Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/860

842 music are mere developments of mathematical formulas, and of every note and wave in music the equation lies in the pages of Lord Rayleigh's book. (Laughter and applause.) There are some who have no ear for music, but all who are blessed with eyes can admire the beauties of Nature, and among those one which is seen in Canada frequently, in England often, in Scotland rarely, is the blue sky. (Laughter.) Lord Rayleigh's brilliant piece of mathematical work on the dynamics of blue sky is a monument of the application of mathematics to a subject of supreme difficulty, and on the subject of refraction of light he has pointed out the way toward finding all that has to be known, though he has ended his great work by admitting that the explanation of the fundamentals of the reflection and refraction of light is still wanting, and is a subject for the efforts of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. But there is still another subject, electricity and the electric light, and here again Lord Rayleigh's work is fundamental, and one may hope from the suggestions it contains that electricity may yet be put upon the level of ordinary mechanics, and that the electrician may be able to weigh out electric quantities as easily and readily as a merchant could a quantity of tea or sugar."

Lord Rayleigh is a man of modest deportment but a very strong man. It was feared that his inaugural address would be an abstruse performance little calculated to interest a general audience, but the apprehension turned out to be groundless. The discourse was full of compressed thought, but closely interested his hearers, and was a model as a survey of the recent advancement in physical science. It was delivered in a clear and effective style, well measured, but without the least hesitancy of speech. In this respect the man of the laboratory of mathematics and of research contrasted strongly with many of those literary Englishmen whom we might suppose would cultivate somewhat the art of delivery; but in all respects Lord Rayleigh's manner of speaking was in sharp antithesis to the style, for example, of Mr. Matthew Arnold.