The Library Magazine of Select Foreign Literature Part 14

However, if we a.s.sume even that Linn has undergone change, we still have no reason to believe that the change is volcanic. A steep wall, say half a mile in height, surrounding a crater four or five miles in diameter, no longer stands at this height above the enclosed s.p.a.ce, if the believers in a real change are to be trusted. But, as Dr. Huggins well remarked long ago, if volcanic forces competent to produce disturbance of this kind are at work in the moon, we ought more frequently to recognize signs of change, for they could scarcely be at work in one part only of the moon's surface, or only at long intervals of time. It is so easy to explain the overthrow of such a wall as surrounded Linn (always a.s.suming we can rely upon former accounts) without imagining volcanic action, that, considering the overwhelming weight of _a priori_ probability against such action at the present time, it would be very rash to adopt the volcanic theory. The expansions and contractions described above would not only be able to throw down walls of the kind, but they would be sure to do so from time to time. Indeed, as a mere matter of probabilities, it may be truly said that it would be exceedingly unlikely that catastrophes such as the one which may have occurred in this case would fail to happen at comparatively short intervals of time. It would be so unlikely, that I am almost disposed to adopt the theory that there really has been a change in Linn, for the reason that on that theory we get rid of the difficulty arising from the apparent fixity of even the steepest lunar rocks. However, after all, the time during which men have studied the moon with the telescope--only two hundred and sixty-nine years--is a mere instant compared with the long periods during which the moon has been exposed to the sun's intense heat by day and a more than arctic intensity of cold by night. It may well be that, though lunar landslips occur at short intervals of time, these intervals are only short when compared with those periods, hundreds of millions of years long, of which we had to speak a little while ago.

Perhaps in a period of ten or twenty thousand years we might have a fair chance of noting the occurrence of one or two catastrophes of the kind, whereas we could hardly expect to note any, save by the merest accident, in two or three hundred years.

To come now to the last, and, according to some, the most decisive piece of evidence in favour of the theory that the moon's crust is still under the influence of volcanic forces.

On May 19, 1877, Dr. Hermann J. Klein, of Cologne, observed a crater more than two miles in width, where he felt sure that no crater had before existed. It was near the centre of the moon's visible hemisphere, and not far from a well-known crater called Hyginus. At the time of observation it was not far from the boundary between the light and dark parts of the moon: in fact, it was near the time of sunrise at this region. Thus the floor of the supposed new crater was in shadow--it appeared perfectly black. In the conventional language for such cases made and provided (it should be stereotyped by selenographers, for it has now been used a great many times since Schrter first adopted the belief that the great crater Ca.s.sini, thirty-six miles in diameter, was a new one) Dr. Klein says, "The region having been frequently observed by myself during the last few years, I feel certain that no such crater existed in the region at the time of my previous observations." He communicated his discovery to Dr.

Schmidt, who also a.s.sured him that the region had been frequently observed by himself during the last few years, and he felt certain that no such crater, &c., &c. It is not in the maps by Lohrman and by Beer and Mdler, or in Schrter's drawings, and so forth. "We know more," says a recent writer, singularly ready to believe in lunar changes; "we know that at a later period, with the powerful Dorpat telescope, Mdler carefully re-examined this particular region, to see if he could detect any additional features not shown in his map. He found several smaller craterlets _in other parts_" (the italics are mine), "but he could not detect any other crater in the region where Dr. Klein now states there exist a large crater, though he did find some very small hills close to this spot." "This evidence is really conclusive," says this very confident writer, "for it is incredible that Mdler could have seen these minute hills and overlooked a crater so large that it is the second largest crater of the score in this region." Then this writer comes in, of course, in his turn, with the customary phrases. "During the six years, 1870-1876, I most carefully examined this region, for the express purpose of detecting any craters not shown by Mdler," and he also can certify that no such crater existed, etc., etc. He was only waiting, when he thus wrote, to see the crater for himself. "One suitable evening will settle the matter. If I find a deep black crater, three miles in diameter, in the place a.s.signed to it by Dr. Klein, and when six years' observation convinces me no such crater did exist, I shall know that it must be new."

Astronomers, however, require somewhat better evidence.

It might well be that a new crater-shaped depression should appear in the moon without any volcanic action having occurred. For reasons already adduced, indeed, I hold it to be to all intents and purposes certain that if a new depression is really in question at all, it is in reality only an old and formerly shallow crater, whose floor has broken up, yielding at length to the expansive and contractive effects above described, which would act with exceptional energy at this particular part of the moon's surface, close as it is to the lunar equator.

But it is by no means clear that this part of the moon's surface has undergone any change whatever. We must not be misled by the very confident tone of selenographers. Of course they fully believe what they tell us: but they are strongly prejudiced. Their labours, as they well know, have now very little interest unless signs of change should be detected in the moon. Surveyors who have done exceedingly useful work in mapping a region would scarcely expect the public to take much interest in additional information about every rock or pebble existing in that region, unless they could show that something more than a mere record of rocks and pebbles was really involved. Thus selenographers have shown, since the days of Schrter, an intense anxiety to prove that our moon deserves, in another than Juliet's sense, to be called "the inconstant moon." In another sense again they seem disposed to "swear by the inconstant moon,"

as changing yearly, if not "monthly, in her circled orb." Thus a very little evidence satisfies them, and they are very readily persuaded in their own mind that former researches of theirs, or of their fellow-pebble-counters, have been so close and exact, that craters must have been detected then which have been found subsequently to exist in the moon. I do not in the slightest degree question their _bona fides_, but a long experience of their ways leads me to place very little reliance on such stereotyped phrases as I have quoted above.

Now, in my paper in the "Contemporary Review" on this particular crater, I called attention to the fact that in the magnificent photograph of the moon taken by Dr. Louis Rutherfurd on March 6, 1865 (note well the date) there is a small spot of lighter colour than the surrounding region, nearly in the place indicated in the imperfect drawing of Klein's record which alone was then available to me. For reasons, I did not then more closely describe this feature of the finest lunar photograph ever yet obtained.

The writer from whom I have already quoted is naturally (being a selenographer) altogether unwilling to accept the conclusion that this spot is the crater floor as photographed (not as seen) under a somewhat higher illumination than that under which the floor of the crater appears dark. There are several white spots immediately around the dark crater, he says: "which of these is the particular white spot which the author"

(myself) "a.s.sumes I did not see?" a question which, as I had made no a.s.sumption whatever about this particular writer, nor mentioned him, nor even thought of him, as I wrote the article on which he comments, I am quite unable to answer. But he has no doubt that I have "mistaken the white spot" (which it seems he can identify, after all) "for Klein's crater, which is many miles farther north, and which never does appear as a white spot: he has simply mistaken its place."

I have waited, therefore, before writing this, until from my own observation, or from a drawing carefully executed by Dr. Klein, I might ascertain the exact place of the new crater. I could not, as it turned out, observe the new crater as a black spot myself, since the question was raised; for on the only available occasion I was away from home. But I now have before me Dr. Klein's carefully drawn map. In this I find the new crater placed not nearly, but _exactly_ where Rutherfurd's crater appears.

I say "Rutherfurd's crater," for the white spot is manifestly not merely a light tinted region on the darker background of the Sea of Vapours (as the region in which the crater has been found is called): it is a circular crater more than two miles in diameter; and the width of the crescent of shadow surrounding its eastern side shows that in March 1865, when Rutherfurd took that photograph, the crater was not (for its size) a shallow one, but deep.

Now, it is quite true that, to the eye, under high illumination, the floor of the crater does not appear lighter than the surrounding region; at least, not markedly so, for to my eye it appears slightly lighter. But everyone knows that a photograph does not show all objects with the same depth of shading that they present to the naked eye. A somewhat dark green object will appear rather light in a photograph, while a somewhat light orange-yellow object will appear quite dark. We have only to a.s.sume that the floor of the supposed new crater has a greenish tinge (which is by no means uncommon) to understand why, although it is lost to ordinary vision when the Sea of Vapours is under full illumination, it yet presents in a photograph a decidedly lighter shade than the surrounding region.

I ought to mention that the writer from whom I have quoted says that all the photographs were examined and the different objects in this region identified within forty-eight hours of the time when Dr. Klein's letter reached England. He mentions also that he has himself personally examined them. Doubtless at that time the exact position of the supposed new crater was not known. By the way, it is strange, considering that the name Louis Rutherfurd is distinctly written in large letters upon the magnificent photograph in question, that a selenographer who has carefully examined that photograph should spell the name Rutherford. He must really not a.s.sume, when on re-examining the picture he finds the name spelled Rutherfurd, that there has been any change, volcanic or otherwise, in the photograph.

In conclusion I would point out that another of these laborious crater-counters, in a paper recently written with the express purpose of advocating a closer and longer-continued scrutiny of the moon, makes a statement which is full of significance in connection with the subject of lunar changes. After quoting the opinion of a celebrated astronomer, that one might as well attempt to catalogue the pebbles on the sea-sh.o.r.e as the entire series of lunar craters down to the minutest visible with the most powerful telescope, he states that while on the one hand, out of thirty-two thousand eight hundred and fifty-six craters given in Schmidt's chart, not more than two thousand objects have been entered in the Registry he has provided for the purpose (though he has been many years collecting materials for it from all sides); on the other hand, "on comparing a few of these published objects with Schmidt's map, it has been found _that some are not in it_,"--a fact to which he calls attention, "not for the purpose of depreciating the greatest selenographical work that has yet appeared, but for the real advancement of selenography."

Truly, the fact is as significant as it is discouraging,--unless we are presently to be told that the craters which are not common to both series are to be regarded as new formations.

RICHARD A. PROCTOR, _in Belgravia_.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] To some this may appear to be a mere truism. In reality it is far from being so. If two globes of equal ma.s.s were each of the same exact temperature throughout, they might yet have very unequal total quant.i.ties of heat. If one were of water, for instance, and the other of iron or any other metal, the former would have far the larger supply of heat; for more heat is required to raise a given weight of water one degree in temperature, than to raise an equal weight of iron one degree; and water in cooling one degree, or any number of degrees, would give out more heat than an equal weight of iron cooling to the same extent.

RECOLLECTIONS OF THACKERAY.

In the absence of any complete biography of the late William Makepeace Thackeray, every anecdote regarding him has a certain value, in so far as it throws a light on his personal character and methods of work. Read in this light and this spirit, all the tributes to his memory are valuable and interesting. Glancing over some memoranda connected with the life of the novelist, contained in a book which has come under our notice, ent.i.tled "Anecdote Biographies." we gain a ready insight into his character. And from the materials thus supplied, we now offer a few anecdotes treasured up in these too brief memorials of his life.

Thackeray was born at Calcutta in 1811. While still very young, he was sent to England; on the homeward voyage he had a peep at the great Napoleon in his exile-home at St. Helena. He received his education at the Charterhouse School and at Cambridge, leaving the latter without a degree.

His fortune at this time amounted to twenty thousand pounds; this he afterwards lost through unfortunate speculations, but not before he had travelled a good deal on the continent, and acquainted himself with French and German everyday life and literature. His first inclination was to follow the profession of an artist; and curious to relate, he made overtures to Charles d.i.c.kens to ill.u.s.trate his earliest book. Thackeray was well equipped both in body and mind when his career as an author began; but over ten years of hard toil at newspaper and magazine writing were undergone before he became known as the author of "Vanity Fair," and one of the first of living novelists. He lectured with fair if not with extraordinary success both in England and America, when the sunshine of public favour had been secured. His career of successful novel-writing terminated suddenly on 24th December 1863, and like d.i.c.kens, he had an unfinished novel on hand.

One morning Thackeray knocked at the door of Horace Mayhew's chambers in Regent Street, crying from without: 'It's no use, Horry Mayhew; open the door.' On entering, he said cheerfully: 'Well, young gentleman, you'll admit an old fogy.' When leaving, with his hat in his hand, he remarked: 'By-the-by, how stupid! I was going away without doing part of the business of my visit. You spoke the other day of poor George.

Somebody--most unaccountably--has returned me a five-pound note I lent him a long time ago. I didn't expect it. So just hand to George; and tell him, when his pocket will bear it, to pa.s.s it on to some poor fellow of his acquaintance. By-bye.' He was gone! This was one of Thackeray's delicate methods of doing a favour; the recipient was asked to _pa.s.s it on_.

One of his last acts on leaving America after a lecturing tour, was to return twenty-five per cent. of the proceeds of one of his lectures to a young speculator who had been a loser by the bargain. While known to hand a gold piece to a waiter with the remark: 'My friend, will you do me the favour to accept a sovereign?' he has also been known to say to a visitor who had proffered a card: 'Don't leave this bit of paper; it has cost you two cents, and will be just as good for your next call.' Evidently aware that money when properly used is a wonderful health-restorer, he was found by a friend who had entered his bedroom in Paris, gravely placing some napoleons in a pill-box, on the lid of which was written: 'One to be taken occasionally.' When asked to explain, it came out that these strange pills were for an old person who said she was very ill, and in distress; and so he had concluded that this was the medicine wanted. 'Dr. Thackeray,' he remarked, 'intends to leave it with her himself. Let us walk out together.' To a young literary man afterwards his amanuensis, he wrote thus, on hearing that a loss had befallen him: 'I am sincerely sorry to hear of your position, and send the little contribution which came so opportunely from another friend whom I was enabled once to help. When you are well-to-do again, I know you will pay it back; and I daresay somebody else will want the money, which is meanwhile most heartily at your service.'

When enjoying an American repast at Boston in 1852, his friends there, determined to surprise him with the size of their oysters, had placed six of the largest bivalves they could find, on his plate. After swallowing number one with some little difficulty, his friend asked him how he felt.

'Profoundly grateful,' he gasped; 'and as if I had swallowed a little baby.' Previous to a farewell dinner given by his American intimates and admirers, he remarked that it was very kind of his friends to give him a dinner, but that such things always set him trembling. 'Besides,' he remarked to his secretary, 'I have to make a speech, and what am I to say?

Here, take a pen in your hand and sit down, and I'll see if I can hammer out something. It's hammering now, I'm afraid it will be stammering by-and-by.' His short speeches, when delivered, were as characteristic and unmistakable as anything he ever wrote. All the distinct features of his written style were present.

It is interesting to remark the sentiments he entertained towards his great rival Charles d.i.c.kens. Although the latter was more popular as a novelist, than he could ever expect to become, he expressed himself in unmistakable terms regarding him. When the conversation turned that way, we would remark: 'd.i.c.kens is making ten thousand a year. He is very angry at me for saying so; but I will say it, for it is true. He doesn't like me. He knows that my books are a protest against his--that if the one set are true, the other must be false. But "Pickwick" is an exception; it is a capital book. It is like a gla.s.s of good English ale.' When "Dombey and Son" appeared in the familiar paper cover, number five contained the episode of the death of little Paul. Thackeray appeared much moved in reading it over, and putting number five in his pocket, hastened with it to the editor's room in "Punch" office. Dashing it down on the table in the presence of Mark Lemon, he exclaimed! 'There's no writing against such power as this; one has no chance! Read that chapter describing young Paul's death; it is unsurpa.s.sed--it is stupendous!'

In a conversation with his secretary previous to his American trip, he intimated his intention of starting a magazine or journal on his return, to be issued in his own name. This scheme eventually took shape, and the result was the now well known "Cornhill Magazine." This magazine proved a great success, the sale of the first number being one hundred and ten thousand copies. Under the excitement of this great success, Thackeray left London for Paris. To Mr. Fields, the American publisher, who met him by appointment at his hotel in the Rue de la Paix, he remarked: 'London is not big enough to contain me now, and I am obliged to add Paris to my residence. Good gracious!' said he, throwing up his long arms, 'where will this tremendous circulation stop? Who knows but that I shall have to add Vienna and Rome to my whereabouts? If the worst come to the worst, New York also may fall into my clutches, and only the Rocky Mountains may be able to stop my progress.' His spirits continued high during this visit to Paris, his friend adding that some restraint was necessary to keep him from entering the jewellers' shops and ordering a pocketful of diamonds and 'other trifles; for,' said he, 'how can I spend the princely income which Smith[64] allows me for editing "Cornhill," unless I begin instantly somewhere!' He complained too that he could not sleep at nights 'for counting up his subscribers.' On reading a contribution by his young daughter to the "Cornhill," he felt much moved, remarking to a friend; 'When I read it, I blubbered like a child; it is so good, so simple, and so honest; and my little girl wrote it, every word of it.'

d.i.c.kens in the tender memorial which he penned for the "Cornhill Magazine," remarks on his appearance when they dined together. 'No one,'

he says, 'can ever have seen him more genial, natural, cordial, fresh, and honestly impulsive than I have seen him at those times. No one can be surer than I of the greatness and goodness of the heart that had then disclosed itself.'

Beneath his 'modestly grand' manner, his seeming cynicism and bitterness, he bore a very tender and loving heart. In a letter written in 1854, and quoted in James Hannay's sketch, he expresses himself thus. 'I hate Juvenal,' he says. 'I mean I think him a truculent fellow; and I love Horace better than you do, and rate Churchill much lower; and as for Swift, you haven't made me alter my opinion. I admire, or rather admit, his power as much as you do; but I don't admire that kind or power so much as I did fifteen years ago, or twenty shall we say. Love is a higher intellectual exercise than hatred; and when you get one or two more of those young ones you write so pleasantly about, you'll come over to the side of the kind wags, I think, rather than the cruel ones.' The pathetic sadness visible in much that he wrote sprung partly from temperament and partly from his own private calamities. Loss of fortune was not the only cause. When a young man in Paris, he married; and after enjoying domestic happiness for several years, his wife caught a fever from which she never afterwards sufficiently recovered to be able to be with her husband and children. She was henceforth intrusted to the care of a kind family, where every comfort and attention was secured for her. The lines in the ballad of the "Bouillabaisse" are supposed to refer to this early time of domestic felicity:

Ah me! how quick the days are flitting!

I mind me of a time that's gone, When here I'd sit as now I'm sitting, In this place--but not alone.

A fair young form was nestled near me, A dear, dear face looked fondly up, And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me-- There's no one now to share my cup.

In dictating to his amanuensis during the composition of the lectures on the "Four Georges," he would light a cigar, pace the room for a few minutes, and then resume his work with increased cheerfulness, changing his position very frequently, so that he was sometimes sitting, standing, walking, or lying about. His enunciation was always clear and distinct, and his words and thoughts were so well weighed that the progress of writing was but seldom checked. He dictated with calm deliberation, and shewed no risible feeling even when he had made a humorous point. His whole literary career was one of unremitting industry; he wrote slowly, and like 'George Eliot,' gave forth his thoughts in such perfect form, that he rarely required to retouch his work. His handwriting was neat and plain, often very minute; which led to the remark, that if all trades failed, he would earn sixpences by writing the Lord's Prayer and the Creed in the size of one. Unlike many men of less talent, he looked upon caligraphy as one of the fine arts. When at the height of his fame he was satisfied when he wrote six pages a day, generally working during the day, seldom at night. An idea which would only be slightly developed in some of his shorter stories, he treasured up and expanded in some of his larger works.

While Alfred Tennyson the future Laureate received the gold medal at Cambridge given by the Chancellor of the university for the best English poem, the subject being "Timbuctoo," we find Thackeray satirising the subject in a humorous paper called "The Sn.o.b." Here are a few lines from his clever skit on the prize poem:

There stalks the tiger--there the lion roars, Who sometimes eats the luckless blackamoors; All that he leaves of them the monster throws To jackals, vultures, dogs, cats, kites and crows; His hunger thus the forest monster gluts, And then lies down 'neath trees called cocoa-nuts.

The personal appearance of Thackeray has been frequently described. His nose through an early accident, was misshapen; it was broad at the bridge, and stubby at the end. He was near-sighted: and his hair at forty was already gray, but ma.s.sy and abundant--his keen and kindly eyes twinkled sometimes through and sometimes over his spectacles. A friend remarked that what he 'should call the predominant expression of the countenance was courage--a readiness to face the world on its own terms.' Unlike d.i.c.kens, he took no regular walking exercise, and being regardless of the laws of health, suffered in consequence. In reply to one who asked him if he had ever received the best medical advice, his reply was: 'What is the use of advice if you don't follow it? They tell me not to drink, and I _do_ drink. They tell me _not_ to smoke, and I do smoke. They tell me not to eat, and I do eat. In short, I do everything that I am desired _not_ to do--and therefore, what am I to expect?' And so one morning he was found lying, like Dr. Chalmers, in the sleep of death with his arms beneath his head, after one of his violent attacks of illness--to be mourned by his mother and daughters, who formed his household, and by a wider public beyond, which, had learned to love him through his admirable works.--_Chambers's Journal._

FOOTNOTES:

[64] Of Smith, Elder, & Co., the well known publishers.