Even though it were true what many say, that education gives not to man another heart, nor another temperament, that it changes nothing in reality, and touches only the outside crust, I would not hesitate to say that it is not useless.—La Bruyère.
[THE ELECTRIC LIGHT.]
By A. A. CAMPBELL SWINTON.
It seems at present that electricity is to be the illuminating agent of the future, and that, as gas has now all but superseded candles and oil, so in turn gas will soon be superseded by electricity. The reasons for this change are several and various, and follow that most immutable of natural laws, the law of the survival of the fittest.
About the commencement of the present century, Sir Humphry Davy, the eminent chemist, succeeded in producing at the Royal Institution the most brilliant light then known. By passing the electricity derived from an enormous battery of four thousand plates through two charcoal points separated from one another, he obtained in air a continuous electric discharge four inches in length, which was increased to seven inches when the experiment was repeated in vacuo.