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About The Hesperian / (Lincoln, Neb.) 1885-1899 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1891)
THE HESPERIAN. always frown at each other as they stand there in Homo, with the graves of two faiths between; one dying, one long since dead: he loved them both so well. Even the scars of barbarian swords upon the polished marble lie half revered; they were honest arms which struck those blows. This reverential seriousness of disposition was character istic ol him in literature, as in cvciything else, lie never stiovc to please a pampered public. I lis genius was not the tool of his ambition, but his religion, his god. Nothing has so degraded modern lilcraluic as the desperate efforts of modern writers to captivate the public, their watching the variation of public taste, as a speculator watches the markets. When Orpheus sings popular ballads upon the street corners, he is a street singer, nothing more. The gates of hell do not open at his music any more, nor do the damned forget their pain in its melody. Carlylc went out alone into the soli tude and wrestled with his great ideas, finding them diffi cult to express in words, so great, so ungainly were they. He little cared whether his books were popular, whether they were even read. He wrote only that which was in him and which must be written. In vain his publishers groaned over his "terrible earnestness;" he would not laugh for them, lie was always down in the chamber of the fates, at the roots of Ygdrasil, the tree of life, which the Norns water day and night, one with honey and two with gall, and it was a ter rible thing to him that it was so. Milton says that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, who sings of the descent of the gods to men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. He is the last poet who has thought so, and he is the last poet who has given us an epic. Carlylc's was one of the most unhappy temperaments. I Ic never saw things as ullieis did; his wild fancy and bad diges tion distorted everything. I writing, he does not willfully exaggerate; he only portrays things as they seemed to him. Like the old Anchorites of the Thebiad, he kept upon his knees within his narrow cell until the outside world looked supernatural to him. The little difficulties of his life were to him actual demons anil powers of darkness sent to tor ment him. His dyspepsia was an actual Tophet. How far his ill health may have influenced his writings is not known. Certainly not so far as some critics claim, who assert that 'Sartor Resartus" is but the result of a year of miserable health, the morbid fancies oi a sick man. If so, it is a new and pleasing feature of bad gastionomy. He was proud to the extreme, but his love was prcdomi nant even over his pride. He, himself, would suffer any pri vation rather than sacrifice an ideal; but for his brother's sake he wrote for money. It seemed to him like selling his own soul. He wrote aiticlc after article for reviews, and cut up his great thoughts to fit the pages of a magazine. No won dcr he bated it; it was like hacking his own flesh, bit by bit. to feed those he loved. Throughout his entire life he was tormented by inter fcrcncc. He was not the kind of a man to be popular, for he was unwise enough to stand aloof from all sects and all parties. None defended him. No one creed nor the doc trines of any one sect were broad enough to hold him. Like the lone survivor of some extinct species, the last of the mammoths, tortured and harassed beyond all endurance by the smaller, though perhaps more perfectly organized off spring of the world's maturcr years, this great Titan, son of her passionate youth, a youth of volcanoes, and earthquakes, and great, unsystematized forces, rushed off into the desert to suffer alone. He died as he lived. Proudly refusing a tomb in West minster, as did one other great English writer, he was buried out on the wild Scotch heath, where the cold winds of the North sea sing the chants of Ossian among the Druid pines. He lies there on that wild heath, the only thing in the Hrit ish Isles with which he ever seemed to harmonize. He dreamed always in life great, wild, maddening dreams: per haps he sleeps quietly now, perhaps he wakes. THE TRANSPIRATION OK PLANTS OR TUB LOSS OK WATBR FROM PLANTS 11V KVAPORATION. For the last two hundred years scientific men have been engaged in trying to settle this apparently simple problem. Dr. Alfred Hurgerstcin has recently published in Germany an epitome of the literature of transpiration from 1672 to 1889. He cites 244 publications from sixteen different languages. Dr. Oscar Ebcrdt, in 1889, published in Germany a very excellent critical study of the subject. These two papers give a good idea of the present state of knowledge concern ing the transpiration of plants. While much has been written on this subject of the var ious phenomena observed, still there is great difference of opinion as to their meaning and cause. The plant cell, like the animal cell, the unit of the organ ism, is by no means a simple aflair. The cell-colony, or as Hackcl calls it for plants, "the cellitpublic," is governed by just as well established laws as is the republic in which we lorm the units. 1 lie biologist, like the sociologist, must deal not only with the individual unit but also with the com binations of units into organisms. A conception of the various minutely complicated prob lems that come to the historian as he tries to trace the evo lution ol n.itiuns fiotii primitive men, and to the sociologist and political economist studying the relations of men to each other and to their environment, will give some idea of the problems which the biojogist must solve. In view of the complexity of the subject it is not at all strange that two or three hundred years of study has failed to solve all the prob lems connected with the so called transpiration of plants. One of the most important questions still to be settled is the effect of light on transpiration. It is indeed well known that the activity of transpiration is greatest in sun light, and decreases rapidly as the intensity of the light decreases.other conditions remaining constant. It is also known that differ ent parts of the spectrum or elements of the solar ray have different cflects on the various so called vital activities of the plant. The vibrations of ether known as light and heat arc, however, so intimately associated in the solar ray that it is almost impossible to separate them. Whether, therefore, a given reaction in the plant is directly or idirectly caused by light or by heat, is still to be settled. When the cause is Renown then comes the question as to hoit one or both of these forces produces the given effect. It is known that cer tain rays are absorbed by the chlorophyll or green coloring matter in plants, other rays by the protoplasm at large. Probably the rays absorbed by the chlorophyll are repre sentcd in the plant by the manufacture of starch or its equiv alent, and heat. But wh."t effect have these absorbed rays on transpiration, if any, how is it brought about? The giving offof water may be an important direct or indirect vital ac,-, tivity of protoplasm and therefore of the plant, or it may be an unimportant accompaniment of some vital activity Which it is must still remain a question. The relation of the stomataor breathing pores to transpir ation depends in a measure upon the solution of the problems mentioned above. The direct cause of the opening and clos ing of the stomata is yet a question. When this is settled
