"In two days Miss goes to Tours with her aunt and uncle-this good Macvirterre. They have taken their places by the diligence of Lafitte and Caillard. They are thy friends. Papa encourages her going. Here is their card of visit. Go thou also; they will receive thee with open arms. What hast thou, my son ?" Philip looked dreadfully sad. An injured and unfortunate gentleman at New York had drawn upon him, and he had paid away every thing he had but four francs, and he was living on credit until his next remittance arrived. "Thou hast no money! I have thought of it. Behold of it! Let him wait-the proprietor!" And she takes out a bank-note, which she puts in the young man's hand. Sylvia and Elcaren had not very long met at social gatherings, and talked and played chess, before, scarcely with her cognition-silently, and, as it were, in the night-the flood-gates felt the opening pressure, and the tide of her whole life's love set forth in steady flow toward this one man. And so, reader, if you have been in love, as you very probably have, you will see how a girl who had been cool and stately as Diana for twenty-three years, could come to thrill and glow by virtue of a single step, and voice, and touch. She was afraid of herself, she was coming to love him so! How could she, who had "detested" such things, let her hand be retained so long in his the last time they parted? More easily, clearly, than to have drawn it " properly" away. I tell you there is a painfulness almost counterpoising the bliss in that sort of incident. The high reserve of a whole pure maidenhood can not be thrown off, though but partially, with ease, even under rising love's quickening light. You having been in the state presupposed, under the white forehead of young Sylvia Farn-will know how it was with Sylvia after an event ham. And yet the wave of trouble and death and anguish which has flown with such heavy surge and coldness through so many hearts of the land had passed her by, to all outward seeing, quite untouched. like the following. She was, you will remember, in the mood we have just discussed, entered on a passion which, at its full, would have thrown herself and the whole world besides at the feet of this beloved. And yet, back of it all, was the maiden delicacy grown doubly sensitive, and ready to take keen alarm at a word. Sylvia Farnham's mental ailment was of that kind, talking over which the best of us are apt It was a social evening at Mrs. Mayhew's. to shrug a little, and say, "Nonsense!" So The parlors were full-the talk and passing to reluctant we are to admit our belief of things we and fro very brisk. Not specially observed, as do believe. We know how Sylvia Farnham she thought, Elcaren was soon at her side; but might sit bereaved, though death had neither before long a gay little piece of the world, in touched nor threatened the least of her beloved. person of Miss Euphrasia Lance, came between Think of the capacity for human tenderness them in a little breeze of airy, vexatious, yet inand devotion a gentle, clear-headed girl will sinuating de trop-ness, and the result was that garner up from her own nature and our litera-Sylvia found herself, after a brief eye-parley ture in the years which pass between sixteen and twenty-three. And if the time seeming full come-it seeks lavish outlet, and is driven back ashamed, will not the heart sink and quiver under the sickening weight? Sylvia had never been specially in love, though she knew very well that, as American girls go, her wedding bells must ring before many years, if at all—and she thought marriage the "true state,” as we all think, whether we say it or not. Not long ago she had observed among the office-signs of the town a new name, "Philip Elcaren," and by-and-by she began to "include" its owner-a man firm of hand and step, with eyes and voice passing those of most men in clear, kindly breadth and fullness. with her companion, separated from him, and seated at chess, on a thoroughly golden rule principle, with good but prosy and purblind Doctor Akerly, the checkered field before him his world for the time being. For nearly an hour she saw nothing of Elcaren. She was beginning to really chafe at this quiet puppet-handling which the Doctor enjoyed so much, when the voice again reached her ear. Any other one at the same pitch she would simply have heard and not understood; but you know there will be voices for us alone, whose most careless cadence rings clear as silver bells. She could just distinguish Alfred Mayhew's words, though he spoke in a higher key. The first were: "Now, Phil, you may as well be honest, and own you're trapped at last. No girl in her senses could ever have looked and acted that way to a fellow who hadn't made himself pretty definite." Will you tell me the common result of a girl of Sylvia Farnham's stamp seeing much of such a man? The demand of a right soul for virtues like its own being apparently fully met, how about the human instincts the noblest truly feel? What need to go over the old theme wherewith It seemed to Sylvia as though the blood had the sweet singers and ready writers have found all gone out of her heart, for it hardly seemed their best occasion for all times? to quiver in its still suspension, while her whole face glowed furiously. So her burning ears took in the second speaker's words: “How little you know me, Alf, to jump at that style of conclusion! I assure you no word of this kind has ever passed my lips." (But what had not he looked!) "If you knew her as well as I do, you would never have fallen into this mistake. She either wants to be married or wants to flirt, and what they vulgarly call the 'dead set' is her plan of operation. I tell you, Alf, I would not marry Venus herself if that were her style of attack. My ideal of the sex never can stoop quite so briskly nor so low to conquer." Then that was his estimate of her, Sylvia Farnham! How the tide rolled back upon her suffocating heart! How she disengaged herself from Dr. Akerly she never knew; but what remained of that evening she spent in a shaded corner of the deserted dressing-room-not crying, but knowing for the first time what real misery meant. Yet as she donned her hood with the rest you must have looked carefully at her, and known her well, to have told that hers had not been a generous share of the enjoyment of the occasion. At the hall-door she met a form she knew quite too well, waiting, before he went his own way, to bestow her safely in the carriage, which bore her home some distance out of town. What matter if she could not help thrilling under the old look? The one she gave back was as full of gathered and haughty reproach as ever cut keen from eyes voicing an insulted heart. His own glance changed to one of surprised inquiry. But what of it? He knew his part well enough, no doubt. So you see it was quite over. The tide could not well be colder and wider which flowed between her and him. She did not meet him very often, but when she did, that man must have been singularly obtuse who did not see that the ereunt omnes was thenceforth pronounced on all mental intercourse of his as concerned herself. Girls like Sylvia Farnham do not peak and pine over things of this sort. She went about her household tasks, as it were, with more gentleness and efficiency than ever. The only change outside seemed that she was more tender and thoughtful of actual suffering, or possibility of it, than before. Her nimble needles clicked and glittered among the very first which unsheathed themselves, on comfortable deeds intent, for those brave but chilly fellows dwelling for the time being in martial but too airy tents. What if the lines of thought meshed in with every sock all these kind fair fingers are knitting this winter were to become visible and palpable as the homely fabric itself! In and out, tears never shed, and lonesomeness never spoken, thoughts busy and sad as death. Out and in, fancies warm and bright as a mid-summer of paradise-high, tender glows from full-pulsed, healthful hearts. All these very possibly in a single stocking! VOL. XXIV.-No. 141.-C c The too quiet and almost too long days came and went for Sylvia. "Winter's wild birthright" was passed, and now the winter's life was full come in all its storm and cold. Sylvia received a note one day from Miss Katinka Creevy, bustling manageress of half the benevolent societies in town, requesting her presence at the organization and initial meeting of the "Soldiers' Dorcas Society." On the evening named Sylvia set out, without companion except the boy who drove, on her lonely ride to the town. Had her heart been ever so light, the scene of the journey would have taken somewhat from its cheer. The snow stretched out in long ghastly reaches under the dead gray sky, its whiteness only broken by distant strips of forest which lay along the land, as she thought, like dead giants, prone and black-palled. Reaching town finally, she found Miss Creevy's parlor full of a smiling, nimble-handed company, among which she took her place, glancing for a moment at the gentlemen, variously disposed, many of them holding skeins of yarn for ladies to wind, others, in lieu of that, keeping balls in diligent ward. No doubt much of the most invigorating electricity wrought back and forth on the lines so formed. Her eyes sought her work relieved; he was not there-though for that matter had he been a thousand miles away the chill waters between them could not have flowed more coldly than if he had been at her side. For nearly an hour she busied herself with her work and a pleasant lady companion. Finishing the task at length, her hands rested a moment in her lap. Then Miss Creevy's vivid voice: "Miss Farnham, please come and wind this yarn off Mr. Elcaren's hands; every body else is busy." How little Miss Katinka knew, as she waited to supervise her visitor's compliance, how thunder-bolt like her simple request had been! Sylvia took in "the situation," as they say in the papers, at a glance. Most of the company had looked up at Miss Creevy's ting-a-ling voice, and were taking in Sylvia's movements with placid observation. How those eyes would have widened, and those tongues rattled, if Sylvia had acted out her impulse before them! She could not do that; but it was scarcely easier to take the thread from her hostess's hands and wind round after round from these others, whose owner had done her such heart despite, and between whom and herself word even had not passed for months. The company soon resumed their occupation, and Sylvia wound on and on it seemed for hours almost-only vaguely glad the often treacherous thread did not tangle. A little snap, and lo! the supply had ceased, and the end of the yarn had hidden in the skein, and was not to be seen! The gentleman leaned forward for her to regain it, and as she sought futilely, with fingers nearly quivering, spite of her almost fierce effort to keep them firm, she heard a question, as others might have done, but whose two-fold meaning was for her, and understood by her only. "What has made this breach ?" She looked up at him instinctively for the first time, and found his eyes, full and earnest, steadily on her. "Ask yourself, Sir." of fair spirits as the wind stirred softly in their million boughs? and the land no longer grim, but lying with a calm smile-pure, white, undefiled as it were Nature's millennium come? THE YARD-MEASURE EXTEND- “I have done so often, and there is no reply As soon as astronomy had learned to know in me." "Then your mind fails to include a conversation some time ago at Mrs. Mayhew's, with her son." He seemed in surprised reflection. "I certainly remember a talk with young Mayhew; but where in any thing then said offense to you can lie I declare I do not know." "You do not see, I presume”—and her voice was full of indignant pain-"how a lady can hear herself adjudged forward and unmaidenly, nay, desirous of forcing herself upon a man, and yet feel no displeasure?" We can believe the yarn was got in a fine tangle by this time, albeit Miss Creevy, glancing that way just then, wondered, in an undertone, to Dr. Akerly, who was officiating as her holder, how some folks could contrive to snarl and fool over yarn in such a purblind way; whereat the worthy Doctor, who, by dint of holding the skein close to his nose, had not slipped a thread, proudly braced out his yarn, and watched it till his elderly eyes and arms must have ached. Meanwhile Phil Elcaren's memory had run swiftly back, and was sharply reviewing every word of that long-forgotten dialogue. Then he looked mentally around the parlor whose festive garlands had been three months dead-saw Sylvia at chess with the Doctor, and heard himself warding off the green young collegian's accusation as regarded himself and that shallow little flirt, Euphrasia Lance! Eureka! He didn't say the word, but long before that yarn began to reel off smoothly it would have told two young folks' mental states thoroughly. Two-thirds of the great skein had vanished into the growing sphere she held, when, fearing to tire him, she asked: its position, it began to suspect that this earth, with its sun, and moon, and planets, and comets-the whole solar system—is but a speck in the vast firmament of the heavens. The more men worked and thought the stronger grew the conviction that Sirius, the little twinkling star, must be a sun immensely brighter than our own. For they had tried in vain to find out his distance. In vain! The distance always came out infinite. The measuring line placed in the hand of man shrank into nothingness in respect to the whereabouts of the nearest of those little orbs, and astronomy retired abashed. Do you ask me what is the measuring line which man has in his hand to apply to the stars? I shall tell you that it is no small matter as men count smallness. It is two hundred millions of miles -a line long enough, you would think; yet this line actually shrank into nothingness so absolute that, half a century ago, it seemed as hopeful to mount to the stars as to compass their distance with so puny a line. But the thing has been done at last, and triumphantly done. We know the distance of a few of the nearest stars now pretty accurately, at any rate. And I propose to endeavor to convey an idea of how this knowledge has been attained. Well, then, to begin at the beginning, the first line to which all others are referred, the primary unit, is the yard-measure, by which ladies' dress. es are measured-nothing more nor less. It does not concern us to inquire what that yardmeasure is. Suffice it that the legislature provide means to prevent its fluctuation from year to year, or from century to century. Now the yard can readily be multiplied to a considerable extent-for example, into a chain of twenty-two yards-and with this chain a line of three or four miles can be measured on the earth's sur "Shall we not break off now, and throw the face. The yard is thus expanded into miles. rest aside?" "Stop a minute," said he, in a low, quick voice; "the threads have run double almost from the first. If you break off this visible gray one I shall take it the other is snapped beyond repair; otherwise (oh, happy chance!) it will run on goldenly through life, and take us both to wind it side by side!" She did not break the thread; but, after one quick look, wound on and on until, finished, it slipped softly through his fingers. And so Sylvia set out on her journey home over the winter hills. The moon was up in the sky no less than in her heart; and is it wonderful that under the glamour of two moons the trees should have turned from dead giants to harps of Æolus, which seemed touched by hands It is no easy matter, certainly, to measure a few miles on the surface of the earth; but it is possible, and has been done. An extension of this process would, of course, measure a very long line; but this is not necessary. Having once got over a few miles, the yard-measure, and the steel-chain, and all similar appliances are discarded, and the measured line itself is assumed as a new measuring-rod. True, it can not be carried about from place to place. Mohammed can not go to the mountain; so the mountain must be brought to Mohammed. This is done by making direction serve as the evidence of distance. If you measure off on the paper a line a foot long, and take a point somewhere over the centre of it, you will see how the angles of direction from the ends of the line depend drawn round the earth, which shall connect Paris with the Poles: let this girdle be the standard of measure, and let men be sent out to ascertain its amount. A magnificent order, truly! Yet it does seem easy enough to count by thirties and by tens- -to make the months thirty days, and the week ten; but to measure the circumference of the earth, this is a work, a labor! It so happened, however, that the thirty days, and the new sun-dials, and the unscriptural Sabbaths failed to struggle into existence-a higher power protected France from herself; while the measure of the meridians-a work beset with appalling difficulties--was accomplished; and the mètre, the ten-millionth part of the measured quadrant of the earth's circumference, is the national standard throughout France to this day. Enough. We have measured the earth, but we are a great way from the stars still. Our yard-measure has brought us thousands of miles on our journey; but the stars are millions of millions of miles away, and how are we to get at them? We shall see. Remember, then, that, when we had a base-line of a few miles, we could determine the distance of an object on its distance from the line. So, conversely, if a church-steeple, or some other prominent object, be visible from both ends of the line meas. ured on the earth's surface, its distance from either of them can be determined at once by means of angles, without approaching the object at all. You see, then, how we can get a good long line of sixty or seventy miles. Now, as the earth is a sphere or nearly so, if you travel due north a 360th part of the earth's circumference, you will find that the pole star has assumed a position one degree higher in the heavens. Accordingly, if you can measure distances and angles, the determination of the circumference of the earth is reduced to a matter of mere multiplication. The old Indians had got thus far; the old Greeks too. Two hundred and thirty years before the Christian era Eratosthenes, the librarian of the Alexandrian library, observed the meridian height of the sun at Alexandria at the time of the summer solstice, and then set to work to measure the distance up the Nile to Syene, where the granite quarries still show the marks of the chisel that cut out those wonderful obelisks from them. Here he found, or somebody found for him, a telescope ready to his hand -the earliest telescope on record. It was a re-seen from either end, by means of angles alone. flecting telescope, like Herschel's, polished by nature's own machinery. The mirror was the surface of standing water, and the tube was one of those vertical shafts, which, as in Joseph's well, have stood the wear of ages, and are wonderful even in the land of the pyramids and the sphinxes. Far, far down in the bowels of the earth the brighter stars were visible by day. This telescope disclosed the fact that Syene is just under the northern tropic. And so Eratosthenes, like his great benefactor Alexander, conquered the world. He did not weep because there were no more worlds to conquer; for were not the bright orbs, the allies of his first victory, like the Thebans, sure to become an easy prey to his chariot-wheels? But the work of Eratosthenes was done, and they gave him as a reward a mountain in the moon, which bears his name. To be sure, the 250,000 stadia which Eratosthenes estimated as the circumference of the earth, was a rough enough approximation as compared to the precision of modern times. But it was a great work for one man. Since then the nations of Europe have set themselves to the task. One instance deserves mention. In 1791-2, the National Convention of France conceived the magnificent idea of establishing a new standard for every thing-morals, money, and measure. "Let the heavens," they said, "furnish new units of time, and the earth new units of space. Let the week, and the month, and the year, yield up their ancient prerogatives. Let the former history of the world be forgotten, and let all history date from this time. Let the month be divided into thirty days, and let the Sabbath occur every tenth day. Let the day be divided into ten hours, and let new dials be constructed to show them. Let a girdle be In the same way, we get at the distance of the sun, or of a planet, by the longer base-line of the earth itself. We get at it roughly, it must be confessed. Copernicus, Tycho, even Kepler himself, had no idea that the sun is so far from us as he really is. Had the sun been fixed immovably in the heavens, it might have been easy, or, at least, it might have been deemed easy, to compare his distance with the size of the earth. But the sun wanders among the stars and rolls round the earth, and thus seems to defy the efforts of the measurer It was the good fortune of James Gregory to point out a method by which his distance may be determined, spite of his unsteadiness. The orbits of the two planets, Mercury and Venus, lie between the sun and the earth, so that those planets occasionally cross the face of the sun-Mercury frequently, Venus more rarely. It occurred to Gregory that observers at different parts of the earth's surface would witness a transit across different parts of the sun-one seeing it cross the centre, another observing it graze the edge. And, as the time it took in crossing might be readily ascertained in either case, the places at which it crossed would be thereby determined. And thus, knowing the positions of the two places of observation, and the corresponding positions of the projection of the planet on the sun's disk, the determination of the distance of the sun would, by a little help from theory, be reduced to a mere matter of triangles. Perhaps Gregory hardly appreciated the full value of the suggestion he was making. At any rate, nothing followed the publication of his hint for a great number of years. At length, about the beginning of the last century, it assumed, in the mind of Halley, the definite and practicable form which renders it now the corner-stone of astronomy. Halley The solar system is now measured. The distance of the sun is now ascertained with positive certainty. Seven different base-lines, a host of independent observations, all concur in giving the distance of the sun from the earth (in round numbers) as ninety-five millions of miles. It is a grand era in astronomy. What would Copernicus, what would Tycho have said? They, worthy men, great astronomers as they were, never dreamed that the sun is a tenth part as far away. Even Halley, when he proposed this most successful problem, labored under the delusion that he was some thirty millions of miles nearer the sun than he actually was. perceived that the planet Venus was greatly to be preferred to Mercury for the determination of the sun's distance from the earth. His lucid statements and earnest exhortations aroused the whole astronomical world, and a transit of Venus was anxiously awaited. Halley himself, indeed, when he directed attention to the importance of the method, had no hope of living to see it tested. He stood like Moses on the top of Pisgah, and looked on the Promised Land; but to cross the Jordan was not his earthly lot. He had been laid with his fathers many a year before the occurrence of the transit from which he had prepared men to expect so much. At length, in 1761, the looked-for time arrived. Well, we have extended our yard-measure to Now transits, which are of very rare occurrence, a pretty good length now. As the earth goes when they do happen, occur in pairs, at an in- round the sun every year in an orbit nearly cirterval of only eight years. Thus, when, after cular, the position we shall occupy six months anxious waiting, astronomers beheld the transit hence will be just a hundred and ninety millions of 1761, they knew that in eight years they of miles from where we now are. And we can should witness another. It was probably this observe a star from both ends of this line, just circumstance of a second transit to fall back as we observed a steeple previously from the two upon that rendered the observations of 1761 so ends of a field. Our measuring tape for the little worth. That date being past, and the stars is a hundred and ninety millions of miles. occasion lost, the succeeding transit of 1769 was Yet, great as this distance is, so inconceivably all that the world had to rely on for another far away are the stars, that all the refinements century. Had this opportunity been again lost, of modern science were unable, half a century what a different position would our astronomy ago, to deduce any thing about them but this and our navigation have been in from that which negative conclusion-that the nearest of them is they now occupy! Happily, all Europe was at least a hundred thousand times as far from astir. Men were sent out north and south, east us as spring is from autumn, or summer from and west, to make the whole length and breadth winter-a hundred thousand times a hundred of the globe available base-lines. England fitted and ninety millions of miles; no star nearer out an expedition to the South Seas, and placed than that! You can not think of such disit under the command of Captain Cook. Who tances as these the mind is unable to grasp has not read Cook's first voyage? Most of us them. Dobrizhoffer, the Jesuit missionary, tells have devoured it, every part but the account of us that the Abipones of Paraguay, among whom the observation of the transit, the real object of he labored, have no better mode of expressing the expedition. Possibly it would have been numbers above a score or so, than by taking up otherwise had the astronomer Green returned to a handful of sand or grass and exhibiting it. tell his own tale. But it was not so to be. His They had to pass through a deal of schooling to body was consigned to the deep during the home- learn to count up to a thousand. The Professor ward voyage. But his observation was made at Angers, wishing to exhibit to his class the under favorable circumstances, and is invalua- relative magnitudes of the sun and the earth, ble. In this respect Green was happier than poured sixteen pecks of wheat on his lecturesome of his fellow-laborers. The Abbé Chappe table. "This," said he, "represents the sun, erected his observatory in California, and died and one of the grains represents the earth.” If ere his work was well complete. M. Le Gentil we try a similar method we shall not succeed so had been sent out to Pondicherry to observe the well. Let us, however, try. You have some previous transit of 1761; but the winds and the faint idea of three thousand miles, from having waves detained him on ship-board until after painfully measured it on the Atlantic, it may be. the event had taken place. But Le Gentil was The thirtieth of an inch, on the other hand, you a man of spirit, not easily discouraged. Ac- can estimate well enough. It is the dot you cordingly, he resolved to lessen the chance of a place over the letter i, as you write. Well, supsecond disappointment, by remaining at Pondi- pose this dot to represent the distance between cherry until 1769 for the second transit. But, Liverpool and New York; then will the actual alas! alas! after eight years of weary waiting, distance three thousand miles-represent the a little cloud effectually hid the phenomenon interval nearer than which there is no fixed star. from his sight, and Le Gentil had to return to Three thousand miles of dots, when each sepaFrance empty as he left it. Poor Le Gentil! rate dot stands for three thousand miles! Or for him there is no cross of honor in life, no na- you may help your mind, or cheat yourself into tional monument at death. He is like the poor, the belief that you do so, by some such process subaltern who leads the forlorn hope, and perishes in an unsuccessful attack. Let us drop a tear to his memory and that of Green ere we proclaim that the stronghold has fallen! as the following. Light travels with such a velocity, that it would fly round the earth, at the equator, eight times in a second. Yet there is no star so near us but that its light occupies |