Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864», sayfa 16
Just so far as the people of Europe understand the nature of our armed controversy, they will understand that we are pleading their cause. Nay, if the mass of our Southern brethren did but know it, we are pleading theirs just as much. The emancipation of industry has never taken effect in the South, and never could until labor ceased to be degrading.
We should be unreasonable to demand the sympathy of those classes which have everything to lose from the extension of the self-governing principle. What we have to thank them for is the frankness with which they have betrayed their hostility to us and our cause, under circumstances which showed that they would ruin us, if it could be done safely and decently. We shall never be good friends again, it may be feared, until we change our eagles into sovereigns, or they change their sovereigns for a coin which bears the head of Liberty. But in the mean time it is a great step in our education to find out that a new order of civilization requires new modes of thought, which must, of necessity, shape themselves out of our conditions. Thus it seems probable, that, as the first revolution brought about our industrial independence of the mother-country, not preventing us in any way from still availing ourselves of the skill of her trained artisans, so this second civil convulsion will complete that intellectual independence towards which we have been growing, without cutting us off from whatever in knowledge or art is the common property of Republics and Despotisms.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES
Heat considered as a Mode of Motion; being a Course of Twelve Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, by JOHN TYNDALL, F.R.S., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
The readers of the "Glaciers of the Alps" have made the acquaintance of Professor Tyndall as an Alpine adventurer, with a passion for frost and philosophy, and a remarkable ability both in describing his mountain-experiences and in explaining the interesting phenomena which he there encountered. All who have read this inimitable volume will testify to its rare attractions. It is at once dramatic and philosophic, poetic and scientific; and the author wins our admiration alike as a daring and intrepid explorer, a keen observer, a graphic delineator, and an acute and original investigator.
In the new work on Heat we are introduced to Professor Tyndall upon the lecturing-platform, where he follows up some of the inquiries started in the "Glaciers" in a systematic and comprehensive manner. His problem is, the nature and laws of Heat, its relation to other forms of force, and the part it plays in the vast scheme of the universe: an imposing task, but executed in a manner worthy of the gifted young successor of Faraday as Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
A comparison of the volume before us with any of the previously published treatises on Heat will afford a striking and almost startling proof of the present activity of inquiry, and the rapid progress of scientific research. The topics treated are the same. The first seven lectures of the course deal with thermometric heat, expansion, combustion, conduction, specific and latent heat, and the relation of this force to mechanical processes; while the remaining five treat of radiant heat, the law and conditions of its movement, its influence upon matter, its relations to other forces, terrestrial and solar radiation, and the thermal energies of the solar system. But these subjects no longer wear their old aspect. Novel questions are presented, starting fresh trains of experiment; facts assume new relationships, and are interpreted in the light of a new and higher philosophy.
The old view of the forces, which regarded them as material entities, may now be regarded as abandoned. Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, etc., which have hitherto been considered under the self-contradictory designation of "Imponderable Elements," or immaterial matter, are now, by common consent, beginning to be ranked as pure forces; having passed through their material stage, they are regarded as kindred and convertible forms of motion in matter itself. The old notions, that light consisted of moving corpuscles, and that heat, electricity, and magnetism were produced by the agency of various fluids, have done good service in times past; but their office was only provisional, and, having served to advance the philosophy of forces beyond themselves, they must now take rank among the outgrown and effete theories which belong to the infantile period of science. This change, as will be seen, involves the fundamental conceptions of science, and is nothing less than the substitution of dynamical for material ideas in dealing with the phenomena of Nature.
The new views, of which Professor Tyndall is one of the ablest expositors, are expressed by the terms "Conservation and Correlation of Forces." The first term implies that force is indestructible, that an impulse of power can no more be annihilated than a particle of matter, and than the total amount of energy in the universe remains forever the same. This principle has been well characterized by Faraday as "the highest law in physical science which our faculties permit us to perceive." The phrase "Correlation of Forces" is employed rather to express their mutual convertibility, or change from one to the others. Thus, heat excites electricity, and, through that force, magnetism, chemical action, and light. Or, if we start with magnetism, this may give rise to electricity, and this again to heat, chemical action, and light. Or we can begin with chemical action, and obtain the same train of effects.
It has long been known that machines do not create force, but only communicate, distribute, and apply that which has been imparted to them, and also that a definite amount of fuel corresponds to a definite amount of work performed by the steam-engine. This means simply that a fixed quantity of the chemical force of combustion gives rise to a corresponding quantity of heat, and this again to a determinate amount of mechanical effect. Now this principle of equivalency is found to govern the transmutations of all forms of energy. The doctrine of the conservation and correlation of forces has been illustrated in various ways, but nothing has so powerfully contributed to its establishment as the investigation of the relations of heat to mechanical force. Percussion and friction produce heat. A cold bullet, struck upon an anvil by a cold sledge-hammer, is heated. Iron plates, ground against each other by water-power, have yielded a large and constant supply of heat for warming the air of a factory in winter; while water inclosed in a box, which was made to revolve rapidly, rose to the boiling-point. What, now, is the source of heat in these cases? The old caloric hypothesis utterly fails to explain it; for to suppose that there is an indefinite and inexhaustible store of latent heat in the rubbing iron plates is purely gratuitous. It is now established, that the heat of collision, and of friction depends, not upon the nature of the bodies in motion, but upon the force spent in producing it.
When a moving body is stopped, its force is not annihilated, but simply takes another form. When the sledge-hammer strikes the leaden bullet and comes to rest, the mechanical force is not destroyed, but is simply converted into heat; and if all the heat produced could be collected, it would be exactly sufficient, when reconverted into mechanical force, to raise the hammer again to the height from which it fell. So, when bodies are rubbed together, their surface-particles are brought into collision, mechanical force is destroyed, and heat appears,—the heat of friction. The conversion of heat into mechanical motion, and of that motion back again into heat, may be familiarly illustrated in the case of a railway-train. The heat generated by combustion in the locomotive is converted into motion of the cars. But when it is desired to stop the train, what is to be done? Its mechanical force cannot be annihilated; it can only be transmuted; and so the brakes are applied, and the train brought to rest by reconverting its motion into heat, as is manifested by the smoke and sparks produced by the friction. Now, as heat produces mechanical motion, and mechanical motion heat, they must clearly have some common quality. The dynamical theory asserts, that, as they are both modes of motion, they must be mutually and easily convertible. When a moving mass is checked or stopped, its force is not annihilated, but the gross, palpable motion is infinitely subdivided and communicated to the atoms of the body, producing increased vibrations, which appear as heat. Heat is thus inferred to be, not a material fluid, but a motion among the ultimate atoms of matter.
The acceptance of this view led to the highly important inquiry, What is the equivalent relation between mechanical force and heat? or, how much heat is produced by a definite quantity of mechanical force? To Dr. Joule, of Manchester, England, is due the honor of having answered this question, and experimentally established the numerical relation. He demonstrated that a one-pound weight, falling through seven hundred and seventy-two feet and then arrested, produces sufficient heat to raise one pound of water one degree. Hence this is known as the mechanical equivalent of heat, or "Joule's Law."
The establishment of the principle of correlation between mechanical force and heat constitutes one of the most important events in the progress of science. It teaches us that the movements we see around us are not spontaneous or independent occurrences, but links in the eternal chain of forces,—that, when bodies are put in motion, it is at the expense of some previously existing energy, and that, when they come to rest, their force is not destroyed, but lives on in other forms. Every motion we see has its thermal value; and when it ceases, its equivalent of heat is an invariable result. When a cannon-ball strikes the side of an iron-plated ship, a flash of light shows that collision has converted the motion of the ball into intense heat, or when we jump from the table to the floor, the temperature of the body is slightly raised,—the degree of heat produced in both cases being ascertainable by the application of Joule's law.
The principle thus demonstrated has given a new interest and a vast impulse to the science of Thermotics. It is the fundamental and organizing conception of Professor Tyndall's work, and in his last chapter he carries out its application to the planetary system. The experiments of Herschel and Pouillet upon the amount of solar heat received upon the earth's surface form the starting-point of the computations. The total amount of heat received by the earth from the sun would be sufficient to boil three hundred cubic miles of ice-cold water per hour, and yet the earth arrests but 1/2,300,000,000 of the entire thermal force which the sun emits. The entire solar radiation each hour would accordingly be sufficient to boil 700,000,000,000 cubic miles of ice-cold water! Speculation has hardly dared venture upon the source of this stupendous amount of energy, but the mechanical equivalent of heat opens a new aspect of the question. All the celestial motions are vast potential stores of heat, and if checked or arrested, the heat would at once become manifest. Could we imagine brakes applied to the surface of the sun and planets, so as to arrest, by friction, their motions upon their axes, the heat thus produced would be sufficient to maintain the solar emission for a period of one hundred and sixteen years. As the earth is eight thousand miles in diameter, five and a half times heavier than water, and moves through its orbit at the rate of sixty-eight thousand miles an hour, a sudden arrest of its motion would generate a heat equal to the combustion of fourteen globes of anthracite coal as large as itself. Should it fall into the sun, the shock would produce a heat equal to the combustion of five thousand four hundred earth-globes of solid coal,—sufficient to maintain the solar radiation nearly a hundred years. Should all the planets thus come to rest in the sun, it would cover his emission for a period of forty-five thousand five hundred and eighty-nine years. It has been maintained that the solar heat is actually produced in this way by the constant collision upon his surface of meteoric bodies, but for the particulars of this hypothesis we must refer to the book itself.
Professor Tyndall opens the question in his volume respecting the share which different investigators have had in establishing the new theory of forces, and his observations have given rise to a sharp controversy in the scientific journals. The point in dispute seems to have been the relative claims of an Englishman and a German—Dr. Joule and Dr. Mayer—to the honor of having founded the new philosophy. Tyndall accords a high place to the German as having worked out the view in an a priori way with remarkable precision and comprehensiveness, while he grants to the Englishman the credit of being the first to experimentally establish the law of the mechanical equivalent of heat. But his English critics seem to be satisfied with nothing short of an entire monopoly of the honor. The truth is, that, in this case, as in that of many others furnished us in the history of science, the discovery belongs rather to an epoch than to an individual. In the growth of scientific thought, the time had come for the evolution of this principle, and it was seized upon by several master-minds in different countries, who worked out their results contemporaneously, but in ignorance of the efforts of their fellow-laborers. But if individual claims are to be pressed, and each man accorded his aliquot share of the credit, we apprehend that America must be placed before either England or Germany, and for the explicit evidence we need look no farther than the volume of Professor Tyndall before us. The first clear connection and experimental proof of the modern theory was made by our countryman Benjamin Thompson,—afterwards knighted as Count Rumford by the Elector of Bavaria. He went to Europe in the time of the American Revolution, and, devoting himself to scientific investigations, became the founder of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Davy was his associate, and, so far as the new views of heat are concerned, his disciple. He exploded the notion of caloric, demonstrated experimentally the conversion of mechanical force into heat, and arrived at quantitative results, which, considering the roughness of his experiments, are remarkably near the established facts. He revolved a brass cannon against a steel borer by horse-power for two and one-half hours, thereby generating heat enough to raise eighteen and three-fourths pounds of water from sixty to two hundred and twelve degrees. Concerning the nature of heat he wrote as follows, the Italics being his own:—"What is heat? Is there any such thing as an igneous fluid? Is there anything that with propriety can be called caloric? We have seen that a very considerable quantity of heat may be excited by the friction of two metallic surfaces, and given off in a constant stream, or flux, in all directions, without interruption or intermission, and without any signs of diminution or exhaustion. In reasoning on this subject, we must not forget that most remarkable circumstance, that the source of the heat generated by friction in these experiments appeared to be inexhaustible. It is hardly necessary to add, that anything which any insulated body or system of bodies can continue to furnish without limitation cannot possibly be a material substance; and it appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in these experiments, except it be MOTION."
In style, Professor Tyndall's work is remarkably clear, spirited, and vigorous, and many of its pages are eloquent with the beautiful enthusiasm and poetic spirit of its author. These attractions, combined with the comprehensiveness and unity of the discussion, the range and authenticity of the facts, and the delicacy, originality, and vividness of the experiments, render the work at once popular and profound. It is s classic upon the subject of which it treats.
My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field. A Book for Boys. By "CARLETON." Boston: Ticknor and Fields.
The literature of the war has already reached the dimensions of a respectable library. The public mind at the instant of the outbreak felt an assurance that it was to be one of the memorable epochs of mankind. However blinded to the significance of the previous conflicts in the forum and at the ballot-box, there was a sudden and universal instinct that their armed culmination was a world-era. The event instantly assumed its true grandeur.
The previous discussions seemed local and limited. They were squabbles, we fancied, among ourselves, which did not touch the vitals of our system, and in which the world without had neither lot nor interest. Even when the fires of debate and division waxed hotter and hotter, and began to break out in violent eruptions in Congress, Kansas, throughout the South, and especially at Harper's Ferry, we still said, These are political conflicts, mob-violences, raids, abnormal eccentricities, which will pass quietly away, when the dynasty is changed, and the reins of power are fairly grasped by the successful rival.
Europe sends her doctors to witness our dissolution. They go South and see the mustering of arms and the intensity of purpose, and coming North find the whole community at their usual pursuits and pleasures, regarding the controversy as a mere political breeze, and the results in which it is beginning to issue as but the waves that ever for a short season roll fiercely after the storm.
This indifference was one of the best signs of our health. We felt such confidence in ourselves, that we distrusted no future, however cloud-cast. The Constitution, sold for a penny-ha'penny in New York, suggested to the mildly sarcastic humor of Dr. Russell that it had better be a little more valuable in tact, if not so cheap in form. He did not see how the People were the rightful masters of the Constitution, as Mr. Lincoln had said they were of Congress and the Courts, and that they would take care of it and of themselves when the hour really came.
We did not see it. Blindness in part had happened unto the whole nation. The shot at Sumter cleft the burdened head of Jove. A Nation was born in a day. It saw instantly the length and the breadth, the height and the depth of the conflict. It was not a struggle about Slavery and Abolitionism, about the white race and the black, about union and disunion; but it was a war for the rights of man, here and everywhere, to-day and forever. The "glittering generalities" of our Declaration and Constitution suddenly blazed with light, while the dull particularities of mere routine faded as a waning moon before the glowing sun. These were lost in the fiery splendors of the grand principles in which alone they live and move and have their being. They will reappear, meekly shining in their humbler sphere, when the great light shall withdraw its intenser rays, the object of their blazing being accomplished. The body of the war is Union, its soul Democracy: union for the sake of democracy, and democracy for the sake of the world. Abolitionism is simply a stepping-stone to the perfection of the Idea in our society.
The instinct that apprehended the full significance of the struggle was universal: Europe saw it in the same flash that revealed it to us. The lightning of the opening gun, or ever its accompanying thunder could follow, leaped, like the lightnings of the final judgment, in an instant from west to east, and illumined the whole earth with its glare.
In such an awakening it was inevitable but that literature should share. And biographies, histories, pictorials, and juveniles, in Europe and America, testify to the general consciousness. Into this last-named class the little book at the head of this notice modestly essays to enter. Had it put on airs and spread itself out into the broad-margined and large-lettered octavo, it might have stood in libraries as a worthy compeer of the ablest chronicles. Such a presentation would not have been beyond its desert, and would have been more consistent with the author's type of mind. Yet his simplicity, fidelity, and straightforwardness will make him a better guide to advanced youth than the too prattling habits of mere child-writers. They ever incline to the baby-talk style of composition,—"mumming," as the tavern-woman proposed, the bread and milk which they set before their youthful readers. "Carleton" ever treats his boy-readers as his intelligent equals, and considers them capable of understanding the common language of books and men. It is refreshing to read a book for boys that is not, as most of this class are, while pretending to be juvenile, actually senile.
The work opens with the story of the causes of the war, in which the author gives the old and new counterblasters a quid, or, as they will doubtless prefer to call it, a crumb of comfort. He traces the origin of the war, not to Slavery, but to Tobacco. The demand for the new drug was general throughout Europe. Virginia was the main source of supply. The vagabondish farmers would not labor. Negroes arrive, and European appetite creates American Slavery. Two hundred years after, the descendants of these slaveholders fancy that a like European demand for another plant will insure this Slavery a national sovereignty. Tobacco thus verifies Charles Lamb's unwilling execration. It is not Bacchus's only, but Slavery's "black servant, negro fine," and belongs, after all, to that Africa which he says "breeds no such prodigious poison." The Union lovers of "the Great Plant" may be called to decide between their country and their cigar. Will patriotism or the pipe then prevail? We tremble for our country in that conflict of duty and desire. It is odd that the two favorite plants of the South should thus be charged with our war. These innocent leaves and blossoms, babes in the wood, are made the bearers of our iniquities. Cotton and Tobacco are the white and black representatives of the vegetable races. Perhaps some fanciful theorist may show from this fact, that not only all the human races, but those of the lower kingdoms, are involved in this struggle, and, as in the greater warfare of Earth and Time, so in this, its condensed type, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in common with its head and master.
The anti-tobacco doctrine of the opening chapter gives place to a clear statement of the gathering and organizing of the great army; which is followed by descriptions of the Battles of Bull Run, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh, the Siege of Island No. 10, and the capture of Memphis. The narratives are illustrated with diagrams which set the movements of the contending forces clearly before the eye. No description of the first great battle of the war is superior to that here given. It is a photographic view of the field and the combatants. We see where the Rebels posted their divisions, how our forces were stationed, how we attempted to outflank them, how they left their original positions to protect the assailed outpost, how the battle raged and was decided around that point, and how a single mistake caused our first repulse, and, for lack of subsequent generalship, produced the shameful and disastrous rout. Russell's description is far less clear and concise. "Carleton" confirms McDowell's military scholarship, but not his generalship. It is one thing to set squadrons in the field, it is another to be equal to all the emergencies of the strife. He traces our defeat to a single mistake, not alone nor chiefly to the arrival of reinforcements. He puts it thus. Two regiments, the Second and Eighth South Carolina, get in the rear of Griffin's and Rickett's batteries. Griffin sees them, and turns his guns upon them. Major Barry declares they are his supporters. Griffin says they are Rebels. The Major persists in his opinion, and the Captain yields. The guns are turned back, the South-Carolinians leap upon the batteries, and the panic begins.
The book is especially valuable as it describes from personal observation the first battles of General Grant. It has no better war-pictures than the taking of Fort Donelson and the Battle of Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing. These were the beginnings of Grant's reputation. In them are seen the elements of his character, writ larger in the more renowned deeds of Vicksburg and Chattanooga. They are strangely alike. In both he is surprised by the enemy at daybreak, and while his soldiers are asleep. In both he is at first driven from his camp, losing largely of men and guns. In both, after a repulse so severe that the Rebel generals fancy the day is theirs, and while their men give themselves up to the spoiling of his tents, Grant, abating no jot of heart or hope, rearranges his broken columns, and plants his guns in new positions, in both cases on a hill rising from a ravine, whose opposite summit is crowned with the Rebel artillery. In each case the Rebels cross the ravine and attempt to scale the hill, and in each case are repulsed with horrible slaughter. The parallel stops not here. Grant in both battles, as soon as he has stayed the advance of the enemy, assumes the offensive. The bugles sound the charge, and the Rebels are driven back through our despoiled camp, and within their own intrenchments. These first-fruits of the great general of the war show the difference between him and the long-time pet of the nation, McClellan. The latter could not move an inch without supplies as numerous and superfluous as those of a summer sauntering lady at a watering-place. Grant does not wait for Foote's gunboats to coöperate at Donelson, but begins the fight the instant he reaches the fort. When the boats are disabled and retire, he does not wait for them to refit and return; nor when the enemy fails to rout him, does he rest on his well-earned laurels till reinforcements arrive, but turns upon them instantly and drives them with headlong fury from their spoils and defences. There is no Antietam or Williamshurg procrastinating. That very afternoon his exhausted troops storm the fort, and the night beholds him the master of the outer works, and with his guns raking the innermost fortifications. This heroic treatment of the disease of Rebellion, with all its loss, results in far less fatality than the rose-water generalship of the Peninsula, as the statistics of the Eastern and Western armies will show.
The peculiar qualities of General Grant, as seen in these battles, are coolness, readiness, and confidence. He is not embarrassed by reverses. He seems the rather to court them. He prefers to take arms against a sea of troubles. He thinks little of rations, ambulances, Sanitary, and, we fear, Christian Commissions, but much of victory. These creature and spiritual comforts are all well enough in their place, but they do not take batteries and redoubts. McClellan is the pet of his soldiers, Grant the pride of his. McClellan cares for their bodies, Grant for their fame. McClellan kills by kindness, Grant by courage.
This battle-book for boys will hold no unimportant place in the war-library of the times. Its style is usually as limpid as the camp-brooks by which much of it was written. In the heat of the contest it becomes a succession of short, sharp sentences, as if the musketry rang in the writer's brain and moulded and winged his thoughts. It is calm in the midst of its intensity, and thus happily illustrates by its popularity that self-control of the nation so well expressed by Hawthorne,—that our movements are as cool and collected, if as noisy, as that of a thousand gentlemen in a hall quietly rising at the same moment from their chairs. The battle-grounds of Vicksburg, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and Chattanooga, all of which he saw, or by subsequent study of the field has made his own, and descriptions of which are promised in a companion-volume, will find no truer nor worthier chronicler.
A Compendious History of English Literature, and of the English Language, from the Norman Conquest. With Numerous Specimens. By GEORGE L. CRAIK, LL.D., Professor of History and of English Literature in Queen's College, Belfast. 2 vols. 8vo. New York: Charles Scribner.
This is a thorough and an exhaustive work, having for its subject that which must be of perpetual and increasing interest to all those colonists who, in different parts of the world, are founding nations which shall inherit the imperial language, and therefore will be entitled to claim a share in the literary glories of the mother-land. Professor Craik is favorably known as the author of works that depend chiefly upon industry for their worth; and this elaborate production must add to the esteem in which his learned labors have long been held in many quarters. He has left no portion of his subject untouched, but affords to his readers a full and lucid account of every part of it, according to the materials that are at the command of scholars. If defective on any points, it is owing to the want of authorities. His survey of English literature includes not only all writers of the first class, but all who can be regarded as of any considerable distinction; and he has noticed many names which have no pretension to be considered as even of second-rate importance, but concerning which general readers may be curious, though their curiosity may not carry them so far as to induce them to hunt up their works. A book of reference, such as this book must be to most of those who shall use it, is bound to make mention of writers whose names are of rare occurrence, but who had their parts, though they may have been insignificant ones, in building up their country's literature. Of the great writers, Professor Craik devotes but little space to Shakspeare and Milton, because their works are in everybody's hands; while from Chaucer and Spenser, Swift and Burke, ample specimens are given, the author assuming that their writings are but little read. Indeed, he declares that the great poets and other writers even of the last generation have already faded from the view of the most numerous class of the educated and reading public,—and that scarcely anything is generally read except the publications of the day. He correctly remarks that no true cultivation can be acquired by reading nothing but the current literature. This, he says, "is the extreme case of that entire ignorance of history, or of what had been done in the world before we ourselves came into it, which has been affirmed, not with more point than truth, to leave a person always a child." No doubt; but we think the learned Professor overrates the extent of that neglect of the literature of the past of which he complains,—for the editions of the works of writers long dead, published in the last twenty years, are numerous, and we know that books are not printed for people who do not care for them. The number of readers of contemporary works is small, if we compare those readers with the population of any given country; but there are more readers now than could be found in any other age, not only of the books of the day, but of the books of the past.
