and discussion for a week, and every one who
had luckily been at the breakfast was at a premium.

PHOTOLOGICAL FACTS.
IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I.

??s, phõs, light, and its genitive case, ??ròs,
phõtos, of light, are the root whence several
ancient and modern words have sprung.
Phosphorus, in Latin Lucifer or the Light-bringer,
was once the morning star, the planet Venus
when she shines before daybreak and ushers in
the dawn. Phosphorus, now, is a substance so
called because it carries light with it, or is
self-luminous, in distinction to substances which
shine only when they burn with sensible heat,
as wood, coal, candle, oil, and gas.
Phosphorescent bodies—certain stale fish, the tail of the
glow-worm, the head of the fire-fly, centipedes,
and other creeping things at special seasons,
the waves of the sea—are such as give out light
without undergoing appreciable combustion. A
photometer is a measure of the intensity of
light; a photograph is a writing or picture
drawn by the agency of light. Photology may
be taken to be the history, description, and
explanation of the theories and facts relating to
light. With the rapid progress which the
science is making, it is probable that before
long the word "photological" will become as
familiar to our ears as its popular congener,
"geological."

Photological phenomena are made known to
us by what is called the sense of sight, but
which, the more we think about it, assumes
more and more the nature of an intellectual
faculty rather than of a gross corporeal sensation.
As the brain is the instrument and medium
of thought, so the retina of the eye is the instrument
and medium of vision. Wound a man's
retina, he ceases to see; oppress his brain, and
he loses thought and consciousness. Sight is
consciousness, observation, reason, extended and
applied to indefinite distances and depths.
Sight, quite as much as speech, is the means of
interchanging thought, the channel of
communication between soul and soul. Nay, it is more
so. Sight enables us to learn and comprehend
what passed in the minds of the bygone dead.
Their impressions, reasonings, and conclusions,
are treasured up for us in books, which sight
alone permits us to decipher and interpret; for
characters printed in relief, to help the blind to
spell and read, are only an accidental corollary
to the previous original gift of sight. It may
be fairly assumed that no blind man would ever
invent an alphabet. Moreover, without uttering
a word, two pairs of eyes shall exchange
glances and signs conveying a hundred different
meanings.

The sense of hearing allows mind to hold
intercourse with mind, through material,
mechanical ponderable means—the air and the
sound-waves in it which are excited by every
sonorous body. You can often see the vibratory
mechanism which produces sound; as in a
harpstring, the rim of a very large bell, in a
drumhead, a tuning-fork, and many other instances.
And when you cannot actually behold it, its
action is betrayed by the motions of dust or
sand scattered upon the sounding body. You
feel it when the pedal pipe of an organ makes
you tremble by the utterance of its deep
sympathetic note. But sight places us in direct
communication with every visible thing around us,
and more with the souls of our fellow-men,
with the humbler reason and instincts of
animals, with the world of plants, with the living
mass of ocean, and with inert matter mightier
in magnitude than Pelion ten times piled on
Ossa—and all through an imponderable agent,
light, which we cannot conceive to be material,
since it traverses with marvellous rapidity and
without injuring them or leaving a trace, solid
bodies of great hardness and density, diamond,
crystal, glass, and ice. Light may either be an
emanation, a something darted out from the sun
and other luminous bodies, or it may be
undulations in an ether (so subtle that we can hardly
call it material) which must pervade all space,
and what is more difficult to comprehend—
must penetrate all transparent bodies. But
whether emission or undulation be the actual
means by which light is propagated, for us the
grand and blessed fact remains that the Creator
has said, "Let there be light!" There is
light.

It is in the faculty of sight that we make the
nearest approach to the condition of spiritual
beings; whom we figure to ourselves as intelligences
endowed with perception, but unencumbered
with the burden of bodily frames and
frailties. We suppose them to behold, and
watch, and take cognisance; to gaze with adoration
at their Maker's perfections, and to look
down with pity on the sorrows of men; but to
be subject to no really corporeal pain, pleasure,
or infirmity.

Milton, indeed, makes Satan
     ——- first know pain,
And writh'd him to and fro convolv'd,

when Michael's
     ——- sword with discontinuous wound
Pass'd through him. But th' ethereal substance clos'd
Not long divisible.

And
Soon he heal'd; for spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man
In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins,
Cannot but by annihilating die;
Nor in their liquid texture mortal wound
Receive, no more than can the fluid air.
All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear,
All intellect, all sense: and as they please,
They limb themselves; and colour, shape or size
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.

It may be asserted, at any rate, that, of all
our senses, sight is the least sensuous. A
pleasant sight pleases us in quite a different way
to that in which an agreeable perfume, a