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troscope towards the moon, which was at the time nearer to the horizon than Mars, so that the lines belonging to our own atmosphere would be stronger in the moon's spectrum than in that of the planet. But the groups of lines referred to were not visible in the lunar spectrum. It remained clear, therefore, that they belonged to the atmosphere of Mars, and not to our own."

This observation removes all reasonable doubt as to the real character as well of the dark greenish-blue markings as of the white polar caps. We see that Mars certainly possesses seas resembling our own, and as certainly that he has his arctic regions, waxing and waning, as our own do, with the progress of the seasons. But, in fact, Dr. Huggins's observation proves much more than this. The aqueous vapor raised from the Martial seas can find its way to the Martial poles only along a certain course-that is, by traversing a Martial atmosphere. Mars certainly has an atmosphere, therefore, though whether the constitution of that atmosphere exactly resembles that of our own air is not so certainly known. On this point the spectroscope has given no positive information, yet it allows us to draw this negative inference-that, inasmuch as no new lines are seen in the spectrum of the planet, it would seem likely that no gases other than those existing in our own atmosphere are present in the atmosphere of Mars.

But we are naturally led to inquire whether the phenomena which our meteorologists have to deal with-clouds, fog, and mist, wind-storms and rain-storms -can be recognized, either directly or in their effects, when Mars is studied with the telescope. The answer is full of interest. We have been able to learn much respect ing the meteorology of this distant world. In the first place, we see that at times the features of his globe-those wellrecognized markings which indicate the figure of oceans and continents-are hidden from view as if by clouds. A whitish light replaces the well-marked red color of the continents or the equally wellmarked green-blue tint of the oceans. But more. We can at times actually watch the gradual clearing up of the Martial skies, for we can see the whitish region of light gradually growing smaller and smaller, the features it had concealed

coming gradually into view. On one occasion Mr. Lockyer was observing Mars with an excellent telescope, six inches in aperture, when he became aware that a change of this sort was in progress. A certain well known sea was partially concealed from view by a great cloud-mass spreading over many thousand square miles of the Martial surface. But as the hours passed, the clouds seemed to be melting away, whether by the sun's heat or because they had fallen in rain was, of course, not determinable. When Mr. Lockyer ceased observing for the evening-at about half-past eleven-a large proportion of the sea before concealed had come into view. But on the same night, the eagle-eyed Dawes, the prince of modern telescopists, as he has been called, was also studying the planet of war. Waiting until the outlines of the oceans and continents had become clearly discernible, he made ("in the wee sma' hours ayont the twae'") an excellent drawing of Mars. When this was compared with the drawing made at an earlier hour by Mr. Lockyer, it was seen that the clouds which had concealed a portion of the planet had, at a later hour, passed completely away, insomuch that the whole of the shore-line, which was at first concealed, had been restored to view. And it is worthy of notice that, referring these events to Martial time, it appeared that the cloudy weather in this part of Mars had occurred in the forenoon, the midday hour (as often happens on earth) bringing clear weather, which would seem to have lasted until the Martial afternoon was far advanced.

But we can also learn something of the general progress of the weather during a Martial day. It would seem that, as a rule, the Martial mornings and evenings are misty. This, at least, seems the most satisfactory explanation of the whitish light which is usually seen all round the planet's disc; for the parts of the planet which lie near the edge of the disc are those where the sun is low-that is, where it is either morning or evening out yonder on Mars. The presence, therefore, of this whitish light would seem to indicate misty mornings and misty evenings in

Mars.

It seems clear, too, that-as with ourselves-winter is more cloudy than summer; for it is always noticed that near the

Martial solstices the markings on that half of the planet where winter is in progress are very indistinctly seen, a whitish light sometimes replacing the red and green markings altogether in these regions. On the contrary, at these seasons, the regions where summer is in progress are generally very well seen.

The reader will infer from what has been said on these points, that the study of Mars cannot be carried on very rapidly by our astronomers; for, in the first place, Mars only returns to our midnight skies at intervals of more than two years, and he remains but for a short time favorably placed for observation. Then one-half of his surface only can be seen at a time, and nearly one-half even of that hemisphere is commonly concealed by clouds, which also extend all round the disc, so that perhaps but about one-eighth of the planet's surface can be favorably studied. When we add to these considerations the circumstance that not one night out of ten in our climate or, perhaps, in any-is well suited for the use of powerful telescopes, while even favorable nights cannot always be devoted to the study of Mars (other celestial objects often requiring special attention), it will be understood that the progress of discovery has not been so rapid as, at a first view, might be expected. When we are told that more than two centuries have elapsed since the telescopic study of Mars began, it seems as though ample time had been given for research; but the time which has been actually available for that purpose has been far more limited than that estimate would imply.

And now returning to the consideration of the probable condition of Mars, with respect to those circumstances which we regard as associated with the requirements of living creatures, let us briefly inquire how far we can determine aught as to the geological structure of the planet. Here the spectroscope cannot help us. The telescope, and such reasoning as may fairly be applied to the relations already dealt with, must here be our main resource. We see, then, that the land regions of the planet present a ruddy tinge. Sir John Herschel has suggested, and we are not here concerned to deny, that this is probably due to the ochreish nature of the soil. The planet, in fact, is to be regarded as perhaps passing through a geological era resembling that through which our own

earth was passing when the Old Red Sandstone constituted the main proportion of her continents. But it certainly must be admitted, as a remarkable circumstance, that we can trace no signs of extensive forests in Mars, nor any such appearances as we should imagine that our prairies must present to telescopists in Venus or Mercury. One is almost invited to adopt the bizarre notion of that French astronomer who suggested that vegetation on Mars is red instead of verdant-that in this distant and miniature world the poet may sing of spring, more truly than our terrestrial poets, that

She cometh blushing like a maid.

As respects the absence of forests, we may perhaps find a sufficient explanation in the fact that lofty trees would exist under somewhat unfavorable conditions in Mars; for gravity being so much less than on our own earth, the stability of objects having equal dimensions would be correspondingly reduced. On the other hand, the winds which blow in Mars are probably, as Professor Phillips has pointed out, exceedingly violent; so that, to quote a striking paper which appeared last year in the Spectator (in a review of a work by the present writer), "if currents of air in Mars are of more than usual violence, while the solidifying force of friction which resists them is much smaller than here, it may be a reasonable inference that natural selection' has already weeded out the loftier growing trees, which would stand less chance in encounters with hurricanes than our own." The absence of prairies is not so easily explained, however; and the idea is in fact suggested that some of those regions which have hitherto been included among the Martial seas, are in reality regions richly covered with verdure. Nor are we wholly without evidence in favor of this view; for there is a certain very wide tract in Mars respecting which the late Mr. Dawes remarked to the present writer that he found himself greatly perplexed. "At times," he said, "I seem to see clear traces of seas there; but at other times I find no such traces." These regions have accordingly been regarded as extensive tracts of marsh land. But the idea seems at least worth considering that they may be forest regions or extensive prairies.

There must needs be rivers in Mars,

since the clouds, which often cover whole continents, must pour down enormous quantities of rain, and this rain-fall must find a course for itself along the Martial valleys to the sea. Indeed we can have no doubt that Mars has been the scene of those volcanic disturbances to which our own mountains, hills, valleys, and ravines owe their origin. The very existence of continents and oceans implies an unevenness of surface which can only be explained as the effect of subterranean forces. Volcanoes must exist, then, in Mars; nor can his inhabitants be wholly safe from such earthquake throes as we experience. It may be questioned, indeed, whether subterranean forces in Mars are not relatively far more intense than in our own Earth, the materials of which the planet is formed being not only somewhat less massive in themselves, but also held down by a gravity much less effective.

It would seem, also, that the Martial oceans must be traversed by currents somewhat resembling those which traverse our own oceans. There is, indeed, a very marked difference between our seas and those of Mars. For apart from the circumstance that the terrestrial oceans cover a much greater proportion of the earth's surface, the Martial seas are scarcely traversed by appreciable tides. Mars has no moon to sway his ocean waters, and though the sun has power over his seas to some slight extent, yet the tidal waves thus raised would be very unimportant, even though the seas of Mars were extensive enough for the generation of true tidal oscillations. For, in the first place, Mars is much farther from the sun, and the sun's action is correspondingly reduced-it is reduced, in fact, on this account alone more than threefold. But, further, Mars is much smaller than the earth, and the dimensions of our earth have much to do with the matter of the sun's tide-raising power. Every one knows how the explanation of the tides runs in our books of astronomy and geography. The sun is nearer to the water turned directly towards

him than he is to the centre of the earth; he therefore draws that water away from the earth, or in other words raises a wave : but again, says the explanation, the sun is nearer to the earth's centre than to the water on the side turned away from him, and therefore he draws the earth away from that water, or a wave is raised on the farther as well as on the nearer side of the earth. If the earth were smaller, the sun would not be so much nearer to the water turned towards him, nor so much farther from the water turned away from him—so that both waves would be reduced in dimensions. Applying this consideration to the case of Mars, whose orb is much smaller than the earth's, we see that any tidal wave raised by the sun in Martial seas must needs be of very small dimensions.

But the existence of ocean currents appears to depend very little on the presence of tidal waves. In the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, and the Baltic Sea wellmarked currents exist, although the tidal wave scarcely affects these seas. Sea-currents would indeed seem to be due to the effects of evaporation taking place extensively over certain portions of the sea surface; and we know that evaporation must proceed very freely in the case of the seas of Mars, since clouds form so marked a feature of his atmospheric economy. We may conclude, therefore, that his seas are traversed by currents, and further that most of those effects which our students of physical geography ascribe to ocean currents, take place also in the case of Mars.

Summing up the results here considered, we seem to recognize abundant reasons for regarding the ruddy planet which is now shining so conspicuously in our skies as a fit abode for living creatures. It would seem, indeed, unreasonable to doubt that that globe is habitable which presents so many analogies to our own, and which differs from our own in no circumstances that can be regarded as essential to the wants of living creatures.

Chambers's Journal. CRITICAL CURIOSITIES.

LOCKE's understanding was not creditably displayed when he endorsed the opinion of his friend Molyneux, that,

Milton excepted, all English poets were mere ballad-makers beside "everlasting Blackmore." Equally unhappy as a critic

was Waller, when he pronounced Paradise Lost a tedious poem, whose only merit was its length; Walpole dismissed Humphry Clinker as a party novel, a party novel, written by a profligate hireling; and Rymer set Cowley's epic above Tasso's Jerusalem. Pope saw his Essay on Criticism written down as “a pert, insipid heap of commonplace;" his Windsor "his Castle described as "an obscure, ambiguous, barbarous rhapsody;" and had the pleasure of informing a friend-who told him there was a thing just out called an Essay on Man, which was most abominable stuff, without coherence or connection —that he had seen the "thing" before it went to press, since it was his own writing; upon which the astonished critic seized his hat, 'blushed, bowed, and took his leave for ever!" Scott's novels have been called pantomimes, and Dicken's stories pot-house pleasantries. Ritson discovered Burns did not appear to his usual advantage in song-writing; and Mrs. Lenox found out that Shakespeare lacked invention, and was deficient in judgment !

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A collection of Shakespearean criticisms would make a very curious volume, but it would hardly contain an odder example than that of the swell who complained that Hamlet was 66 dooced full of quotations." Worthy Mr. Pepys, who, despite sundry vows of theatrical abstinence, found himself pretty regularly in the playhouse, has set down in his Diary his honest opinion of the plays he saw. The most insipid, ridiculous play he ever saw in his life was A Midsummer Night's Dream; he was pleased by no part of The Merry Wives of Windsor; and Othello, which he had esteemed a mighty good play, became a mean thing in his eyes after reading The Adventures of Five Hours. On the other hand, he admired Hamlet exceedingly, when Betterton played the hero; and Macbeth he considered "an excellent play in all respects, but especially in divertisement, though it be a deep tragedy; which is a strange perfection in a tragedy, it being most proper here and suitable; " while that "most innocent play," The Tempest, although displaying no great wit, was yet "good above ordinary plays." It must be remembered, in the Secretary's behalf, that the versions of Shakespeare's plays witnessed by him were too often the adaptaNEW SERIES.-VOL. XIV., No. 2.

tions of Dryden and other marrers of the great dramatist's works. Oliver Goldsmith had not that excuse for his depreciation of Shakespeare. He was especially offended by the famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy, which he calls a chaos of incongruous metaphors, proving his case in the following fashion: "If the metaphors were reduced to painting, we should find it a very difficult task, if not altogether impracticable, to represent with any propriety outrageous Fortune using her slings and arrows, between which there is no sort of analogy in nature. Neither can any figure be more ridiculously absurd than that of a man taking arms against a sea; exclusive of the incongruous medley of slings, arrows, and seas, justled within the compass of one reflection. What follows is a strange rhapsody of broken images, of sleeping, dreaming, and shifting off a coil, which last conveys no idea that can be represented on canvas. A man may be exhibited shuffling off his garments or his chains; but how he should shuffle off a coil, which is another term for noise and tumult, we cannot comprehend. Then we have 'long-lived Calamity,' and 'Time armed with whips and scorns;' and 'patient Merit spurned at by Unworthiness;' and 'Misery with a bare bodkin going to make his own quietus,' which is at best but a mean metaphor. These are followed by figures sweating under fardles of burdens,' 'puzzled with doubts,' shaking with fears,' and 'flying from evils. Finally, we see Resolution sicklied o'er with pale thought,' a conception like that of representing health by sickness; and a 'current of pith turned away so as to lose the name of action,' which is both an error of fancy and a solecism in sense." Goldsmith also falls foul of Hamlet for describing death as

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That undiscovered country, from whose bourne No traveller returns,

when he had just been talking with his father's spirit piping hot from purgatory.

When Professor Felton, reading A Midsummer Night's Dream to the captain of the ship of which he was a passenger, came to the description of Oberon sitting on a promontory listening to a mermaid on a dolphin's back, the seaman was disgusted. "The dolphin's back," said he, “is as sharp as a razor, and no mermaid could possibly ride the beast unless she first saddled

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him!" Wallack the actor undertook to read Macbeth with a French friend, but the first scene proved enough for both; for the Frenchman broke out : "Monsieur Vallake, you have told me dat Shakspeare is de poet of nature and common-sense; good! Now, vat is dis? Here is his play open Macbess-yes; good, very good! Well, here is tree old-old vat you call veetch, vid de broom and no close on at all-yes; upon the blasted heath--good! Von veetch say to the oder veetch: 'Ven shall we tree meet agen?' De oder veetch she say: 'In tondare;' de oder she say: 'In lightning—and she say to dem herself agen: 'In rain!' Eh bien! now dis is not nature! dis is not common-sense! Oh, no! De tree old veetch shall nevare go out to meet upon de blasted heath with no close on in tondare, lightning and in rain. Ah, no! It is not common-sense! ma foi, dey stay at home!-aha!" Such matterof-fact criticism reminds us of the story told by the Rev. Newman Hall of the negro preacher who informed his flock that Adam was made of wet clay, and set up against some palings to dry; and upon a sceptical darkey rising to ask, "Who made the palings, den?" retorted, "Sit down, sar! such questions as dat would upset any system of teology!"

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Extorted criticisms are apt to prove severe ones, and no wonder; the victim, if he has any spirit, naturally resenting what seems an attempt to force him to flatter the extorter. When Henderson the actor asked Johnson what he thought of Joseph Reed's Dido, the doctor replied: "Sir, I never did the man an injury, yet he would read his tragedy to me!" A Scotch lady, pressed in the author's presence to express her opinion of a poem called Eternity, said: "It is a bonny poem, and weel named Eternity, for it will never be read in time!"-a verdict for which, doubtless, the poet was very grateful. No man, perhaps, ever extorted such a compliment out of another as Boswell did out of Lord Thurlow; when, just after the publication of his famous book, Johnson's biographer stopped him, as he was hurrying to the House of Lords, with: "Have you read my book ?" and received for answer: "Yes, hang you! every word of it-I couldn't help myself!"

Sometimes a man's friends favor him with criticism, none the more welcome because

it comes unsolicited. Richard Wagner sent Offenbach a copy of his work, Le Règne des Juifs dans la Musique, which his brother-composer acknowledged thus: "DEAR WAGNER-You will do better to write music!" Upon this, the musician of the future forwarded his Meistersinger, eliciting a second note from Offenbach: "DEAR WAGNER--On reflection, you will do better, I think, to continue writing books!" When Thomson sent a presentation copy of his Winter to Joseph Mitchell, the latter wrote back :

Beauties and faults so thick lie scattered here, Those I could read if these were not so near. An ungracious acknowledgment of the gift, stinging the poet to reply:

Why all not faults, injurious Mitchell? Why Appears one beauty to thy blasted eye? Damnation worse than thine, if worse can be, Is all I ask, and all I want from thee ! We may be sure Sir Walter was more amused than offended when his faithful Purdie, after delighting him with the assurance that the novels were invaluable to him, went on: "For when I've been out all day hard at work, and come home tired, I take up one of your novels, and I'm asleep directly." Fancy Mr. Hatton's delight, after playing in his best style two of Bach's finest fugues at a London concert, at being told that a lady who was present, on being asked next day how she liked the pianoforte playing, replied that there was none; the only thing approaching to instrumental music she had heard the whole evening was when some one came in between the parts and tuned the piano! Mr. Marquis Chisholm found his pianoforte playing better appreciated by the good folks of Yokohama ; he did not indulge in fugues, but gave them some of their own favorite airs; and upon paying a second visit, the grateful Japanese presented him with a sort of testimonial, in the shape of a sketch of himself, surrounded with high-flown panegyrics of him and his instrument. But there was one note none of his admirers would translate for his edification; however, he found somebody to help him in the difficulty, and discovered the troublesome sentences ran thus: "Mystery. The loss of one great man is a whole nation's grief; a man of true genius should be best known and most encouraged in the place of his birth. Hence, if this Marquis

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