third-class passengers at all. On the Dublin and Kingstown, also about 1840, the firsts were purple, the closed seconds yellow, the open seconds green, and the thirds Prussian blue. The outside passengers themselves, at a time when white trousers and blue coats were not thought outrageous, added a good deal to the picturesqueness of the scene. The guard in many cases wore a scarlet coat with silver buttons, and formed on the roof of the last coach a fitting termination to the brilliant procession. He was not much to be envied, however, for occasionally he was found to be frozen to his seat or insensible with the cold, and quite incapable of working his primitive brake. This contrivance consisted of a vertical rod and handle connected below the floor with a horizontal shaft attached to the brakeblocks. A rather popular institution at one time was that of travelling in private carriages placed upon railway trucks, and usually attached to the end of the train. The chief object of so doing was to obtain a good view of the line and the country round about, whilst forming also a comfortable family party. Such passengers were usually charged second-class fares, and were perhaps as well off, or better, than if they had gone in the dreadfully cramped coaches of that class. The oscillation must have been rather alarming at times, and they had to put up with whatever the weather might have in store for them; but it was more usual to travel in this manner in summer than in winter. In fact, it was regarded as a pleasant sort of holiday outing to have a jaunt on the railway in your own carriage. For some years passengers were booked over an open counter, the tickets being pieces of paper torn from a book usually containing five slips to each leaf. The name of the station the traveller was going to was sometimes written, sometimes impressed with a stamp; the date was added, the counterfoil made out, and finally a waybill was handed to the guard, setting forth the number, class, and destination of his passengers in a most paternal and considerate manner. The present mode of issuing printed tickets was the invention of one Thomas Edmondson, a clerk on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, about the year 1837. He realized a large sum by letting out his printing and stamping machines, but it was not until nearly 1850 that they became universally adopted. When railways so long as the London and Birmingham (one hundred and twelve miles) and Great Western (one hundred and eighteen miles) were opened, the question of providing refreshments for the travellers became pressing. The former opened refreshment-rooms at Wolverton, the "half-way house," and for several years all trains stopped there. The place became celebrated for the scalding hot tea and coffee invariably supplied, and the insufficient time allowed for its consumption. Its career, however, was not a long one, Rugby becoming soon a place of much greater importance, and many a trav eller on the London and North-Western of to-day has never heard the once famous name of Wolverton. For a long time passengers were very badly catered for on most lines, the refreshment-rooms were let out to local contractors or broken-down servants of the company, the charges differed almost everywhere, and were only alike in being outrageously high. The present system, short of perfection as it is, is a vast improvement upon that of old days, and there can be little doubt the traveller of the future will not have much to complain of in the all-important matter of interior supplies. A glance at the position of the thirdclass passenger of half a century ago, and we have done. Down to 1845 he had no legal status at all, many companies would not carry him at any price, others put him in an open goods truck with movable seats placed across it, and charged him 1d. per mile for the luxury too. He was conveyed with other unclean animals by cattle-trains, he was shunted about in his bufferless box for hours, and when at last he reached his destination it was to see a notice that "the company's servants are strictly ordered not to porter for wagonpassengers." A delightful conveyance often used for third-class traffic was known as a "Stanhope." It consisted of a box about eighteen feet long, divided into four compartments by two wooden bars crossing each other in the middle. There was a door to each compartment, but it had no seats, so that the number of passengers it would contain depended upon the bulk of the respective Stanhopers. The absence of seats, however, was the "last straw," travellers rebelled, and the Stanhopes were not long in use. Of course we must take into consideration that few people besides men of business and the wealthy travelled at all, much less the humbler classes. On the rare occasions when the latter made journeys they relied upon getting a lift now and then from some friendly carter, or a place on one of the huge stage-wagons | mon, and they are always short-lived. which conveyed goods at a walking-pace About a score of them have been credibly on the main roads, or, much more fre- recorded during two thousand years, bequently, they simply tramped. When, ginning with the star which, according to however, the railways themselves im- Pliny, determined Hipparchus upon the mensely increased the demand for labor, construction of his epoch-making catathe poor, like other people, became much logue. And the "modern Hipparchus " less stationary than of yore, and soon the received a similar emphatic summons. impediments to getting about freely be- Tycho Brahe was, on November 11, 1572, came intolerable. It was also felt that the rescued from the quagmire of alchemy, railways owed the working-classes some and recalled to his true vocation, by the recompense for having superseded most startling splendor of the renowned nova of the few modes of locomotion open to in Cassiopeia. This extraordinary object them, such as the stage-wagons just men- was, to begin with, as bright as Jupiter, tioned, the "fly-boats" on the canals, etc. and by a further rise, placed itself, in a The legislature, therefore, in 1845, passed few days, well-nigh on a par with Venus an act, the chief provisions of which were at her best. Neither the glare of the that at least one train must be run over sun at noon, nor the drifting by night of each line per day, and in both directions, clouds thick enough to conceal every calling at every station, going at least other sidereal object, availed to blot out twelve miles an hour, charging not more its scintilating lustre. Yet it has utterly than a penny per mile, and having coaches disappeared. Not even Mr. Roberts's provided with seats, roofs, sides, and light. searching camera can detect, in the place Some companies interpreted this act more it once occupied, the faintest glimmer of liberally than others, but few erred on the its pristine fires. They are to all appearside of excessive generosity. Most of ance extinct, and there is small probability them were afraid of diverting the better- that they will ever be rekindled. paying traffic into the lowest class, so that idea, it is true, got abroad, and even still the most miserable vehicles that could be partially prevails, that the star of 1572 had made to meet the requirements of the previously manifested itself at intervals of act were constructed and used for many about three hundred years, and might be years. expected to show once more towards the close of the present century; but it seems to have originated in pure misapprehension of some vague medieval notices of comets. Kepler, however, enjoyed the privilege of observing, though in a totally different quarter of the sky, a new star scarcely the inferior of Tycho's; and these two have, so far, met no rivals to their surpassing brilliancy. At last, however, a brighter day dawned, and the unfortunate, despised third-class traveller began to find himself courted as the mainstay of the passenger traffic of some of the largest companies in England. He is now so thoroughly well able to look after his own interests that we may safely leave him to the care of those great corporations which, having discovered, after so many years, his commercial value, pursue the sensible and enlightened policy of inducing people to travel by treating them well and making the time which most of us have, more or less, to spend in travelling as agreeable and comfortable as it is in its nature to be. From The Contemporary Review. THROUGH the modest medium of an anonymous post-card, an event of high importance to astro-physical science was, on the 1st of February last, announced to Dr. Copeland, the Scottish astronomerroyal. This was nothing less than the outburst of a new star in the Milky Way. Now such apparitions are not too com The Our own age has, nevertheless, no reason to complain. It has been, on the contrary, exceptionally favored in the unusual number of stellar apparitions presented to it. Half-a-dozen have been crowded into the comparatively short space of forty-four years, and may, accordingly, all have been witnessed with mature comprehension by many men now living. Eminent among them is Mr. Hind, the discoverer of the first of the series, the nova, as such objects are technically called, of 1848, the immediate predecessor of which, separated from it by an interval of one hundred and seventy-eight blank years, was Anthelm's nova of 1670. This glaring inequality of apportionment has certainly been for the advantage of science. Astronomers in the last century were ill-equipped for taking advantage of such opportunities, while modern physical appliances are especially adapted for turn- | exposure photograph, taken by Mr. Robing them to the best account. They are erts with a view to developing possible indeed eagerly welcomed, and the evidence nebulous surroundings, conclusively demafforded by them is earnestly invoked for onstrated their absence. A similar result the testing of novel theories, and for the was obtained at South Kensington by Prodecision of various moot questions rela- fessor Lockyer. To all appearance, then, tive to the constitution of the heavenly the object was, and is a star like any other. bodies. When rapid changes are going But let us hear the dictum of the spectroon, nature's secrets are apt to slip out for scope in the matter. the instruction of those on the watch for them; and new stars are the intensified embodiment of change. No wonder then that the Edinburgh missive of February acted as a réveillé to the astronomical forces in all parts of the northern hemisphere. The light of Nova Aurigæ, unrolled by prismatic dispersion into a rainbow-tinted riband, presented a dazzling spectacle. Splendid groups of bright lines stood out from a paler background; the red ray of hydrogen, Fraunhofer's C., glowed, as Mr. Espin remarked, like a danger-signal on a The sender turns out to have been a dark night; a superb quartet of rays shone denizen of Auld Reekie, Mr. Thomas D. in the green; shimmering blue bands and Anderson, the example of whose success lines drew the eye far up towards the viowill doubtless kindle the zeal of many an- let; the characteristic blazing spectrum, other amateur star-gazer. His discovery in fact, of a new star was unmistakably might indeed have been made a week present. Its interpretation left no doubt earlier. Only by degrees, and after sev- that hydrogen played a large part in the eral observations, Mr. Anderson came to conflagration; Dr. and Mrs. Huggins at recognize the novelty of the object sending once identified a yellow line with the wellits straw-yellow beams from a previously known shining badge of sodium, and more empty spot in the southern part of the than suspected an adjacent ray to belong constellation Auriga. It was found, more- to the solar element called "helium;" and over, on inquiry to have unobtrusively re- a violet line distinctive of calcium imcorded itself twelve times, from December printed itself strongly on numerous pho10, 1891, to January 20, 1892, on the chart- tographs. The substances accordingly plates exposed at Harvard College for the ascertained to be glowing in this far-off purposes of the great spectographic sur- body, are sodium and calcium, the metalvey in progress there under Professor lic bases, respectively, of common salt and Pickering's direction. With the first of lime; with hydrogen, the universally difthese casually secured impressions, its bi- fused gaseous metal indispensable for the ography begins. No trace of its existence production of water. Iron and magnesium has as yet been pursued further back. Un-are doubtful; but carbon had certainly not less totally obscure, it belonged then to the crowd of uncatalogued small stars; and merely swelled by a unit the nameless multitude of the heavens. Nothing indicated the distinction in reserve for it. For one of its class, however, its growth in light was to an uncommon degree leisurely. Most new stars have leaped upwards from obscurity with bewildering swiftness. They claim, as a rule, neither past nor future worth mentioning, and only a brief, if brilliant, present. But the star of 1892 attained no strongly emphasized maximum. Although absolutely brightest about December 20, it slowly regained light until February 8, when it was of the fifth magnitude - that is, well within the range of naked-eye vision-entering then upon a gradual, and not perfectly continuous, decline. In aspect it was throughout perfectly stellar. Its rays emanated from a sharp point, and, some incautious remarks to the contrary notwithstanding, were nowise blurred or hazy. And a long stamped its sign-manual on the opened scroll of the new star's light. It was marked, however, by one extraordinary peculiarity in the coupling with dark lines of all the bright rays conspicuous over its entire extent. Each lustrous member of the great hydrogenseries carried a black shadow on its blue or more refrangible side; the rays of sodium, calcium, and other unidentified substances being similarly attended. The meaning of this strange appearance was evident, if in the highest degree surprising. The principle by which motion in the line of sight can be detected through its effect upon the spectrum of the moving body, is now fully recognized. The amount, moreover, of the observed change gives the velocity of the motion, and the sense of the change tells its direction. Thus, the rays, say, of hydrogen, when they proceed from a luminous mass rapidly approaching the earth, are pushed without swaying one another into the description of some kind of orbit. Their orbit, however, may be of the hyperbolic variety; in which case the bodies just now visually conjoined are flying asunder, never to meet again. Their single encounter, if this be so, was what we, in our ignorance, can only describe as casual; and the greater part of their motion must be inherent; it belonged, that is, to themselves, ab origine, and was not merely imparted by the pull of their mutual attractive forces. And we should indeed naturally expect the solitary outburst of a from their standard places towards the blue end of the spectrum, while they shift towards the red when the movement is one of recession. The result is strictly analogous to the variation of pitch perceived by a stationary listener in the steam-whistle of a rushing engine. The sound is rendered acute, because the airwaves are shortened by the advance of its originating source; it sinks, on the contrary, as they are lengthened by its retreat. And so with the waves of light sent out by the stars. They are physically crowded together by a physical advance, and hence become more blue; but because their suc-"new star" to be associated with precisely cession is retarded, they become more red when a velocity of withdrawal is in question. Astro-physicists can, accordingly, determine whether a celestial object be moving towards or away from the earth, and at what rate, by simply measuring on a photograph the deviation from its normal position of some known line in its spectrum. such a temporary relationship as comports with hyperbolic travelling. In a permanently organized system, on the other hand, light-fluctuations, if they occurred at all, might be looked for periodically. This state of things, in fact, seems actually to prevail in the only known example comparable in any degree with the wonderful star of our present experience. The variBut in Nova Auriga two amazing cir- able star Beta, in the constellation of the cumstances were disclosed by this method Lyre, has, like Nova Auriga, been reof procedure. First, the speed correspond- solved, through the photographic study of ing to the measured displacements was its spectrum,* into a pair, of which one unprecedented; next, it was apparently member emits, bright, the other shows pursued, at the same time, in opposite dark lines on a prismatic background. directions. The bright lines unanimously But here there is clear evidence of revolushowed to the careful scrutiny of Dr. tion in a closed orbit, the bright and dark Vogel at Potsdam recession at the extraor- lines exchanging their relative positions dinary rate of four hundred and twenty once in nearly thirteen days. Moreover, English miles a second, while their dark this same period is observed with strict comrades testified to an approach of three punctuality by the luminous fluctuations hundred. Plainly, then, both sets were of the star. So that we have here a pernot emitted by the same body; and a two-suasive argument of identity in nature fold spectrum, owning a twofold origin, was at once seen to be under observation. The whole range of bright lines, in short, was obviously marked out as the appurtenance of a mass rushing away from the earth, the dark ones matching them, as proceeding from a mass rushing towards it. And the two were separating at the rate of seven hundred and twenty miles a second, or about sixty-two millions of miles a day! Moreover, these portentous velocities showed, during at least a month, no perceptible slackening. The coupled lines did not tend to close up, as they should have done if the bodies they served to distinguish relaxed their furious speed, or swerved from their straight course. Hence, these presumably did neither the one nor the other to any considerable extent. They can scarcely then be in mutual circulation; yet a pair of gravitating masses could not possibly have made so close an approach as theirs evidently was, between continuous stellar variations in brightness, conducted regularly in short periods, and the catastrophic outbreak of temporary stars. Nay, we gather a hint that the shape of the orbits traversed by such bodies determines the character of their changes; periodical variability depending upon elliptical movement, ephem. eral splendor followed by irrecoverable decay corresponding to a single approach at an excessive velocity, with consequent separation along tracks divergent to infinity. The star of 1892 has then taught us to regard stellar apparitions as resulting, in some way, from the temporary vicinity of two rapidly moving cosmical masses. All new stars are, it may safely be asserted, during the brief epoch of their visibility, double stars. The light that they send Conducted at Harvard College by Mrs. M. Fleming and Miss A. C. Maury under the direction of Professor Pickering. + The compound nature of all variable stars has been - us emanates from a twofold source. Their duplicity, however, might not always be patent to observation. For the spectra of the bodies in conjunction could only be separately distinguished if their motion happened, like that of the components of Nova Auriga, to be largely directed towards or from the earth. If they advanced and retired sideways or vertically terrestrially speaking- the combined powers of the spectroscope and camera could extract from them no sign by which their separate existence might be inferred. Sidereal science is thus indebted to the present unaccustomed inmate of our skies for the disclosure of a fact which, without the aid of a body so happily circumstanced for the gratification of intellectual curiosity, might have remained for ages undivulged. But the knowledge that incandescence of the kind first analyzed by Dr. Huggins in the star of 1866 is due to external influence, leads immediately to a further question as to how that influence is exerted. Direct collisions are not to be thought of. And for this obvious reason, that the impact of two inelastic bodies either brings them to a standstill, or reduces them to a unanimity of slackened motion. We know but too familiarly what takes place when oppositely rushing trains crash together. They certainly do not proceed onward at express speed to their respective destinations. But this is precisely what the components of Nova Aurigæ are doing. They have beyond question met no serious check in their flying careers. No considerable part of their motion has been sacrificed to produce their increase of light. Elementary though the principle be, yet it is not superfluous to insist upon it, that incandescence through collision implies stoppage, partial or entire. Since the evolved light and heat are only transformed motion, both kinds of energy cannot be present simultaneously. They are correlative. One disappears to furnish the other. Unless the motion be arrested, the blaze will not occur. One might as well expect to get a coat without curtailment of the piece of cloth affording the material for it. Hence the outburst of the new star in Auriga cannot be attributed to an actual bodily encounter of two dark bodies swiftly advocated for some years by Professor Lockyer; and the merit of the suggestion should be fully acknowledged, although the "meteoritic hypothesis," of which it formed an integral part, has received a fatal blow from the spectroscopic investigations of Nova Auriga. traversing space. The hypothesis of a grazing collision has more to recommend it. Yet in this case, too, motion should be sacrificed in strict proportion to the development of luminosity. Unless evidence of retardation should be forthcoming, the supposition of outlying entanglements must be abandoned. The two masses, however, spectroscopically observed to be hurrying past at the daily rate of sixtytwo million miles, cannot, one would imagine, have surrendered much of their velocity in the process of gaining enhance. ment to their brilliancy. There is, indeed, a possibility of a third body being present, travelling much more slowly than the others. Dr. Vogel, towards the close of February, observed the bright lines on his photographs to be, not only accompanied by dark ones, but themselves double; and he suggested (though with great reserve) in explanation of the phenomenon, the triplicity of the new star. This too, had, very curiously, been surmised by Dr. and Mrs. Huggins as early as February 3, and, if real, could only, one would think, be due to a division of the gaseous body, analogous to the breaking up of some comets in passing the sun. Yet the circumstance that the bright line spectrum of Beta Lyræ sometimes appears similarly twofold, warns us not to adopt over-hastily the hypothesis of physical disruption in combination with arrest of movement in the disrupted body. Masses of matter may, nevertheless, be excited to luminosity by other means besides that primitive one employed in the tinder-box. But before hazarding a conjecture as to how these might be brought into action, let us see what has been learned as to the nature of the bodies concerned in the transient splendor of our nova. One of them, as giving a spectrum of bright lines, must be of a gaseous constitution. But it is known to be neither a comet on a vast scale, nor a nebula, by the absence of the quality of light distinctive of each of these classes of object. The yellow, green, and blue hydro-carbon bands forming the chief part of cometary radiance were clearly shown by Dr. and Mrs. Huggins to have no place in the spectrum of the star, which included conspicuously, on the other hand, the unbroken hydrogen-series of rhythmically disposed rays, from burning red to invisible ultra-violet. But not one of these has ever been observed in a comet. The characteristic nebular spectrum, too, is entirely unrepresented in the nova, as the eminent |