Cramoiseau, though so fidgety a person, did not read badly, and his tone imparted more rhythm to the love ode than perhaps it possessed. But one thing struck all these fanatical men, who were more misguided than cruel that such verses could only have been penned by one who was seriously enamoured.

A moment's silence followed the conclusion of the ode; then the German, Hardreich, spoke. "Bah! Paul is out of his senses. He is in He can be of no use to us. Let him go."

love.

"Without killing him?" asked the soft, sad Russian, who had been shedding sentimental tears, but was none the less ready for a little private execution.

"Our rules are formal," yelled the Pole Raczki.

"Every rule has its exception, though," replied the dogmatic German. Here one of the Frenchmen, who was at heart Paul's friend, took him by the shoulders with pretended roughness and shoved him towards the door. "Out you go!" he shouted. "A pretty fellow you are, forsooth! We took you for a man, and we find you a puling baby! Off with you, and don't let us see you again!"

"Stop!" cried Cramoiseau. "I have the key; let me unlock the door. I'm sure I don't want the fellow's blood; let him go and get hanged or married, so far as I am concerned, only don't let him come athwart any of us. Do you hear what I say, Paul Brun?"

"Thank you," answered Paul, rather flurried as he saw the door opened and doubting whether he were not dreaming.

"Then begone," said the little Cramoiseau peremptorily, as he pointed to the street with quivering finger. "Remember that you are disgraced, and that we have turned you out from our society; but we shall have our eyes on you."

"That is of no consequence so long as you keep your hands off," rejoined Paul with an attempt at a joke. At heart he was rather humiliated to be treated with this ignominy, but by the time he had descended the door-step he bethought him that it is a good thing enough when a drama which threatened to end as a tragedy concludes as a farce. Nobody followed him. The door closed behind his back, and he felt that he was free.

"And I owe it all to Rose," he muttered, thinking of his verses, which one of the brethren had confiscated. "Well, now, I will go to Richmond and tell her all about it. I dare say she will laugh, and think my secret was not such a terrible one after all."

Paul Brun did go to Richmond, but on second thoughts he did not tell Rose Cherril of his heroi-comic adventure. He confined himself to assuring her, in Miss Smalway's presence, that he was free, and to asking her if she would marry him during the holidays. To the schoolmistress's speechless disgust no further explanations were vouchsafed her then or afterwards, when Rose, having become a happy wife, came to pay occasional friendly visits to Acacia House with her husband the Mosier.

321

Age of the Sun and Earth.

Raphael. The sun, as in the ancient days,
'Mong sister stars in rival song,
His destined path observes, obeys,
And still in thunder rolls along.

Gabriel. The vex'd sea foams-waves weep and moan,

And chide the rocks with insult hoarse,

And wave and rock are hurried on,

And suns and stars in endless course.-0
-GOETHE.

We have learned how small is our domain in space, but as yet we have scarcely been willing to admit that man's duration in time is as utterly minute, and in a sense insignificant. Yet there is scarcely a feature of our recently acquired knowledge about the relations of the earth in space, which has not its parallel in known facts respecting time and the earth's relations thereto; while the mysteries of space, as yet unfathomed and unfathomable, have their analogues in the mysteries which a thoughtful mind recognises in relation to time, as well in the remote past as in futurity. We may hereafter consider specially in these pages the parallelisms of time and space. At present we note only that the subject we have to deal with illustrates strikingly the manner in which the researches of modern science into space relations lead men to consider also the periods of time during which the objects of their research must have existed in the past and are likely to exist in the future.

In the infancy of human thought it was a sufficient explanation of the light and heat of the sun to suppose that a bright and hot body circled around the earth (or rather round the place inhabited by the observer), coming into view each day in the east, and passing over by the south towards the west. Rejoicing as a giant to run his course, never varying in his circuit round the earth, the sun was regarded either as himself a being of power, or else as representing the energy of a higher power, which had set this glowing mass in the sky, and had appointed its courses. But while on the one hand the sun was regarded as a smaller body than the earth, so unquestionably the duration of the sun was regarded as of necessity less than that of the earth. For ages this earth had endured, without form and void, cold and dark, before the sun was appointed to gladden her with his beams; and though the future was not so clear to men's minds, yet it was generally supposed that the end of the earth would not come while the sun and the moon endured. VOL. XXXVIII.-NO. 225. 16.

The recognition of the vast superiority of the sun over the earth in size was not attained gradually, as some have asserted, but suddenly. The discovery came on men as a revelation. One generation had believed in a central earth, all-important in the universe, as well in space as in time. In the lifetime of the next generation the earth had descended from her high position to become one only and by no means the chief of several small bodies circling round the giant orb of the sun. No longer central in space, she could no longer be regarded reasonably as central in time; in other words, it was no longer reasonable to suppose that her formation however brought about, her progress however longlasting, and her final end however attained, either marked the beginning, progress, and end of time, or occupied a central position in all time. We do not find that men were as ready to accept this conclusion as they had been (no choice, indeed, being left them) in accepting the earth's noncentral position in space. But the inference was undoubtedly the only reasonable and probable one. The earth's history might no doubt occupy a central position in time, precisely as this day on which we write these lines may be exactly midway between the day when life first began on the earth, and the day when life here will finally cease. Yet, while either proposition might be true, one is not more wildly improbable than the other.

With regard to the sun, which had now come to be recognised as exceeding the earth more than a millionfold in size, it was an equally reasonable inference that his duration also far surpassed that of the earth. Of course the substance of either might reasonably be regarded as existent during all time; but the fashioning of the mighty orb ruling over a family of which the earth was but a small member, might reasonably be supposed to have belonged to a far more remote epoch than that of the earth, and his continuance as a sun might as reasonably be supposed likely to outlast not merely by many centuries, but many times, the continuance of our earth as the abode of living creatures.

Men had no positive evidence, however, on these points, so long as they considered only the dimensions of the sun and earth. It was natural to suppose-or rather it would have been natural, for as a matter of fact the supposition was not entertained-that as the duration of mankind far surpasses the duration of a nation, and as the duration of a nation far surpasses that of any individual man, so the duration of the solar system, and therefore of the ruler of the system, must far surpass that of any individual planet. But there was only one way (one general way involving many special methods) of determining whether this was actually the case or not; and the researches of men along this special line of research did not begin till long after the importance of the sun in size had been ascertained. We refer to the inquiry into the processes actually taking place in the earth, in the sun, and in the solar system, and into the evidence respecting the continuance and effects of such processes in the past. Men's ideas on some of these points were almost as

vague at the beginning of the present century (nay, even much later) as had been the thoughts of the men of old times respecting the proportions of the heavenly bodies and their orbits. We find Sir W. Herschel, for instance, adopting and enforcing a theory respecting the sun's condition, and the emission of solar light and heat, which would not account for one week's supply of such sunlight as we actually receive. Still later we find a man like Dr. Whewell, a skilful mathematician and an able physicist, who also, if not strictly speaking an astronomer, was well read in astronomy, maintaining in his Plurality of Worlds the theory that the fixed stars may be mere lights, not mighty masses like our sun— a theory which the modern discovery of the conservation of force shows to be utterly inconsistent with the steady emission of enormous quantities of intensely brilliant light during many thousands of years.

But now the student of science recognises in the sun's constant radiation of light and heat the existence of a store of energy which must have been in some way garnered up during long past ages. As certainly as the constant deflection of the earth from the direction in which she is moving at any moment indicates the existence of a force residing in the sun towards which body that deflection constantly takes place, so certainly does the emission of light and heat from the sun indicate the action of processes in the past by which the necessary energy has been stored up. We know that the sun cannot be the habitable orb girt round by phosphorescent cloud-masses imagined by Sir W. Herschel, any more than it can resemble the stars, as imagined by Dr. Whewell, in being a mere light without any considerable mass or substance. The working of a steam-engine does not more certainly indicate the consumption of fuel, and therefore the prior gathering together of fuel, than does the sun's radiation of light and heat imply the consumption of solar energy, and therefore the prior gathering together of stores of energy.

When this was first recognised, students of solar physics were content to inquire how the observed emission of solar light and heat could be accounted for in such a way as to explain the sun's appreciably unvarying size and mass. They perceived that to regard the sun as a mere mass of burning fuel would by no means suffice. We can measure the quantity of heat that the sun constantly emits, because we can measure the amount received by our earth, which intercepts about one2,300,000,000th part of all the light and heat emitted by the sun. We thus find that in every second of time the sun emits as much heat as would result from the combustion of 11,600 billions of tons of coal. In passing, it may be convenient to notice that each portion of the sun's surface as large as our earth emits as much heat per second as would result from the combustion of a billion tons of coal-a simple and easily remembered relation. Now it is easily calculated from this that if the sun's whole mass consisted of coal, and could burn right out to the last ton, maintaining till then the present rate of emission, the supply would not last more than 5,000 years. As the sun has most certainly been

emitting light and heat for a far longer period than this, the idea that the solar fire is thus maintained is of course altogether untenable. There are, however, many other reasons for rejecting the idea that the sun is composed of burning matter, using the word "burning" in its proper sense, according to which a piece of coal in a fire is burning, whereas a piece of red-hot iron is not burning, though burning hot. In like manner we find ourselves compelled to reject the belief that the sun may be a body, raised at some remote epoch to an intense heat throughout its entire mass, and gradually cooling. For we find that in the course of a few thousands of years such a mass would cool far more than the sun has cooled (if he has cooled appreciably at all) even within the historic period; and we have evidence that he has poured his heat on the earth during periods compared with which the duration of the human race is but as a second amid centuries, while the duration of historic races is utterly lost by comparison.

This brings us to the consideration of evidence which has only in quite recent times been brought to bear on the question of the sun's age.

We know from records left by men of old times that the sun was in their time very much what he is now, though we cannot be altogether certain that he gave out exactly the same amount of light and heat, or even almost exactly the same. Again, from the remains of animals and plants in the earth's crust we can deduce similar inferences. Those animals and plants could not have existed unless the sun had supplied light and heat as at present, though we cannot assert so confidently that he supplied the same amount of either. The possible range of variation may have been greater, so far as evidence of this kind is concerned, than in the case where we have human records for our guidance. But there is other evidence which, while less exact still as to the actual emission of light and heat, ranges over periods of time far greater than could be directly inferred from the examination of fossil fauna or flora. As yet we are not able to form satisfactory estimates of the periods of time necessary to bring about such and such changes in the various races of plants and animals; hence, although we may be quite sure that enormous time-intervals must have elapsed before the races whose remains only are found became changed into the races which are their modern representatives, we cannot definitely assign the duration of these time-intervals, or even at present make the roughest approximation to their length. But there are changes depending on the sun's action whose rate of progress we can satisfactorily measure. We know that processes of change are caused on the earth's surface by the downfall of rain and snow, by the action of frost and ice, of winds and waves, by chemical action, by processes of vegetation, and other causes, all depending on solar activity. Geologists no longer assign the existing irregularities of the earth's crust to causes other than those at present at work, or even suppose that, within the range of time over which their researches extend, causes such as these acted much more actively than they do at present. But it may be noted