only puzzled us: that whether in the flower-
arched lanes, the cactus-planted gardens, or
dusty barrack-square, we were everywhere
being saluted by soldiers and bowed to by
portly officers. We could see clumps of
them watching us from the batteries and,
as we passed the curious arched cafés, groups
of them turning to follow us, with their eyes,
out of sight.

It was not till we were the next day arm-
in-arm on the Gib Alameda, and the band
beginning to strike up, that the reason for
this singular courtesy and attention struck
the sagacious Fluker.

"Why, by Jove," says he. "Blank, I know
what it is made those fellows do the civil
to us so; it was our being put down as
general officers in our passports. I'll be
hanged if they mustn't have thought we were
on an official visit of inspection."

Said I, "Fluker, by Jove, you're right."
And he was right, too. "For once—in
Barbarie."

PHYSICAL FORCE

What we call inanimate matter is not
inanimate in fact; it shows its latent vitality
by transmutations to which there is no
known end. In our manufactories, offensive
offal is converted into beautiful pigments,
and noxious residues are changed into scents
and flavours for sweetmeats. In Nature's
laboratory, gases become water, ice, snow,
and steam; liquids change to heavy solids,
or to masses of invisible but active
vapoir; solids solidify still more firmly, or crystallise,
or rust and decompose, assuming
new forms unrecognisable to the vulgar eye.
The stars send forth light and heat, which
the planets absorb, enjoy and partially
distribute in their turn. This grand united
cosmos is in unceasing motion, integrally
and universally. Powerful agents, whose
existence was only of late divined and
discovered, exert untiring influences
unsuspected as yet. In the universe, then,
there may be temporary repose, but there is
no death-like rest, no cessation of action. A
calm or a lull may come on now and then; a
total stagnation, or an utter syncope, never.
Likening the universe to a living creature,
its heart never ceases to beat, nor the life-
blood to flow in its minutest veins. The
stillness of the earth as we behold it at
rest which gives its charm to evening,
and soothes the mind after the toils of the
day, forms but a dim shadow of that awful
quiet which would exist were matter not
capable of mutual action. In that case there
would be neither heat to cheer, light to
gladden, sound to enliven, nor motion to excite.

But it is easy to conceive a universe whose
matter should be impassive and still, remaining
ever just as it was from all eternity, with
no change, no mutual affinities, no gravitation
of one body towards another, and
towards all the rest, no motions forwards or in
retreat, no revolution on axes or in orbits,
no radiation of electricity or of whatever
constitutes light and heat. The difference
between a dead universe like this, and the
adorable universe in which we are placed,
is caused by the presence of what learned
men have called PHYSICAL FORCES; by which
are understood the various affections of matter
which constitute the main object of
experimental physics, that is, heat, light,
electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity, and
motion.

It is superfluous to tell the reader that the
study of the physical forces constitutes the
main distinction which separates ancient
from modern knowledge, or, that to such
studies the present century owes the miraculous
material progress it has made. And
now, as a culminating triumph of science, we
are informed that the physical forces are
really and ultimately one; or, if not one, at
least sprung from one source, and that they
certainly are correlative, or have a reciprocal
dependence; that though neither of them,
taken abstractedly, can be said to be the
essential cause of the others, yet that either
of them may produce, or be convertible into,
any of the others. "What!" exclaims the
startled novice; "can heat be, or become
motion? Can motion be light or heat?
Can chemical affinity be motion or
electricity?" The philosopher calmly answers,
"Yes; heat may mediately or immediately
produce electricity; electricity may
produce heat; and so of the rest, each merging
itself as the force it produces becomes
developed." This is the position sought to
be established, and really established to
the minds of most men, by an essay, called
The Correlation of Physical Forces, by W. R.
Grove, Queen's Counsel, and Fellow of the
Royal Society. The book has obtained a
European reputation, its third edition having
been translated into French by the Abbé
Moigno. Moreover, a very remarkable
lecture, delivered at the London Institution,
has since been published in the pamphlet
form, The Monogenesis of Physical Forces,
by Alfred Smee, also Fellow of the Royal
Society, and Surgeon to the Bank of England.
The lecture would have attained equal notoriety,
fame, and honour, with the essay, but
for its brevity and its occasional character.
It may attain it yet. The present article,
written to promulgate the views of those
gentlemen throughout a wider public than
they might otherwise reach, is of course
much indebted to them for its substance.

That there exists in nature a principle of
unity ,comprising in its law all cause and effect,
is the great truth which appears likely to be
demonstrated (if it is not already demonstrated)
by the research of modern philosophy. In
physics and in physiology, in mechanics and