The Press.
London, England, 1854-07-22 00:00:00

- 690

Persons suspended in a balloon much elevated find it
needful to speak with considerable exertion in order to
render their words audible.
On one occasion, when Gay Lussac had ascended to the
unusual height of 23,000 feet above the level of the sea, he
found that he could scarcely hear the sound of his own

voice.
When a person has ascended very rapidly into a stratum
of air extremely rarefied, as Gay Lussac did on the tith of
September, 181)4, the air contained in the middle chamber
of the ear has not time to put itself in equilibrium with the
constantly decreasing density of the atmosphere ; the drum
is, consequently, ttretched outward with such intensity
that its vibrations are extremely feeble.
Miss Martineau tells us, that she lost her deafness during
the time she was on the top of the great pyramid. When
deafness is due to a too great laxity of the tympanum, as in
the case referred to, the increase of tension, which would be
painful and prejudicial to others, would act most service-
ably.
So imperfectly does rarefied air transmit the impulses of
sound, that no noise produced by the art of man can pro-
pagate itself to the limits of our atmosphere ; and no noise
whatsoever proceeding from celestial bodies can ever reach
to our earth.
Thus, sound is weakened or lost when either
the air is so thin as to transmit its vibrations
imperfectly, or when the tympanum of the ear
is so relaxed or disturbed that it does not
correctly sympathise with those vibrations.
If sound does not, as we believe, exist apart
from the ear, and if all our infinite sensations
of sound, from the thunder of the heavens to
the lowest whisper of the voice, the gentle
sigh of Zephyrus, or the softest breathings of
a musical instrument, are caused solely by
undulations of the air acting on its delicate
mechanism, we must admit that in its con-
struction there is displayed (even with our
imperfect appreciation of the use of its internal
parts) an adaptability of means to ends calcu-
lated to excite our highest admiration. Under
this view the wide air is a volume on which
characters are continually being inscribed,
and as these characters reach the ear they at
once become vocal. It is a marvellous fact
that the impressions made on the air by the
human voice should in their infinite variety
be faithfully conveyed until the air-waves are
lost in distance ; but how much more mar
vellous, that each pulsation should fall dis-
tinctly on the ear, and, through such a slight
disturbance of the subtle fluid around us as
can barely be conceived, to physically affect
the tympanum of the ear, and with it all the
internal parts connecting it with the auditory
nerve, and excite that sensation which we call
sound—a sensation so distinct and so various
in its manifestations as to be commonly sup-
posed to reside in the objects which merely
agitate the atmosphere.
Dr. Brewers little volume has been put
together with evident care. The arrangement
is convenient and skilful, the illustrative exam-
ples and experiments are numerous and clear.
Woodcuts are given as often as necessary, and
the anatomical details of the ear and larynx
are, from their simplicity, well adapted for
purposes of popular instruction.

The Divine Drama of History and Civilisation.
By the Rev. James Smith, M.A. London ;
Chapman and Hull.
As there is a certain school of poets who have
a great capacity for producing the false
sublime, so there are writers on theology and
ethics whose compositions exhibit simulated
originality in every page. With a glittering
phraseology, they put a new rhetorical costume
on old and familiar ideas. They ornament
commonplaces with quaint additions ; and, in
order to pass current for deep thinkers, they
take the facts of a science and the criticism
that is appropriate to an art and mingle them
together, and then call on the world to admire
elaborate oddity as signal originality. Whim
sical in their caprices and grotesque in their
style, such sciolists affect to have discovered
new systems of thought, while every chapter of
their commentaries convicts them of having
only invented, with some pains, new methods
of going wrong.
We suspect that the name on the titlepage
of this fantastic production is a pseudonym.
The writer probably thought that it would
sound very pleasantly to ask readers to digest
nonsense and esotericism when offered to
them under the prosaic respectability of
" Rev. James Smith," whose church and
locality are as indefinite as his ideas. Know
ing, as we do, what the volume is made of, we