two refractions with one interval reflection. A cylinder of glass rings is underpinned with glass rings, and is crowned with a dome of glass rings, and all are upheld by vertical or slightly oblique metal ribs, horizontally connected. Sometimes there are thirtysix or forty of these rings in one apparatus. Any focal light in this magnificent glass cage-six feet in interior diameter, and nine or ten feet highmust shine, exclusively, for the benefit of those outside wanderers who skirt the horizon, and cannot waste its splendors on aeronauts and hovering angels. Star-gazing is under prohibition, and each ray must acknowledge king utility.

There are several important variations from this fixed-light combination, besides the modifications for different orders of fixed-lights. For a revolving lens-light, a regular polygon is assumed as a basis, on which to erect faces of glass refractors and prisms, operating as in the fixed-light, except, that all the light, incident on each face, issues as a single parallel beam, or nearly so. A eentral circular lens, at the level of the focus, is placed in each face, and is so surrounded by ring-lenses as with them completely to fill the rectangle of the face. This rectangle is surmounted by a dome segment of curved prisms, and is extended downward, by several like internally reflecting prisms. All these parts are determined by the condition, that the transmitted rays shall emerge parallelized horizontally as well as vertically. If the primary plan were an octagon, eight such beams would be produced simultaneously. To the whole arrangement, a clock-work gives a regular rotation around a vertical axis, thus bringing the beams successively to bear on an eye in the horizon, which sees a regular series of blazes or long flashes succeeding at stated intervals, characteristic for each light. A considerable duration is essential to the flash, hence the rotation must not be very rapid. There is, however, opportunity to give a considerable variety of distinctly recognizable appearances to different revolving lights, so as to avoid mistaking one for another.

The fixed-light, varied with flashes, is produced by revolving a combination of vertical prisms around a fixed lenslight, so as to parallelize a portion of the horizontally diverging rays, or it

might be made by inserting one face of a revolving-lens apparatus in the fixedlight apparatus, and giving a revolution to the whole. Such a light is seen most of the time, as if a steady fixed one; but a bright flash, preceded and followed by a short eclipse, occurs once during each revolution. This ingenious device of Fresnel gives one of the best characteristic distinctions of a light. There are many cases where the land-action of a light causes the waste of about half the rays. This is in part remedied by what are called holophotal arrangements, in inventing which, Alan and Thomas Stevenson have been distinguished. By placing spherical reflectors or prismatic combinations for effecting a like result, by two interval reflections behind the lamps, the landward rays may be thrown back through the flame, whence they will emerge as if original light issuing seaward. Innumerable devices, modifications, adaptations, and details of lighthouse optical apparatus have been made, to which we cannot take space to allude.

Suffice it to specify the sizes and character of the six orders of lens-apparatus. The first order lamp has four or five wicks, and the lens-apparatus or glass-cage is six feet in internal diameter, and from nine to ten feet high. This is eminently the sea-coast light, and it is adapted to the greatest ranges. The second order lamp has three concentric wicks, and the apparatus is four feet seven inches in inner diameter. The third order lamp has two wicks, and its apparatus is three feet three and one-third inches diameter. The fourth order has one or two wicks, and one foot seven and three-fourth inches diameter; the fifth, one wick, and one foot two and three-fourth inches diameter, and the sixth, one wick, and eleven and threefourth inches inner diameter. These lights may be either fixed, fixed, varied with flashes, or revolving. These distinctions, with those derived from times of revolution, are chiefly relied on, and are quite sufficient, except in some overcrowded localities. Double lights, or two lights, either on the same tower or on two adjacent towers, are sometimes used for distinction; but this mode has the fault of requiring two lights to do what one may be made to accomplish. Besides, at a distance of one mile for each six feet of vertical

separation, two lights run together, and if they are on two towers, not only are they liable to blend at the same rate, but their opening varies with their bearing. Range-lights, consisting of two lights covering vertically to indicate a channel, or other important right line, are of great value in certain cases. Tide-lights, to show the height and stage of tide, are much used in Europe, but not yet in the United States. Thomas Stevenson gives the name of apparent light to his combination, constructed at Stornoway, by which a lamp on the shore illuminates a beacon, supporting a reflecting apparatus 530 feet from the light, whereby the beacon is made to show as a light to a distance of over a mile in a certain sector.

From what has been said, it will be seen that the catoptric and diacatoptric systems of apparatus are the only two generally available. Theoretically, the diacatoptric system has a very great superiority over the parabolic mirror system. Practically and economically, this advantage is equally great, as is proved by a vast array of comparative statistics, and by the fact that every. where, where the subject is understood, lenses are rapidly replacing mirrors, but nowhere so rapidly as in our own country. The gain experienced from substituting lenses for reflectors, in some of the smaller lights of our establishment, has been found to be enormous: indeed, the cost of maintaining reflectors and providing oil and supplies of all kinds, was actually, in these cases, about ten times greater than for the regular supply of lenses, giving more effective lights. When all our lights are fitted with lenses, the quantity of oil consumed will be only from one-fourth to one-fifth what it would be with equivalent reflectors under the old system. Thus a reflector light of ten lamps consumed over 400 gallons yearly, while a fourth order lens only burns about fifty gallons. The importance of this economy will be better appreciated from the fact that our authorized lights would, if all fitted with reflectors, require 5,110 lamps, burning forty gallons each, or 204,400 gallons in all, yearly; while the actual estimate for the year only calls for 148,150 gallons, giving an absolute saving, by the present lenses, of 56,250, which, at $2 25 per gallon, makes $126,562 as the pecuniary saving for a year. Of course, as our supply of lenses is increased, this sum

will undergo a proportionate increase. The oil saving for our 494 lights, in 1854, anticipated from a complete substitution of lenses for reflectors, was estimated at 130,720 gallons, or, at present prices, a value of $394,120. Have we not good reason for pronouncing Fresnel a public benefactor? When the annual advantage to us alone, for a single scientific invention, is thus expressed in hundreds of thousands, we may well demand honor and recognition for those more abstract and recondite fields of investigation whence Fresnel drew his power to become a benefactor. Nor should we here forget to express our admiration for that excellent mastery of glass fabrication and manipulation, and for that tasteful skill in mechanical adjuncts, which has centralized in Paris the manufacture of light-house illuminating apparatus and lamps. Not only patronage but honor is justly awarded to men like Soleil, the mechanical and operative assistant of Fresnel in his inventive career, as also to such as Lepante and Letourneau.

If we have succeeded in conveying a tithe of the interesting information concerning light-house administration, construction, and illumination, which has been at our command, our expectation is fully answered. The superabundance of riches has been a great embarrassment, and the amplitude of the subject has made our effort seem like a hopeless attempt to coerce the towering and expanding genius in the Arabian Nights within his box-prison. A light-house not only epitomizes the arts of the engineer, mechanic, and optician, but it is an exponent of administrative organization; it is an expression of honorable commercial enterprise, it is an embodiment of national majesty, and, prouder than all, it is an untiring assertor of the common brotherhood and united humanity of the nations upon earth. Its friendly invitations, and still more friendly warnings, as, in faithful steadfastness, it shines out over the varying phases of the deep, give to it almost a human and vital interest. The quiet star-light which comes to us from remotest worlds,

testifies to some unknown affinities which bridge the very depths of space; so, when the solitary ocean-rover sees, glimmering along the far horizon, a beacon-star of man's kindling, he knows that humanity, and kindness, and real philanthropy, have there a home.

THE threatened war with England has passed away, as we predicted that it would pass, and the relations of the two countries continue on an amicable footing, where we trust they will long remain. But now that the controversy is over, we wish to direct attention to an incident, evolved in the course of it, which may be instructive to some of the parties concerned. We refer to the fact that the excitement throughout has been mainly confined to the English side. While the London newspapers were declaiming volubly, and with extreme vehemence, against the blood-thirsty determination of the Yankees, to provoke a war at any rate, scarcely a man in this whole country dreamed of the possibility of such a thing, much less of its desirableness. A great majority of us, on the contrary, were very much puzzled to find out what the dreadful pother in the London prints was all about. Not a stock fell in consequence of it-not a soul lost his breakfast. Until the philippics of the Times appeared, the subject did not create any more sensation than some probable skirmish among the remoter Indians, or the menaces of a Union-saving speech. Even after the diplomatic correspondence had been all published, and the very spirited sparring between Mr. Marcy and Lord Clarendon duly appreciated, nobody felt alarm enough to get up a reply to the earnest memorial and remonstrances of the quaking British merchants and manufacturers. All the while in England there was a general apprehension, amounting, in some regions, to a dread of immediate active hostilities.

Now, what was the cause of this dif ference of feeling? Partly the mistaken notions which prevail in England, as to the warlike proclivities of our people -partly, the immense interests which are staked there in American custom and trade -and partly the dependence of public opinion upon one or two leading organs, which, having scarcely any competitors in circulation, may produce what impression they please. But a more efficient, though perhaps less obvious influence than either of these causes. is to be found in the differeat nature of the two governments. Eng

land is, to a large extent, an aristocracy, and the control of public affairs is in the hands of a few men, who, conducting their negotiations in comparative secrecy, may precipitate a war before the country is aware, and even against its real wishes. But in the United States, where the policy of the government is more directly controlled by public sentiments, the people know that a war-and a war of such magnitude as one with England must be-could not be undertaken without their consent. The people of England were disturbed, therefore, because they could not tell what their rulers might do; while the people of this country were "as calm as a summer's morning," because they were assured that so long as they did not themselves desire a war, the occurrence of such a calamity was not probable-that is, not probable as coming from their side. It was the superior responsibility of government among us which gave us superior security.

We

Yet, the British public persist in refusing to see this fact. It has been taught by its travelers and journalists to believe that our democracy is a kind of wild and reckless animal, ever thirsting after somebody's blood-and it is consequently thrown in a fever of excitement whenever it is told that we are looking that way. hope that it will derive from its recent experiences a better knowledge of us, and cease to get so ludicrously discomposed by every idle rumor of trouble with America. There was much good sense. too, in the advice of Mr. Disraeli, in his brief speech on the Crampton affair, when he told his countrymen that they had better make up their minds to the advancing power and greatness of the United States. It will not hurt them, if they do not meddle with it; and the time may come, in the complications of European politics, when they will rejoice in that national strength of ours which they now affect to deprecate and suspect.

-The death of so eminent a literary man as the French historian, Augustin Thierry, is an event which deserves more than a passing remark. He was a pioneer in that new movement of historical science

which has been imparted to it during the present century, and which has conferred so much lustre upon modern genius. Just previous to his time, history, in the true sense, was but little cultivated in France. The fine old chroniclers, from Gregory of Tours, to Comines, had been forgotten, or were used for party purposes; the Benedictines and the Duchesnes had few imitators; the powerful impulse given by Montesquieu and Voltaire had expended itself, and the popular writers had come to be such jejune and shallow compilers as Mezeray, Rapin, Velley, and Anquetil. Remarking this want of truth and animation in history, and the general neglect or perversion of the sources of history, Thierry was among the first to indicate the deficiency and to attempt an improvement of the state of historical study. It is said that he was led to his awakened interest in the subject by perceiving, in the romances of Chateaubriand and Sir Walter Scott, incidents and characters introduced for which he found no authority among the accepted writers on the times involved. Were the romances wrong or were the historians he asked, and in proceeding to determine the question for himself, he discovered that, whatever might be said of the romances, the historians were clearly in error. This discovery put him upon a course of original research, in which he made himself thoroughly familiar with the actual facts, and duties, and relations of the earlier times of France, and the results of which were his brilliant letters on the History of France, which appeared in the Courier Français, about the year 1820. They were written with great beauty, zeal, and vigor; and, though they pushed certain theories, perhaps, to excess, were received with remarkable eclat and success. A few years later they were followed by his Norman Conquest of England, which exhibited even higher powers of historical investigation, sounder judgment, and a more artistic finish. At a later day he resumed his Letters, and, in 1840, issued his Récits des Temps Merovingiens, which crowned his reputation, not only as one of the most accurate and industrious of inquirers, but as a writer of rare force and elegance. What added to the interest and surprise with which these later volumes were hailed, was the fact, that the historian had been smitten with the double calamity of partial blind

ness and paralysis. Yet, the affliction did not diminish his ardor, though it impaired his activity in his favorite pursuit. He somewhere draws an affecting picture of his assiduous toils, in the midst of difficulties, in behalf of science, while he touchingly adds, that they were their own rich reward. As we design. sooner or later, devoting more consideration to the entire circle of Thierry's labors, we must dismiss the subject now with the simple expression of our grateful sense of the value of what he has accomplished, and of our regret at the loss of so distinguished and useful a man. Meanwhile, let the desponding student take courage from this noble passage at the close of the Etudes Historiques. "Blind and afflicted beyond the reach of recovery and hope, I will bear this testimony which cannot be suspected in my circumstances: There is in the world something better than material enjoyments; better than fortune, better than health itself-the ardent love of science!"

-The Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith is the title of a work published by Redfield, and edited, with a memoir, by EVERT A. DUYCKINCK. It consists of an admirable biography of the wit and the divine, compiled from all the most authentic sources, and of selections from Smith's writings. It is a necessary work, excellently done. We say necessary, because the reduction of the mass of literature within some reasonable and practicable compass has now become an important literary labor. Every writer who is worth reading, and, therefore, perpetuating, has written a great deal that is not worth reading; and although, as Southey said, no man likes to have another choose his reading for him, yet he must consent to that choice, or go without reading a great deal that he would be sorry to lose. Besides, this is true mainly of scholars and reading men; the majority of men want only the best things of the best authors. Thus, of the nineteen full-sized octavos of Swift's complete works, how many are known to the mass, who are naturally desirous to know something of Swift? Everybody would read Gulliverbut the temporary political pamphlets are interesting only to the curious. This task of literary selection, however, although now a necessity, demands rare accom plishments. The editor must have a nice knowledge, not only of books, but of

men. He must be, in an unusual sense, a scholar. His notes must restore the form and color of the times with which his author dealt; and his life of the author must be something more than a genealogy and diary-it must be a portrait of the man. Biography, like portrait-painting, belongs to the highest walk of art.

Mr. Duyckinck is equal to his task. He has given a cheerful and vivid picture of the most English of modern Englishmenthe man whose severe good sense, wise humor, catholic charity, united with a total want of imagination, and a constant tendency to a somewhat low view of human nature, entirely free from cynicism, make him a typical John Bull. For, how is it, that, notwithstanding Shakespeare and the poets, John Bull always appears unimaginative? In saying that Sydney Smith inclined to a low view of human nature, we mean the feeling indicated; for instance, by the humorous contempt with which he always treats the Methodists and the Catholics. His argument always assumes that they were a weak, deluded, silly set of people, whom it was folly to treat severely; who might be scorched with sarcasm, but were never to be credited with any lofty moral conviction. He advises the government to invite the disaffected to dinner. He shone at dinners himself, and it would even seem that he thought dinners to be, in most men's minds, the final cause of life; therefore, his argument runs: Let a government dine its enemies well, and they will wipe their mouths, afterwards, its friends. John Bunyan, for instance, or John Wesley.

He

The force of his peculiar logic must have been irresistible to the pure English, middle-class mind. Sydney Smith was worth a seventy-four to England. was equal to a dozen police brigades, and all the justices of the peace and quorums added to them. He was a great public benefactor. But the government could never find the place for him. They had plenty of places for nobodies. Look, now, at the bench of English bishops, and reflect that the man of the modern English Church, who most truly represented its spirit, who was also a man of most noble nature, and enlarged and liberal mind, a good Samaritan in every way, was left to live on in poverty, and finally reached a small clerical preferment. We do not say

that a clergyman ought not to be the best man he can possibly be, without any consideration of the worldly advantage; we only ask why an ungrammatical bigot gets to be archbishop of Canterbury, and the man who has every requisite for the office of bishop is quietly ignored? Is it because there is an ecclesiastical as well as political "circumlocution office?" Would it facilitate the reply to say that it is for the same reason that old women are sent to command armies? Sydney Smith, certainly, did not advance rapidly in church preferment; but with equal certainty, no man ever made more cheerful fun of his poverty, or was gayer under greater difficulties. To read his life is as refreshing as to contemplate a good deed. Mr. Duyckinck has admirably done what everybody will thank him for doing.

-Paul Ferroll is another publication of Redfield's. It is "a Tale by the Author of IX Poems by V." and is a very handsome reprint from a fourth London edition. It is a remarkable tale-full of passionate energy and development, and almost without a superfluous word. Every novel-reader should know it. Every reader, curious in psychological revelations, will be fascinated by it. It is a book of the same Kind of general interest as Bulwer's "Eugene Aram," but of an infinitely profounder reach. Eugene Aram deals only with the phenomena of a life affected by a murder of the grossest character. It is a purely superficial tragedy. Paul Ferroll is a great intellect dissected; the processes of a supreme will laid bare; a will and an intellect which have superseded conscience. It is the picture of a character without moral sense; a supreme and sub. lime selfishness, whose theory of the universe begins and ends in itself. The story makes you think of Goethe. You find yourself saying, "Goethe might have written Paul Ferroll." Possibly you find yourself asking, "Could Goethe have been Paul Ferroll?" We do not await the reply; we only commend this story as a piece of wonderful literary art, in symmetry and strength, and a work of marvelous psychological audacity. It is a tale of terrible interest. Godwin's "Caleb Williams" is a bauble beside it. The story is told with restrained power. The mind of the reader apprehends the catastrophe long before it comes, as in sultry days you feel the coming