Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450

Light as the comet's substance is, it is not, however, light enough to escape the grasp of the sun's gravitating attraction. When the mass of thin vapour is rushing through the obscurity of starlit space, so far from the sun that the solar sphere looks but the brightest of the stellar host, it feels the influence of the solar mass, remote as it is, and is constrained to bend its course towards it. Onwards the thin vapour goes, the sun waxing bigger and bigger with each stage of approach, until at last the little star has become a fiery globe, filling up half the heavens with its vast proportions, and stretching from the horizon to the zenith of the visible concave. The great comet of 1680 came in this way from a region of space where the sun looked but half as wide as the planet Mars in the sky, and where the solar heat was imperceptible, the surrounding temperature being 612 degrees colder than freezing water, into another in which the sun filled up 140 times greater width of the sky than it does with us, and where the heat was some hundred times higher than the temperature of boiling water. It was then only 880,000 miles away from the solar surface, and would have fallen to it in three minutes, in obedience to its attraction, if the impetus of its motion in a different direction had been on the instant destroyed or arrested. But this impetus proved too great for the attraction, light as the material of the moving body was. When the comet has approached comparatively near to the grand source of attraction, the speed of its accelerating motion has become so excessive, that it is able to withstand the augmented solicitation it is subjected to, and move outwards in a more direct course. It goes, however, slower and slower, and curving its journey less and less, until at last its motion in remote obscurity is again so sluggish, that the sun's attraction is once more predominant, and able to recall the truant towards its realms of light. Such is the history of the comet's course.

Thin comet vapours drift through space, sustained by exactly the same influences that uphold dense planetary spheres. They are supported in the void by the combined effects of motion and attraction. Their own impetus strives to carry them one way, while the sun's attraction draws them another, and they are thus constrained to move along paths that are intermediate to the lines of the two impulses. Now, when bodies are driven in this way by two differently acting powers, they must travel along curved lines, if both the driving forces are in continued operation, for a new direction of motion is then impressed on them at each succeeding instant. There are three kinds of curved lines along which bodies thus doubly driven may move: the circular curve, which goes round a central point at an unvarying equal distance, and returns into itself; the elliptical curve, which returns into itself by a route that is drawn out considerably in one direction; and the hyperbolic curve, that never returns into itself at all, but has, on the other hand, a course which sets outwards each way for ever. The parabolic curve, as it is called, is a line partaking of the closeness of the ellipse on the one hand, and the openness of the hyperbola on the other. A parabola is an ellipse passing into a hyperbola; or, in other words, it is a part of an ellipse whose length, compared with its breadth, is too great to be estimated, and is consequently deemed to be endless for all practical purposes.

In most instances, comets move in space, about the sun, in ellipses so very lengthened, that their paths seem to be parabolas as long as the cloudy bodies are visible in the sky. Two of them, Ollier's Comet and Halley's, are known to return into sight after intervals of seventy-four and seventy-six years, during which they have visited portions of space a few hundred millions of miles further than the orbit of Neptune. Six comets travel in elliptical orbits that are never so far from the sun as the planet Neptune, and return into visibility in short periods that never exceed seven or eight years. These interior comets of short period seem to be regular members of our world-system in the strictest sense. Their paths, although more eccentric, are all contained in planes that nearly correspond with the planes of the planetary orbits, and they travel in these paths in the same general direction with their planetary brethren in every case. The planetoid comets of short period are—Encke's, De Vico's, Brorsen's, D'Arrest's, Biela's, and Fage's. The comet of 1843 is half suspected to belong to the group, and to be also a periodic body, revisiting our regions punctually at intervals of twenty-one years.

The comet's motions strikingly illustrate the almost absolute voidness of space. If the thin vapour experienced any resistance while moving, its free passage would be checked, although that resistance was many thousand times less than the one the hand feels when waved in the air. It is found, however, that Encke's Comet does indicate the presence of some such resistance. It goes slower and slower with each return, and contracts the dimensions of its elliptical journey progressively. But it must be remembered, that this is one of the close comets that never gets well out of the solar domain in which our neighbouring planets float. The resisting medium which opposes its journey may be merely an ethereal solar atmosphere surrounding the sun, as our air surrounds the earth, but spreading to distances of millions instead of tens of miles. On the other hand, it must be remembered also that starlight passes through universal space, and is everywhere spread out therein, and that it is hardly possible to think of starlight as an existence without some sort of material reality. Some physicists believe that Encke's Comet, with its retarded motions, will some day fall into the sun; while others fancy that such a consummation can never take place, because successive portions of its substance will be thrown off by the tail-forming process with each perihelion return; so that long before the cometic mass could reach the sun, it will have been altogether dissipated into space, and nothing will be left to accomplish the final state of the fall.

The great peculiarity of cometic paths, as compared with the planetary ones, is, that they consist of ellipses of very much more eccentric proportions; and that, therefore, the bodies moving in them, go alternately to much greater and less distances from the sun than the planets do. It must not be imagined, however, that all comets revolve about the sun even in the most lengthened ellipses. Three at least—the comets of 1723, 1771, and 1818—are known to have moved along hyperbolic paths instead of parabolic or elliptical ones. These comets, therefore, can make but one appearance in our skies. Having once shewn themselves there, and vanished, they are lost to us for ever. They are but stray and chance visitors to the domains of our sun, and refuse to submit themselves, with the more regular members of their fraternity, to the regulation-arrangements of our system, or to appear punctually at the systematic roll-call therein instituted. They are the true free-wanderers of the Infinite, passing from shore to shore of immensity, and presenting themselves, for short and uncertain intervals, to star after star. When they flit through our skies, they shew themselves in all possible positions, and move along all possible directions. They sometimes, however, yield too much to temptation, and have to suffer the penalty of a short imprisonment in consequence. Lexell's Comet, for instance, rushed in its hyperbolic path too near to Jupiter, and was caught in the attraction of its mass, and made to dance attendance on the sun through two successive elliptical revolutions. At the end of the second, the influence that had impounded the comet came, however, into play oppositely, and restored it again to its wandering life and hyperbolic courses. Its cloudy form has not presented itself amongst our stars since 1770, when its visit was thus strangely received by Jupiter.

Twenty-three comets were seen by the naked eye during the sixteenth century, 12 were seen in the seventeenth, 8 in the eighteenth, and 9 in the first half of the nineteenth. This does not, however, give anything like an adequate idea of the number of comets really in existence. When Kepler was asked how many comets he thought there were, he answered: 'As many as there are fishes in the sea.' And modern science seems determined, that the sagacious German shall not be at fault even in this predication. Two or three fresh telescopic comets are now usually found out every year. In 1847, 178 comets were known to be moving in parabolic orbits, and therefore to be in some way permanent connections of our world-system. Lalande has enumerated 700 comets, but Arago believes that not less than 7,000,000 exist, which fall at some time or other within the reach of our sun's influence.

THE SLEEPY LADY

She is easy, good-natured, and compliant about everything but her sleep. On that point she can bear no interference and no stoppages. Unless she had it fully out every day, neither would life be worth having for herself, nor would she allow the life of any other people to be endurable. Sleep is her great gift; her body has been wonderfully constituted to take a great deal of ease. Deprive her of that, and you starve her as effectually as you famish a human being by abstraction of food. Her personal appearance confirms her philosophy; for you can detect not one particle of restlessness about her. All is soft, rounded, and woolly, as if she carried an atmosphere of deafening about with her.

It has been her habit ever since her earliest years. One of the principal anecdotes of her girlish days now remembered in her family is, that her mamma having sent on some exigency to rouse her, she faintly murmured forth, 'Not for kingdoms!' then turned on the other side, and doggedly went to sleep again. There is another story of her having had to rise one morning at half-past seven, in order to attend a friend as bridemaid, when, coming down stairs, and seeing it to be a raw drizzly day, she pronounced her situation to be 'the ne plus ultra of human misery!' She told the young bride (by way of a compliment) that she would not have got up in the middle of the night to be present at the marriage of any other friend on earth. This phrase might seem to most people only a pleasant hyperbole; but I am not quite sure that it was so intended. The fact is, she has seen so little of the world at any other hours than between noon and midnight, that she has a very obscure sense of other periods of daily time. She scarcely knows what morning is. Sunrise is to her as much of a phenomenon as a total eclipse of the sun to any other person. She cannot tell what mankind in general mean by breakfast-time, for she has scarcely ever seen the world so early. And really half-past seven was not very far from the middle of her night.

Her husband, who is a little of a wag, compares her waking-life to the appearance which the sun makes above the horizon on a winter day: only, her morning is about his noon. He says, however, there appears to be no necessary end to her sleep. It is like Decandolle's idea as to the life of a tree: keep up the required conditions, as sap, &c., and the tree will never decay. So, keep up the necessary conditions for her repose, and she continues to sleep. It is always some external accident of a disturbing nature which gets her up. He has sometimes proposed making an attempt so to arrange matters as to test how long she would sleep. But, unfortunately, he cannot provide against the disturbing effect of hunger, so he fears she might not sleep above two nights and a day at the most—a result that would not be worth the trouble of the experiment. She takes all his jokes in good-humour, as indeed she takes everything which does not positively interfere with her favourite indulgence. '"Ah, little she'll reck if ye let her sleep on," ought,' says he, 'to be her motto, being applicable to her in the most trying crises of life, even that of the house burning about her ears.'

He contrasts his life, which is a moderately active one, with hers. 'I went up to my dressing-room, about nine o'clock one evening, to prepare to go to a party, when the sound of heavy breathing from the neighbouring apartment informed me that she had reached the land of forgetfulness. I went out, spent a couple of hours in conversation, had supper, set several new conundrums agoing in life, and made one or two new friends. Then I came home, had my usual rest, rose, and set to work in my business-room, where I drew up an important paper. Still no appearance of the lady. I had breakfast, read the newspaper, and played with the children. One of my new friends called, and made an appointment. Still no appearance of my wife down stairs. At length, about the middle of the day, when I was deep in a new piece of business, she peeped in, with a cold nose and fresh ringlets, to ask a cheque for her house-money—having got down stairs rather more promptly than usual that morning, in order to go out and settle her weekly bills. Thus I had a series of waking transactions last night, another this morning—in fact, a history—while she had been lost in the regions of oblivion. My sleep is rounded by hers, like a small circle within a large one.'

Sometimes he speculates on the ultimate reckoning of their respective lives. 'Mine,' says he, 'will have been so thickened up with doings of all kinds, that it will appear long. I shall seem to have lived all my days. I fear it must be different with yours. So much of it having been passed in entire unconsciousness, you will look back from seventy as most people do from five-and-thirty; and when Death presents his dart, you will feel like one that has been defrauded of a most precious privilege. You will go off in a state of impious discontent, as if you had been shockingly ill-used.' Such is one of his sly plans for rousing her to a sense of the impropriety of her ways; but all such quips and cranks are in vain. Only don't absolutely shake her in her bed before her thirteenth hour of rest, and you may say what you please. It cannot be implied that she is hardened, for no such quality is compatible with her character. But she smiles every joke and every advice aside with such an air of impassible benignity, that you see it is of no use to think of reforming her in this grand particular.

One day not long since it rather seemed as if she was going to turn the tables on her worthy spouse. She had a remarkable dream, in which she thought she heard a lady sing a new song. When she awoke, she remembered the two verses she thought she had heard, and they turned out to be perfectly good sense and good metre, and not intolerable as poetry. Now this was what Coleridge calls a psychological curiosity, for the verses had of course been composed by her in her sleep. There was more in the matter still. In her waking-life, she has a remarkably treacherous memory for poetry, being seldom able to repeat a single verse even of Isaac Watts without a mistake. Here, however, she had carried two entire verses safe and sound out of her sleep into her waking existence. It was therefore a double wonder. She has accordingly got up a theory, that her mind is at its best in her sleep, and is judged of at a disadvantage in its daylight moments. In sleep lies her principal life. Waking is an inferior exceptive kind of existence, into which she is dragged by the base exigencies of the world. She ought to be judged of as she is in her dreams. No saying what she goes through then. Perhaps she is the most active woman in the world in that state. Possibly she says and does the most brilliant things, such as nobody else could say or do in any condition. 'You say you cannot test it, for you cannot follow me into my dream-world. Well, but it may be as I say; and till you can prove the reverse, I hold that I am entitled to the presumption which my dream-song establishes in my favour.' It must be admitted there is some force in this reasoning. All that her husband can in the meantime say on the other side, is just this: 'Granted the activity and the brilliancy of your sleep-life, it does wonderfully little for me or our household concerns. Only give us an hour more of your sweet company in the forenoon, and we shall admit you to be in your sleep as stirring and as clever as you choose to call yourself.' This of course he says very safely, for he well knows that no earthly consideration would induce her to abridge her sleep even by that one hour.

At a visit I lately paid to this good couple, I found them debating these points, the gentleman still refusing to give implicit credence to the theory which the lady had started in her own favour. The controversy was conducted with a great deal of good-humour, and I could not refrain from entering into the discussion. I started, however, a new theory, which I thought might please both parties, and in this object I am happy to say I was successful. 'Here,' said I, 'is a wife remarkable for putting as much good-nature into her six or eight hours of day-life as most women put into twice the time. No one can tell what she is in her sleep: perhaps the veriest termagant on earth. Suppose her sleep could be abridged, might not some of this termagantism overflow into and be diffused over her waking existence? I can well imagine this, and you, my friend, reduced to such straits by it that you might wish she would never waken more. Be content, then, and rather put up with the little ills you have than fly to others that you know not of.'

THE NEW CONVICT ESTABLISHMENT IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

The subject of convict discipline has for several years past excited the attention both of legislators and philanthropists; but the knowledge of the public concerning its details has hitherto been exceedingly meagre. It is not intended in this article to discuss the abstract question of the policy of transportation to the colonies, or of convict discipline there pursued; but merely to give some account of the system adopted at a new settlement in Australia. We will state at once, that our official authority is a Blue Book—one of those huge volumes printed from time to time, by order of parliament, for the edification—or as some facetious folks say, for the mystification—of M.Ps. Having carefully waded through its voluminous pages, we have jotted down the passages that especially struck us, and propose to present the pith and substance of our labour—for it is nothing less—in a condensed and popular form.

Little more than a couple of years ago, it was resolved by government to establish a convict settlement at Fremantle—a small town, as we learn, of some 5000 inhabitants—in Western Australia. The first ship arrived in Swan River on 1st June 1850, with 75 convicts; and in October following, a second came with 100 more. Soldiers, and proper officers to control and conduct the convicts, were on the spot; and a tolerably suitable prison was forthwith extemporised out of a wool-shed or warehouse. It is this kind of temporary and experimental establishment that forms the subject of the published returns to government, which are dated up to February 1851, and include an exceedingly minute and clearly-stated detail of the operations and plans adopted during the six months ending December 31, 1850. Three hundred more convicts—principally from the Portland prison in England—were expected in February 1851, and a grand permanent prison was to be erected, to contain 500 cells.

The convicts at Fremantle are employed in both in-door and out-of-door work, but principally the latter. The artisans—tradesmen they are styled in the Reports—such as blacksmiths, masons, carpenters, tailors, bricklayers, &c., labour at their respective trades; and the labourers, par excellence, toil at road-making and various other works of public utility. The 'daily routine' is as follows:—The first bell is rung at 5 a.m., and the prisoners rise, and neatly fold up their bedding—they sleep in hammocks, we believe, as the documents speak of the beds being 'hung' at night. The second bell rings at 5.15; and they are then mustered in their several wards, and paraded. The third bell rings at 5.55, when they are minutely inspected by the proper officers, and working-parties are detailed and marched off. From this time to 7.55, the prison orderlies are busily engaged in sweeping the wards, and making preparations for breakfast. At 7.55, the bell rings, and the convicts muster, and go into breakfast. One of the prisoners is selected to say grace, and the breakfast is eaten in perfect silence. At 8.25, they leave the mess-room, and are then 'allowed to smoke in the square before the prison door till 8.45, when they must muster inside for prayers.' At 9 o'clock, the bell rings for work, and the parties are inspected and marched off. At 12 o'clock, the dinner-bell rings; but parties working at a considerable distance from the prison, are allowed to leave off work a quarter or half an hour earlier, according to the distance they have to walk to the prison. When grace after dinner—for which meal one hour seems to be allowed—is said, they are again permitted to assemble outside from 1 p.m., till resuming work. At 1.55, the 'warning-bell' rings, and the working-parties are again formed. At 2 o'clock, the bell rings, and off they march, and continue working till 6 o'clock, when they are all paraded, wash themselves, and muster for supper. At 6.15 rings the supper-bell; and after supper they are 'allowed outside' from 6.45 till 7.30, when the chaplain reads prayers. At 8 o'clock, the beds are hung, and the convicts are sent into them immediately; and the most perfect quiet is enforced till the morning.

The 'rules and regulations' to be observed by the officers of the establishment and the prisoners are very strict and minute; and, on the whole, appear to be exceedingly judicious. As a fair specimen of the sound and humane spirit that seems to pervade the regulations in question, we will only quote No. 2 of the 'General Rules'—as follows:—'It is the duty of all officers to treat the prisoners with kindness and humanity, and to listen patiently to and report their complaints or grievances, being firm at the same time in maintaining order and discipline, and enforcing complete observance of the rules and regulations of the establishment. The great object of reclaiming the prisoner should always be kept in view by every officer in the prison; and they should strive to acquire a moral influence over the prisoners, by performing their duties conscientiously, but without harshness. They should especially try to raise the prisoners' minds to a proper feeling of moral obligation, by the example of their own uniform regard to truth and integrity, even in the smallest matters. Such conduct will, in most cases, excite the respect and confidence of the prisoners, and will make the duties of the officers more satisfactory to themselves and to the public.'

With respect to the degree of communication permitted between the convicts and their friends, it is stated that a prisoner is allowed to write, or to receive a letter, once every three months; but the chaplain or the overseer reads all letters either received or sent; and if the contents appear objectionable, they are withheld. We are told in the 'Rules for Prisoners,' that no prisoner during the period of his confinement, or employment on public works, has any claim to remuneration of any kind, but that industry and good conduct are rewarded by a fixed gratuity under certain regulations, depending on the class in which the prisoner is placed; and this gratuity is credited to him at the following general rates: 1st class, 9d. per week; 2d class, 6d.; 3d class, 4d. If any misconduct themselves, they forfeit all advantages, or are subject to the minor punishment of being placed in a lower class, &c. A prisoner, by particularly good behaviour, will be eligible to receive 3d. to 6d. per week in addition to the above rates. The amounts thus credited 'will be advanced to the prisoner under certain restrictions, or otherwise applied for his benefit, as may be considered desirable.'

There are several long and extremely circumstantial tables given of the amount of work done per day, per week, per month, &c. We gather, that the estimated value of the work earned by all the convicts in the six months ending 31st December 1850, was no less than L.3128, 9s. 4d. The total number of 'non-effectives'—men unable to labour through illness or otherwise—was 40 in the six months. The total 'effective' workers, during the same time, was 586—artisans, 218; labourers, 368; and this gives the average number of effectives as nearly 98 per month; so that some idea may be formed of their individual earnings. In the month of November, the total number of effectives was 154; and they earned the large sum of L.823, 17s. 6d. During the following month of December, task-work was adopted, and the effectives, 143 in number, earned L.665, 19s. 10d. We are informed that task-work has been contrived to allow each man to do 1¼ to 1½-days' work per diem, and to obtain credit for the extra amount earned. Were we, however, to take the above figures as a criterion, we should conclude that less, rather than more, was proportionately earned during the month of task-work; yet this conclusion would not be fair, for doubtless many modifying circumstances require to be taken into consideration—such as the state of the weather, the number of artisans as compared with the labourers, &c.; besides which, it must be borne in mind, that although task-work has been specially designed to benefit the convicts themselves, yet, while some would work with a will, others, and perhaps many, would prefer unremunerative idleness.