Throughout this volume of choice poetry | written, perhaps, the only work which the are scattered many passages which the fastidious Gray would care to read, if he pencil of Hunt or of Millais might nobly should once more visit this mortal sphere. render to the eye; and it is not unlikely In all these writers we find exquisite alluthat our future exhibitions will testify to sions to the deeds and court of Arthur, its inspiring influence. But there is little and till now we might have had occasion need and small encouragement. There is to regret that one of the mighty three little need, we say; for the book itself is had not appropriated the theme entirely an illuminated poetic missal; it makes to himself. It is now done by that true pictures to the imagination which the "heir of fame," the author of the present graphic art can only faintly realize. And Idylls. It is much as if the Father of small encouragement; for the poet's English Poetry had himself performed it: images have already taken possession of for though, like every master of the art, the mind, and the chances are that the Mr. Tennyson has a style and a region of his artist's conception will not answer to the own, his genius has much in common with reader's. With respect to the last scene the copious and imaginative muse of Geofof all, closing with the departure of the frey Chaucer. What of his writings can great Pendragon to his mysterious doom, not be paralleled out of the book of Chauwe may safely pronounce that the most cer will be found matched in the yet cunning hand must fail in the attempt to nobler and far richer page of Milton. realize it. Its awful beauty lies in a more subtle region than any which the painter can command.

It is easy to see that Mr. Tennyson has made this theme his own, even if he should return to it no more, nor summon the dread hero from his long trance of centuries in the dim Vale of Arvalon. Who now will read “Prince Arthur, in Ten Books," although it was one time actually popular in England? Small credit, however, is due to our author for superseding the wooden epic of that blind, obtuse, and every way respectable old knight and 'pothecary, Sir Richard Blackmore; who sounded all the shoals of dullness, as Wolsey those of honor; who either was, or might, or would, or should have been the laureate of that age of lead; and whose "heroic poem" (Heaven save the mark!) has hardly served the purpose of a paste-board imitation to keep a place upon our shelves till the true book came warm and glowing from the hot-press of the nineteenth century. It is little, we say, to have pushed this thing aside, but it is something more to have filled out the glorious hints of Chaucer, and realized the poetic dream of Milton; and to have

We need hardly say that we recommend this work as a rare treat and precious study. It is all true poetry and pure. If we could pour it from the page into a vial, and hold it between the sunlight and our eyes, how it would sparkle and give out! If we could shed it drop by drop upon the turf, how soon would the grass assume a brighter green, and all the air be filled with summer perfume! No matter that we can not do this. It will answer every magic purpose of the kind if we lay it up, line by line, like "sprigs of summer," to sweeten and to charm our memories; and then, like the fabled euphrasy, it may serve to purify our daily vision, giving fresh beauty to the face of nature, and discovering new attractions in the form and gait of virtue. We can all read the simple language of this poem, and almost at all times. When Chaucer is too obscure, and even Milton a trifle too difficult and grave, we can pass by the immortal Flower and Leafe, and put aside Comus with a gentle reverence, to take up this book of pure and pleasant Idylls; and even the child_between our feet will listen spell-bound as we read.

From the British Quarterly.

PHENOMENA

O F

RAINDROPS.*

No water, no vegetables. No vegeta- town with a view to subjugate the dust. bles, no animals. No animals, no men. He had a force-pump mounted on wheels, The due irrigation of the earth is a point with a stumpy barrel to hold the fluid, a of vital importance in the adjustments of stumpy hose to direct the stream, and a creation. The machinery by which this stumpy lever to expel it from the mais accomplished is complex, and in many chine. Stationing his apparatus at a parrespects extremely recondite; but viewed ticular point, he slowly scattered the as a great apparatus for pumping up wa-liquid over the ground within range of ter and sprinkling the surface of the pla- the jet, and then shifting his quarters, pronet, it is impossible to conceive of a hap-ceeded to operate on a new space, until a pier or a more effective contrivance.

gurgling in the tub announced that the For the better comprehension of the receptacle was exhausted. Away he subject, let us venture on a trifling suppo- trudged to a cistern, dragging his engine sition. In the interior of some continent, after him, and then with some effort-we just on the spot where an old map-maker thought a little groaning-drew fourteen would have planted an elephant and castle big pails of water, with which he replenfor want of true topographical material, ished his reservoir of rain. Returning to there lies a farm, which is far removed the area, our Aquarius executed a little from lake and river, and at best but sting- more irrigation, but it was obviously as ily supplied with springs or wells. There poor an apology for a shower as a peal of has been no rain for several years. How sheet-iron thunder at a theater is for one is the poor proprietor to keep it in culti- of those echoing crashes which seem to vation? Noted as the agricultural mind tear the firmament asunder. By the time is for discontent-always complaining of that one portion of the ground was symeteorological hardships and indulging in ringed, another was nearly dry; here and philippics against the skies he would there were streaks and patches which had doubtless avail himself of his privilege of been left untouched; in fact so superficial grumbling to the fullest extent, and might was the sprinkling the place had received, perhaps be disposed to abandon his ill- that Beau Brummell, who professed to used freehold in despair. To dig a long have caught cold when shut up in a cofcanal for the purpose of conveying water fee-room with a damp stranger, might from the nearest stream, and then to fur- have bivouacked on the spot without inrow his fields with innumerable little chan-curring a twinge of rheumatism. Toiling nels for its distribution, would be as tedi- at this rate, thought we, if the whole popous and elaborate a process as it would ulation of England were converted into be to plow up all the corn-fields of Great drawers of water and workers of pumps, Britain with penknives, or reap them with they would scarcely suffice to souse a sinscissors. It would be ridiculous to think gle county and maintain it in a state of of moistening his acres by means of wa- vegetable prosperity. tering-carts, and insane to attempt it by means of gigantic_squirts. Not many days ago, we watched a man who was watering a spacious area in a fashionable

* An Essay on the Causes of Rain, and its allied Phenomena. By G. A. ROWELL, Honorary Member of the Ashmolean Society. Oxford. 1859.

The Rain Cloud: or, an Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers, and Uses of Rain in various Parts of the World. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1846.

Now nature takes all this trouble off our hands. Whilst the owner of our imaginary farm is puzzling his brains to discover how he shall procure the fertilizing fluid-comforting himself meanwhile with many agricultural growls-she is preparing for him a rich and gratuitous supply. Far off-it may be hundreds or thousands of miles away-vapor is ascending from some great expanse of liquid, or from some humid tract of land. Water is the

life's blood of the world. To keep it in | tish acre yielded from two to three thoucirculation is not less needful for the sand gallons in twelve hours. In hot health of the planet, than is the flow of countries, after the soil has been refreshed the red rivers through our veins for the by showers, the emanations will of course health of man. But as the fluid always be much more copious. And not only seeks its level, and finds it in the ocean, does the ground perspire thus freely, but how is it to be brought back and scattered it must be remembered that vegetables, over the high grounds, or hoisted to the as well as animals, are constantly dissummits of the mountains? How, too, charging their moisture into the atmoshall it be freed from the salts and other sphere. The former are extremely sudoingredients it may have imbibed in the rific. The aqueous matter transpiring soil, or found in the sea, and thus return through their pores may sometimes be to its duty in a pure and uncontaminated seen hanging in drops, often mistaken for condition? dew, at the extremities of their leaves. The rate of exudation with them must also be controlled by the warmth and humidity of the air, but Dr. Hales found that some cabbages which were subjected to experiment gave off one pound three ounces during the day, whilst some sunflowers, which are still more famous hands at perspiration, threw out one pound four ounces during the same interval. Men, too we dare not say ladies are extremely prone to this process. Not less than two pounds of moisture are daily expelled from the skin and lungs of most individuals; and if a person happens to be flung into a particularly deliquescent mood by stress of heat and exercise, he may contribute five pounds to the atmosphere within the four-and-twenty-hours. Were this rendered visible, every one would appear to be enveloped in a little cloud. “I

The magnificent process of evaporation is the first step which is taken for the farmer's relief. Since water is a fluid of considerable gravity, being eight hundred and sixty times heavier than air, (at a temperature of sixty degrees at the level of the sea,) it is necessary that it should be rendered portable through the atmosphere. This object is accomplished by converting it into vapor through the agency of heat. The ocean has in fact been called a great still, and the sun may be regarded as the great distiller. But because water when placed in a pan over the fire does not pass into steam, properly so called, until it reaches a temperature of two hundred and twelve degrees, we must not suppose that it refuses to vola tilize at all lower degrees of the thermo metric scale. On the contrary, it gives out vapor at every stage, though at a tar-remember," says Watson, "having been dier rate, and of feebler tension. Even ice and snow will waste away in an atmosphere cooled below the freezing point; for Boyle found that an icicle weighing two ounces, when poised in a balance in the evening, lost ten grains by morning; and Howard ascertained that a circular patch of snow, five inches in diameter, threw off one hundred and fifty grains -equal to a thousand gallons per acre--may shortly reäppear as the tender dew, in the space of a single January night.

Of course the great sheets of water on the globe are the reservoirs from which our supplies of vapor are primarily extracted. Dr. Halley calculated that the quantity brewed by the Mediterranean alone, during twelve hours of a summer's day, amounted to not less than fifty-two hundred and eighty millions of tons. The moisture exhaled from the land must necessarily vary with the humidity as well as the temperature of the spot; but from experiments tried under different circumstances, Dr. Watson estimated that a Bri

greatly heated and fatigued in ascending the ladders from the bottom of the copper mine at Ecton. When I got to the top, I observed by the light of a candle a thick vapor reeking from the body, and visible around it to the distance of a foot or more." Yet such is nature's wonderful alchemy, that these same effusions-the sweat of sea and land, of herb and beast and man

the fattening shower, or the limpid gush from the mossy fountain. Reckoning the mean annual evaporation all over the globe at thirty-five inches, it has been computed that the total quantity of water poured into the air would fill a cistern ninety-four thousand four hundred and fifty cubic miles in capacity. This estimate, however, founded upon Dalton's data, is assuredly too low, for the mean annual issue of rain from the clouds all over the earth is now calculated at five feet.

But, secondly, the simple rise and fall of these exhalations on the spot where

cargo of vapor, and be deprived of about nine degrees of caloric, it must throw overboard one fourth of its load, or if reduced by twenty-one degrees, one half. Its tonnage, we may say, is lessened by every decrement of heat. The discarded moisture will then appear in a visible shape, and if sufficiently condensed, may descend in the form of rain. In fact, whenever a humid current encounters a colder stream of air, or enters a chillier tract of sky, or whenever the atmosphere is in too watery a mood to receive further accessions of vapor, the surplus will be rejected, and must manifest itself either as mist, fog, cloud, dew, rain, hail, or snow.

produced would do nothing for our impa- | therefore, any current of air heated to tient farmer in the interior. The aqueous 80° should start on its journey with a full particles must be conveyed from the seas, and set down at his very threshold. For this purpose the atmosphere is traversed by winds which load themselves with moisture, and hurry it off in various directions. A ship freighting itself with merchandise at a foreign wharf, a train starting with luggage from a railway-station, a water-cart filling with liquid at some reservoir, is not more explicit in its mission than the current of air which takes in a cargo of vapor at a great ocean tank, and hastens into the heart of some continent to deposit its beneficent burden. There are winds, like the Harmattan of the desert, which seem to go forth only to wither and destroy. These greedily suck up all the moisture they can collect from the land, blighting the foliage so that it crumbles to dust, fissuring doors and furniture, opening great seams in the sides of vessels, starting casks of liquids and spilling their contents, and parching the human body as if intent upon reducing it to a state of mummy. But the sea-winds Come charged with rich stores of humidity, and hence those which visit the western shores of Europe from the south-west, and the north of Europe from the north-east, are the bringers of rain and the givers of fertility.

Thirdly, however, a mass of moisture floating at a hight of from two to four or five miles in the air would be of as little service to yonder anxious farmer as a diamond mine in the moon to a jeweler. How is he to get it down from the skies? Now the quantity of water which can be sustained in the air in an elastic, invisible form is proportionate to the temperature. The higher the thermometer, the greater the priming of moisture required. Treating the vapor-atmosphere which surrounds the globe as a distinct envelope, its pressure may be expressed in mercurial inches -that is, by the amount of quicksilver it will support in the barometric tube. If our seas were all on the boil (212°,) the steam produced would poise a column of about thirty inches; but at 80°-the temperature of the ocean in the equatorial regions never mounting much above this figure-the dose of vapor which the air will carry is only sufficient to balance a single inch. At 71° it is equal to threequarters of an inch, at 59° to half an inch, and at 39° to a quarter of an inch. If,

But, fourthly, when moisture thus transported from a distant sea has been reconverted into a liquid, it is necessary that its precipitation should be conducted with considerable caution. As a cloud is a great cistern containing thousands of tons of fluid, it is clear that if this were all liberated at once it would inflict serious damage upon the vegetation below, and might probably drive the farmer to distraction. No crops could withstand such a local deluge. They would be beaten to the ground at a stroke. The leaves would be stripped from the trees, and a forest leftstanding under bare poles like a ship whose canvas had been wrenched from its masts by an unexpected gale. The soil itself would be plowed up and washed into the nearest stream. In cities, too, as well as in the country, the approach of a nimbus would be eyed with suspicion, and men would have to fly to buildings for shelter, since umbrellas, though made of sheet-iron, would afford but doubtful protection. There are cases of violent discharge which show that mischief might constantly ensue were not the breaking up of a cloud regulated with consummate nicety. Land-spouts, for example, occasionally make their appearance. swept over a moor near Colne in Lancashire, in 1718, and tore up the ground down to the very rock, some seven feet below, making a deep gulf for above a quarter of a mile, as Dr. Richardson describes, and destroying ten acres by the flood. "The first breach where the water fell," says he, "was about sixty feet over. The ground on each side the gulf was so shaken that large chasms appeared at above thirty feet distance, which a few

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