered to the grass;
And even thy fair beauty must decay

As youth's delightful moments pass away.

But though the dewdrop and the rose be gone,
The golden sun still shines in glory on;
And though thy outward beauty may depart
Yet shall the fuller brightness of thy heart,
Around thy form a gladsome halo cast,
And love shall linger until life be past.

AURUM.

THE LIGHT OF THE FUTURE.

WHETHER the advance of civilisation is a meaningless phrase (as i some contend) or an absolute reality; the gigantic strides made in science within the present generation admit of no dispute. It seems difficult to realise the fact that living men can look back to a period when steam was a mere experiment, and the old stage coach aptly symbolised the conditon of the locomotive science of the day. In future ages the figure of George Stephenson will loom up out of the dim past as the pioneer of a mighty movement which has revolutionised this world of ours, and which in its progress has populated the desert places, and created cities and communities which without it might never have existed.

To have lived in an age which has witnessed the development of steam, that mighty force which enables us to traverse the globe with safety and certainty, to set in motion our tens of thousands of looms, and to forge into shape, as with a Titan's power, our hundred-ton guns; this might well have sufficed for the ambition of one generation. But that a mightier force still, a force yet in its infancy, but which enables us to communicate with the swiftness of the lightning's flash with the most distant part of the earth, by means of which we are able to transmit our voices audibly and distinctly to the ears of friends far distant, and which enables us to turn the darkness into light of the brilliancy of the noonday sun; these are indeed triumphs which amid the despondencies of an existence which cannot be divorced from anxiety and sorrow, make us proud that it was our lot to be born into the nineteenth century.

Within the limits of the present sketch it will not be possible to deal with more than that most recent, and to the mass of the public, most interesting development of modern science, the electric light. It is curious to note that like most other remarkable discoveries, this one has to encounter the depreciatory criticisms of those interested in retaining the existing system of gas illumination, as well as of those who, being quite ignorant of the merits of the discovery, follow in the wake of the former. When Stephenson asserted before a Committee of the House of Commons that a locomotive engine could be constructed to travel at the rate of thirty miles an hour, a great scientific luminary of the day

met the statement with the remark that "no one but a candidate for Bedlam would have made such a proposition." When gas lighting was introduced the same antagonism was shown to the discovery, and the most deplorable results were prognosticated. The fear of explosions would make life unendurable, the cost of laying pipes, &c., would render it too costly for any but the rich, whilst the consumption of fuel would be so enormous that the existing coal fields would be speedily exhausted. It is not surprising, therefore, that the electric light has to run the gauntlet of a class of objections equally absurd.

As the public at large will ere long be interested in the new light to an extent not yet fully estimated, it is worth while examining some of the objections referred to. The question of cost is, of course, an important factor in the matter, and if on this point we were to accept the opinion of those interested in gas undertakings we might save ourselves the trouble of discussing the subject further. As, however, even gas engineers are but human, and remembering that self-preservation is the first law of nature, it will be but fair to take the statements of such authorities cum grano salis. We mention this, as the Corporations of several towns (and we believe our own among the number) sent their engineers to the late Electrical Exhibition at Paris, and their reports, if accepted as those of unprejudiced witnesses, would have a decidedly unfavourable effect. In bar of judgment on such partial testimony we will present one fact, and that is, that these authorities have invariably added the cost of the apparatus to the cost of the light in making their estimates. In other words it is about the same as an assertion that every one using gas should have a gasometer and set of mains of his own! Unprejudiced persons will however accept the undoubted fact that several Companies are now supplying the electric light at the same cost as gas, and this notwithstanding the heavy royalties that have at present to be paid to the patentees of lamps and burners. When these patents have expired, and the demand for the new light has warranted the erection of works sufficiently large to supply complete districts, it is but fair to assume that the cost will be very considerably under that of gas. This at least has been the experience of gas manufacture, the heavy cost of which in its initial stage was well nigh prohibitory.

To those who have studied in ever so cursory a manner the develop ment of electrical illumination so far as it has gone, some of the reasons given to justify a belief in its ultimate failure are highly amusing. Take the one affecting the appearance and effect of the light. This, its opponents declare, is glaring and painful to the sight, if not absolutely injurious to it. In reply to this it ought to be sufficient to record the fact that, in several French manufactories, the workmen have for over twelve months been working at night with no other illumination than the naked electric light, and that not a single complaint of any injurious effects has been made. It would be a waste of argument to deal at any length with objections to its appearance in an open space, or in an apartment. Upon those who profess to prefer the yellow flickering

flame of gas to the stream of brilliant moon-like light thrown from one of the new incandescent lamps, and the foul and heated atmosphere caused by the former as compared with the pure oxygen permitted by the use of the latter-argument would be thrown away.

If it were worth while to enlarge upon this part of the subject it would be interesting to invite a comparison between one of the London Railway Stations (Cannon Street), the vast area of which is so brilliantly illuminated with seven electric lamps that the smallest print can be read in any part of it, with the dismal gloominess of our New Street Station and its hundreds of gas jets. But it will be more instructive to hazard a forecast of the advantages we may fairly look forward to when (and that at no distant period) electric lighting comes into general use for domestic purposes.

It does not concern us to answer the question as to what will be done with the huge gas works which now disfigure the approaches of most large towns, and poison the air of the districts in which they are placed. It is sufficient to note that no such abominations will be required for the production of the electric light. The districts into which a town or suburb will be divided will each have a small, and it is hoped, handsome building in which will be placed the necessary machinery both for producing and storing the electrical force. The wires will be carried to each house in iron pipes close to the surface of the pavement. The miseries we are now condemned to undergo when a whole street is blocked up for a week by the opening up of a vast trench to discover and repair gas breakages will be a thing of the past. Electricity being unaffected by frost, such calamities as that of last winter, when a great part of our town was left in Cimmerian darkness owing to the freezing of meters will be entirely obviated. In the internal economy of our households we may look forward with confidence to such an improved state of affairs as will increase our social pleasure after business hours tenfold. Our rooms will have a pleasant and equable temperature. Pictures, books, and curtains, will be safe from the destructive ravages of gas; and how much this indicates let our housewives estimate. All fears of explosions from escapes of gas will be at an end; whilst ceilings will be independent of the whitewasher for an indefinite period. In short (to use Mr. Micawber's favourite phrase) the question as to whether "Life is worth living" will be met with a very emphatic reply in the affirmative.

That these are no mere optimist speculations is quite susceptible of demonstration by what is now in actual operation. Some time will of course be required to manufacture the vast amount of materiel required for the purpose, as well as to overcome the opposition of vested interests. But that time is rapidly shortening, and when once the public mind is brought to a proper estimate of the enormous increase in domestic comfort which the change will involve, an universal demand for the new illuminant will be assured.

GULIELMUS.

ART AND ITS ENEMIES.

A LITTLE work has just been published by one of the most distinguished of modern Bibliophiles, under the title of "The Enemies of Books." I, for my own part, have never read it, and never mean tothe title itself sufficing to evoke in my mind as ample a picture of rapine and ruin as my organisation is at all likely to be able to bear. Is not the very announcement of so dismal a catalogue a thing to be glanced at with a shock, and to be perused with tears? Picture to yourself the fires-from the destruction of the Tower of Babel, a building which must certainly have been a scientific Reference Library with spiral galleries, or it would never have pretended to touch both earth and heaven at once-to the destruction of the Birmingham Reference Library! Imagine the ruthlessness of conquerors, from the Goths, to the Germans who were so careful to show their paternal affection for Strasbourg by not sparing the rod. Think of the waste of spoilersthe heating of the baths of unfragrant Arabs at Alexandria with the priceless manuscripts which contained the long-hoarded lore of the East-the convulsion which must have been caused in the whiteybrown-paper trade in the reign of the Eighth Harry by the superior cheapness of monastic literature for wrapping purposes-the maddening, and quite modern, Philistinism with which goldbeaters have cut the patient labors of the long-dead scribes into squares of vellum between which to beat their contemptible gold. Figurez vous, as our French neighbours say, the long generation of ante-Board-School nurse girls who have pacified their noisy charges with "pretty picture books" which would now, if extant, be worth their weight in rubies; the genial mischief of well meaning simpletons such as the old lady who had a first folio of Shakespeare cut neatly down to the quick and bound in half calf extra as a present for a favourite nephew; the all-devouring sea with its shipwrecks; the rotting damp; the collector of title pages; the scrap-book manufacturer; the rag and bone man; down to the comparatively harmless ant of the East, and book-worm of the West, who devour books not quite in the way the fond author anticipated. Truly the list of the enemies of books might be made a sufficiently apalling And yet, as compared with that of the enemies of Art, it would fall short of the very climax of mischievous absurdity in the person of

one.