Nay, boys, ye love me-all of jasper, then!
'Tis jasper ye stand pledged to, lest I grieve
My bath must needs be left behind, alas!
One block, pure green as a pistachio-nut,
There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world-
And have I not St Praxed's ear to pray
Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts,
And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs ?
-That's if ye carve my epitaph aright,
Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word,
No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line-
Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need!
And then how I shall lie through centuries,
And hear the blessed mutter of the mass,
And see God made and eaten all day long,
And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste
Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!

The portraiture of selfish egotistic men was never taken in hand more successfully than by Robert Browning. He commonly selects them from exceptional orders of society-monks, kings, or nobles of high rank-but the features are strongly marked, and recognisable enough by all attentive readers. Here is a pretty speech for a widower Duke to make to the ambassador who comes from him whom His Grace hopes to call father-in-law.

MY LAST DUCHESS.

FERRARA.

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive; I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf' by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps

Frà Pandolf chanced to say: Her mantle laps
Over my Lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat;' such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart... how shall I say? . . . too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the west,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace-all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men-good; but
thanked

Somehow... I know not how . . . as if she ranked
My gift of a nine hundred years' old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech-(which I have not)-to make your will
Quite clear to such a one, and say: 'Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark'-and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse
-Een then would be some stooping, and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir! Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me. Who does not pity the future Duchess, although we never hear her name, or know whether she be beautiful or young?

Of the supposed evil passions of the Cloister-like enough, however, to exist, where antagonistic natures are forced into close companionship throughout existence-there has been surely never painted a more terrible picture than this which followsSoliloquy of the Spanish Cloister.

GR-R-R-there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims-
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!

If I trip him just a-dying,

Sure of heaven as sure can be, Spin him round and send him flying Off to hell, a Manichee?

Or, my scrofulous French novel,

On gray paper with blunt type ! Simply glance at it, you grovel

Hand and foot in Belial's gripe: If I double down its pages

At the woeful sixteenth print, When he gathers his greengages, Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

Or, there's Satan !-one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture

As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia

We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine.
'St, there's vespers! Plena gratia

Ave, Virgo Gr-r-r-you swine!

Singularly enough, this bitter satirist of men and morals, with so evident an enjoyment in the use of the lash, can be as charmingly humorous as Dickens himself; and we instance that author designedly, since inanimate objects and animals are by both writers as often made the subjects of humour as human beings. In the famous story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, whose dulcet strains led all the rats that plagued the town into the river Weser, Mr Browning assures us that there was one rat, stout as Julius Cæsar, who swam across and lived to carry to Rat-land home his commentary.' This fortunate creature describes the rat-paradise which the deceptive musician conjured up to allure his four-legged brethren to destruction.

At the first shrill notes of the pipe,
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,
And putting apples, wondrous ripe,
Into a cider-press's gripe:

And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks,
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks;
And it seemed as if a voice

(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out: O rats, rejoice!
The world is grown to one vast drysaltery!
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon !
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,
All ready staved, like a great sun shone
Glorious scarce an inch before me,

Just as methought it said: Come, bore me !-
I found the Weser rolling o'er me.

Throughout many of Mr Browning's poems there runs a sardonic vein of thought, which has application enough to modern and home matters, though evoked by an old-world or foreign subject. There is (or was but lately) a political sect in this country, who might, for instance, have seen an admirable reflection of themselves in this passage from The Flight of the Duchess.

And he came back the pertest little ape

That ever affronted human shape;

Full of his travel, struck at himself.

You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways

Not he! For in Paris they told the elf

That our rough north land was the Land of Lays,
The one good thing left in evil days;
Since the mid-age was the heroic time,
And only in wild nooks like ours

Could you taste of it yet as in its prime,
And see true castles with proper towers,

Young-hearted women, old-minded men,

And manners now as manners were then.
So, all that the old dukes had been, without knowing it,
This duke would fain know he was, without being it;
'Twas not for the joy's self, but the joy of his shewing it,
Nor for the pride's self, but the pride of our seeing it,
He revived all usages thoroughly worn out,

The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them

torn-out.

And chief in the chase his neck he perilled,

On a lathy horse, all legs and length,

With blood for bone, all speed, no strength.-
They should have set him on red Berold,
With the red eye slow consuming in fire,
And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire!

Without wishing to draw a comparison between two great poets (and, indeed, for our own part, quite agreeing with the public voice as to which is the greater), it is observable that Browning most succeeds where Tennyson most fails. The satire of the latter is feeble by the side of that we have quoted, while he has scarcely any appreciation of the ridiculous, and could no more have written such a poem as that which follows than could Calvin or Louis XIV.

Plague take all your pedants, say I!
He who wrote what I hold in my hand,
Centuries back was so good as to die,
Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land;
This, that was a book in its time,

Printed on paper and bound in leather, Last month in the white of a matin-prime, Just when the birds sang all together

Into the garden I brought it to read,

And under the arbute and laurustine Read it, so help me grace in my need, From title-page to closing line. Chapter on chapter did I count,

As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge; Added up the mortal amount;

And then proceeded to my revenge.

Yonder's a plum-tree, with a crevice

An owl would build in, were he but sage;
For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis
In a castle of the middle age,
Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;

When he'd be private, there might he spend
Hours alone in his lady's chamber:

Into this crevice I dropped our friend.

Splash, went he, as under he ducked

-I knew at the bottom rain-drippings stagnate; Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked

To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;
Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf,
Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis ;
Lay on the grass, and forgot the oaf
Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.

Now, this morning, betwixt the moss
And gum that locked our friend in limbo,
A spider had spun his web across,

And sate in the midst with arms a-kimbo;
So, I took pity, for learning's sake,

And, de profundis, accentibus lætis,
Cantate! quoth I, as I got a rake,
And up I fished his delectable treatise.

Here you have it, dry in the sun,

With all the binding all of a blister,

And great blue spots where the ink has run,
And reddish streaks that wink and glister

O'er the page so beautifully yellow

Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks! Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow? Here's one stuck in his chapter six !

How did he like it when the live creatures
Tickled and toused and browsed him all over,
And worm, slug, eft, with serious features,

Came in, each one, for his right of trover; When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face Made of her eggs the stately deposit,

And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet.

All that life, and fun, and romping,

All that frisking, and twisting, and coupling, While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping, And clasps were cracking, and covers suppling! As if you had carried sour John Knox

To the playhouse at Paris, Vienna, or Munich, Fastened him into a front-row box,

And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic.

Of our selections from these Selections, there would be no end, if we extracted all that pleased us; but it behoves us already to apologise for the length to which they have run. We have surely set forth samples sufficient to shew the richness and variety of the mind of Robert Browning. He has uttered dark sayings on his harp, long enough, and it is fit that all should begin to understand what he has got to say worth hearing. Never did oracle more need a prophetess, than did Robert Browning an interpreter, and these sibylline leaves will doubtless flutter far and wide. For our own part, we have done our best to draw the tardy attention of the Public to the words of a

true Poet.

SOLAR CHEMISTRY. THE connection between the two words written above may be new to some of our readers; but a comprehension of their meaning, as they are thus joined together, and an appreciation of the results they have to tell us, will well repay any one for the trouble of examination.

It is known to most persons of ordinary education, that one of the main objects of the science of chemistry is to detect the presence of one or more of the various known elementary substances in any compound supposed to contain them, though in quantities too small to be detected by the unassisted senses; and to ascertain the presence of these elements, various tests have been discovered, more or less reliable in their operation. Whatever, therefore, increases the number, variety, and accuracy of these, forms a very important addition to the utility of the science of chemistry. These tests have hitherto been mainly the employment of known elementary substances, whereby certain reactions have been produced, indicative of the presence or absence of the particular elements of which the analyst is in search; or new and known combinations have been formed by the introduction of the testing element, whereby is indicated the presence of the desired constituents.

But of late years the attention of chemists has been drawn to another test of a totally different nature: it is one dependent upon the properties of light. To make this clear, we must briefly refer to the experiment by which Sir Isaac Newton first established the truth of the composition of white light. It is pretty generally known that this great philosopher, upon allowing a small portion of sunlight to enter into a dark room through an orifice in a window-shutter, and pass perpendicularly through the edge of a prism, found that these rays of light, after emerging from the second side of the prism, were bent upwards and dispersed, producing no longer a mere pencil of white

rays, but a series of coloured ones, which being received upon a white screen on the opposite side of the room, gave the appearance of the colours ordinarily seen in a rainbow. The boundaries of these were not very accurately defined, but they could be roughly divided into seven different colours; namely, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, which are popularly termed the prismatic colours. The result thus visible upon the screen is termed the solar spectrum.

More accurate students of the science of optics were not content with this somewhat rough classification, and they subjected the spectrum to closer examination. For this purpose, the light was admitted through a very narrow slit in the shutter, instead of through a circular opening, so that the light might proceed from only one portion of the sun. The spectrum was also made to fall upon a refracting telescope, so placed that the image of the spectrum should fall upon the common focus of the objectglass and eye-piece. Then there appeared no longer the mere colours, but certain well-defined dark lines, at various intervals and various breadths, and formed into groups containing from one to sixty. A German, named Fraunhofer, was, in 1815, the principal observer of these lines, and noticed the position of about six hundred of them. From him, they have been called Fraunhofer's lines. Since his time, other scientific men have given increased attention to the solar spectrum, especially Professor Kirchhoff of Heidelberg. This savant having viewed the spectrum under superior instruments, and with increased dispersion, by having made the light to pass through four prisms, has been able to make out about two thousand lines, and mapped these out both in position and brilliancy in an engraved representation of them, which is said to be beautiful beyond description.

Besides receiving the light direct from the sun, it was observed that if the sun-light be reflected, as from the moon or Venus, and a spectrum be obtained from either of these bodies, there is found to be the trum was obtained by direct solar light. The spectra same arrangement of dark lines as when the specof some of the most brilliant of the fixed stars were then examined, and it was found that there were dark bands seen different from those in the solar spectrum. The difficulty of observing these spectra is of course very great; but this part of the subject has been taken up by the astronomer-royal, and no doubt further results will be obtained.

from the gases of various elementary substances; and Experiments were also tried with lights produced when from the light of any one of them, as sodium, for example, a spectrum was obtained, there appeared this remarkable phenomenon: it was found not to contain Fraunhofer's lines, but two very fine bright yellow lines. These exactly occupied the position of two conspicuous dark ones in the solar spectrum, and the rest of the field was perfectly dark. The be invariably the test of the presence of sodium in presence of these bright yellow lines was found to the vapour; and such is the delicacy and perfection of the test, that it has been proved by Professor Kirchhoff that the presence can be detected of even so small a quantity as the one-hundred-and-eighty-millionth of a grain in the gas which colours the flame and produces the spectrum. Indeed, the minuteness of this which, from the bluish-gray and red lines which they test enabled the professor to discover two new metals, respectively emitted, he called casium and rubidium. Ordinary analysis had never even suggested their existence. Similar experiments have been tried with other metals, such as platinum, iron, &c.; and in all

cases it has been found that the light given off by the vapour of each metal furnishes its own peculiar spectrum, and produces bright lines exactly tallying in position with some of the known dark lines in the solar spectrum, but not interfering with any of the bright lines produced from the light of any other metal. If two elements be brought at the same time to influence the light which is to produce the spectrum, the spectrum resulting from both will contain precisely the same bright lines that were found in the spectra produced from the separate metals.

In order to shew the exact coincidence, in position, of the bright lines in the spectra from metallic vapours with the dark lines of the solar spectrum, the experiments which have been just described were so arranged that the solar spectrum might occupy one half, and the metallic spectrum the other half of the field of view of the telescope: it was then found that there was a perfect coincidence of the bright lines in one with certain of the dark lines in the other, so that the one set seemed, as it were, a mere prolongation of the other.

Again, when a tolerably bright solar spectrum was formed, and a sodium flame was interposed between the aperture for the admission of the light and the prism, the two bright yellow lines of the sodium spectrum completely overlapped the dark lines of the solar spectrum. Upon admitting, however, the full intensity of the sun-light to shine through the sodium flame, the dark lines then appeared through the sodium lines with great clearness. The professor then exchanged the sun-light for the oxy-hydrogen or Drummond-light, which, as many of our readers may have seen, gives a most intense light by the combustion of a piece of lime by a flame produced by the ignition of hydrogen and oxygen mixed in due proportions, meeting in a small chamber, and passing through an aperture about one-tenth of an inch in diameter. This light gives of itself a spectrum containing no dark lines; but when its light was allowed to fall through the sodium flame, dark lines were seen on the spectrum in the position of the yellow sodium lines. How was this? A theory soon suggested itself to the professor, which, if true, would quite account for the above phenomenon; and it was this-that the same sodium flame which has the power of emitting bright lines upon its spectrum, has also the power of absorbing rays of the same degree of refrangibility as those which it emits, and while allowing all other rays to pass through, leaves dark lines in the spectrum, in lieu of the rays which it has absorbed. In confirmation of this theory, Professor Roscoe, the translator of Professor Kirchhoff's work, in giving a course of Lectures on spectrum analysis in the Royal Institution of London, exhibited the following experiment. A glass tube containing a little metallic sodium was exhausted of air, and then closed. When the tube was heated, the sodium rose in vapour, and filled part of the empty space. When the vapour was viewed by ordinary white light, it appeared quite colourless; but when seen by the yellow light of a sodium flame, the vapour cast a deep shadow upon a white screen, thus shewing that it did not allow the yellow rays to pass through.

We now come to the main deduction from these facts, and to the theory which gives the name of our heading, 'Solar Chemistry.' For if the interposition of a sodium flame in a Drummond-light, which gives no dark lines in its spectrum, produces dark lines where the sodium would of itself produce bright lines, thus indicating the absorption by the sodium of certain rays proceeding from the Drummond-light, may not the presence of the dark lines, which in the solar spectrum occupy the position of the sodium yellow lines, be similarly accounted for, namely, by their having been absorbed by the interposition of a vapour containing sodium between the body of the sun and the surface of the earth? In like manner, the vapour

of iron gives a very large group of bright rays, which, when compared with the lines of the solar spectrum, tally most completely with a familiar group of these lines. Hence, we conclude that the rays of light from the sun, which contained iron, and would, if uninterrupted, have made bright lines in their spectrum, have been intercepted by the vapour of iron, and have suffered absorption, so that they produce dark lines in the very spot where the light from the vapour of iron would have produced a similar series of bright lines. Where, then, are these vapours of iron, sodium, &c., which thus intercept certain rays proceeding from the body of the sun? That they are present in our own atmosphere, at least in sufficient quantities to produce the observed effects, is à priori improbable; especially when we know that these dark lines of the solar spectrum do not appreciably alter when the sun is near the horizon, and when, therefore, its rays must pass through a larger portion of our atmosphere than ordinary. We hence conclude that the vapour of iron, sodium, &c., is in the solar atmosphere. Similarly, it can be proved that there are present in the solar atmosphere the vapours of all other metals, whose spectra give bright lines corresponding to some of the dark lines in the solar spectrum. This is found to be the case with calcium, magnesium, sodium, and chromium. Nickel is present also, but not so strongly marked. Cobalt seems undetermined. Barium, copper, and zinc appear only in small quantities; but the following have been sought for by the same methods, and not found to be present, namely, gold, silver, mercury, aluminium, cadmium, tin, lead, antimony, arsenic, strontium, and lithium.

Hence we arrive at a considerable knowledge of the constitution of the sun. We may add, that though it is not thereby proved, yet it is rendered very probable, that, according to the nebular hypothesis, the body of the sun has been cooling down from the state of vapour to a state of comparative solidity; for, upon this supposition, the body of the sun would contain the same elements as the vapour by which it is surrounded; and this, as we have seen, would exactly explain the very interesting spectrum phenomena to which we have called attention.

DROWNED IN HARBOUR. No more the music of the summer wave,

No more the foam-white sea-gull sailing by,
Calls back the smile that boyish beauty gave,
Or wakes the slumbering brightness of his eye.
Yet though no flowers of spring may blossom there,
The coral clasps him in its rosy arms;
The pearl-drop twinkles in his briny hair,
And many a bush-weed wreathes its wavy charms;
And oft as Twilight drops her starry veil,

The toiling fisher, as he homeward rows,
There rests awhile to tell the tearful tale,
And point where youth and innocence repose.

So early gone, and yet so early blest!

With us he needs not now the churchyard sod; We have our storms to meet, and earth's unrest, But he is in the haven with his God!

All communications to be addressed to 47 Paternoster Row, London, accompanied by postage-stamps, as the return of rejected contributions cannot otherwise be guaranteed.

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by all Booksellers.

AT DR SWISHEM'S.

6

Ir is not generally known among mathematicians, that the fuller a thing, the more obvious is the void therein, and the more pressing the necessity for immediately supplying that void. This is a fact, however, well understood by the proprietors of new periodicals. The air has long been darkened by their flying columns, and yet projectors of fresh serials are ever found to exclaim, with the heroic Greek: What of that? Let us fight in the shade.' This sort of literary property is still by courtesy called Popular, notwithstanding that to be popular, in a strictly grammatical sense, it is essential that the periodicals in question should possess a circulation. Their number is always on the increase, although they are individually very short-lived. The general issue is continuous, but a solution of continuity rapidly occurs in each particular case. The public of the Bi-weekly Butterfly-that is to say, the hundred and forty persons who take it in-are left after its eleventh issue, or so, without any literary organ, and with a mystery upon their minds which not even time itself will unravel. They will never know, for certain, whether Sir Bohan de Blublases did succeed in carrying off Alice Harebell from the arms of her poor but honourable lover, Walter Two-shoes, or not. They may conjecture what they like, but they will never be informed by the only person who is in possession of the actual facts. That gentleman has been already retained to write another romance of startling interest for the Tri-weekly Tadpole, which will, in its turn, try weakly for existence for a month or two, and then perish with equal suddenness, or be amalgamated with the Nightly Novelist, profusely illustrated.

says he—and, I must say, with a great deal of reason -'when nobody will ever know anything about it? I don't care a farthing about the dénouement myself. All the good people might be put to death to slow music, and all the bad people inherit the titles and estates, for what I care. As for the virtuous Florinda, I have no very high opinion of her, for my part, and would just as soon that she were garrotted as not. My readers may have their aspirations about these matters, but I confess I have none. However, matters have never gone nearly so far as this with any of my productions. For beginnings of novels, mind ye, I don't knock under to any man in England, or for bringing in an illustration, when your proprietor may wish to make any wood-cuts useful he may have by him; but I can't say what sort of hand I should make in the winding-up of a story, because I never tried. The four-and-thirty popular periodicals with which I have been connected perished young.'

And at this Fitzball will put his handkerchief (if he happen to have one) to his eyes-for he is not without some humour-and ask whether I have seen the only hope that is now left to him-a little bantling, born but yesterday, and named the Bi-daily Bodkin, a family organ, devoted to useful recipes and tales of terror.

There is law for everything, and surely an action ought to lie for restitution of literary rights on the part of readers who have thus been deprived of their narrative. It is true that the proprietors of the deceased periodical are ruined men, but they were probably that before they started it, and because a man is ruined he should not be permitted to commit an intellectual fraud. Who pays for all these clouds of serials? Certainly not the public, for they don't take them in; certainly not the proprietors, for they rarely have any money. My own belief is, that they are somehow persuaded into being by the buttermen, who eventually purchase the entire issue at some

Does anybody desire to see a new periodical? Would anybody weep if nineteen-twentieths of those which at present exist should perish simultaneously? Why, then, O why, are we every week informed that a serial publication has been projected to supply an admitted want in cheap literature, and will appear on the first Saturday of the ensuing month. Of course, it supplies nothing of the kind; of course, it is the merest imitation of one or other of the classes already