Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 2.pdf/20

 because the variation of the distance between by us and the stars is so infinitesimal in amount, compared with their enormous distance, that for us they are always little; but with terrestrial objects, this is not the case. On climbing the slope of a lofty mountain, our fellow-creatures, seen on the plain below, soon show "scarce so big as beetles," then as mites, and finally become invisible animalcules. We restore to them a portion of their original size, and render them visible, by drawing them nearer to us with the telescope. Thus the telescope is the microscope of large distant things, while the microscope is the telescope of small things in too close approximation for their parts to be perceptible by our limited organs. It shows and proves that between their parts there are intervals which would otherwise escape our observation and cognisance; that what we think to be contiguous and continuous, is really separate and broken up into parts. The telescope extends our range of vision outwards, the microscope enables it to plunge deeper inwards.

The intervals between the ultimate particles of bodies will probably ever remain beyond our ken and measurement, visible only to the eye of the mind. Some philosophers have held that the distances which separate the atoms constituting solid bodies, are as great, relatively to their actual size, as those from one fixed star to another. That the atoms of which everything—gas, liquid, or solid—is made up are not contiguous, and do not absolutely touch each other, is proved by their expansion and contraction under heat and cold. A favoured hypothesis maintains that those atoms revolve round each other, like the heavenly bodies, and that their revolutions are made perceptible to us by the sensations of warmth or chilliness, as the case may be.

Dr. Tyndall, to explain the heating of a lump of lead by the blows of a sledge-hammer, says, "The motion of the mass, as a whole, is transformed into a motion of the molecules of the mass. This motion of heat, however, though intense, is executed within limits too minute, and the moving particles are too small, to be visible. Here the imagination must help us. In the case of solid bodies, while the force of cohesion still holds the molecules together, you must conceive a power of vibration, with certain limits, to be possessed by the molecules. You must suppose them oscillating to and fro; and the greater the amount of heat we impart to the body, or the greater the amount of mechanical action which we invest in it by percussion, compression, or friction, the more rapid will be the molecular vibration, and the wider the amplitude of the atomic oscillations." Now, if the vibration describes a long ellipse, like the dance of a gnat in the air, it becomes precisely the orbit of a revolving comet which remains in attendance on its sun, instead of wandering from system to system.

If this be true—and Dr. Tyndall adds, "the molecules have been thought by some, notably by Sir Humphry Davy, to revolve round each other, and the communication of heat, by augmenting their centrifugal force, is supposed to push them more widely asunder;"—if this be true, there is a complete analogy between the smallest and the greatest of created things. An iron-filing, a drop of oil, a bubble of air, are galaxies of atoms, obeying the laws of their mutual attractions and repulsions; while the stars we call fixed, are only the atoms composing some great whole whose form and contour are beyond the scope of our vision. And thus, whether we look outwardly, to reach the infinitely great, or inwardly, to penetrate the infinitely small, the prospect that meets us is alike, differing only in magnitude. And we may repeat that both in its mechanical and its material constitution, the universe is one—a unity.

waves broke over the harbour light,
 * The women ran, screaming, along the pier.

The wind like a wild beast howled; the night
 * Grew darker as, with a shudder of fear,

We saw just then, by the flash and flare
 * A hissing rocket a moment cast,

A tossing wreck swept almost bare,
 * Aye! the cruel end it was coming fast!

A few more blows from the breaking sea,
 * A few more surges of angry wave,

And a floating spar and a plank would be
 * All that was left. Was there none to save?

None to struggle with surf and tide,
 * And the foaming hell of the angry flood,

That raved and raged with a devilish pride.
 * Howling, as 'twere, for human blood?

'Twas a little brig of St. Nazaire,
 * That wrestled with Satan at sea that night;

And the steady lighthouse flame fell there
 * On the women's faces, wan and white;

The children sobbed, and the mothers wept,
 * Hearing the sailors' screaming cries.

As the torchlight fell on the waves that leapt,
 * And gleamed on the staring and sorrowing eyes.

And then we could see the savage rush
 * Of the wolfish waves as they bore along,

And swept o'er the wreck with a ravening crush.
 * Then the moon shone out from the gloom bygone,

And up in the rigging dark there showed,
 * Bound to the ropes, five half-drowned men,

And one poor boy, who a spar bestrode
 * Till a breaker bore him into its den.

No brave man's heart could bear that cry,
 * As below, on the moonlit level sands,

The women knelt in their agony,
 * And wrung their tight-clasped pallid hands.

The moon was full, but its tranquil light
 * Lent only a terror to the snow.

And a horror and fear to the rolling surge,
 * And the restless mighty seethe and flow.

Then we English fellows, with cheer and shout,
 * Ran eagerly down to the further sand,

And dragged the life-boat quickly out
 * Not one of us lads but bore a hand.

'Twas bedded deep in the silt and snow,
 * And the drift was round it high and fast;

But we dragged it steadily, though slow,
 * Till the deeper water was reached at last.