Science, nowadays, is so specialized that we have in every branch of it separate departments and fields of research and work. Physical science, for instance, is subdivided into the branches of Natural Philosophy or Physics, Mechanics and Hydrostatics, Acoustics, Optics, Light, Heat, Electricity and Magnetism. Allied with this is, usually, Mathematical Science. Mechanical Science especially includes Applied Mechanics, and, in addition, Civil Engineering, Surveying, Architecture, etc. Other branches of science comprise Chemistry, Geology, Botany, Physiology, Biology, Anthropology, and Zoology. All these demand special courses of study and most of them call for special gifts in the student. As to results, in the way of rewards, that again depends upon ability and attainment, as well as upon the success of one's research or achievement. A chair of any one of these departments at a university or school of science brings, usually, a good income to the incumbent, and bright, clever, hard-working and enthusiastic men are always sure of good recognition and a high status in the community.

In the practical professions, perhaps few are better paid where there is high ability, than in surgery, or as a consulting electrician or engineer. The cost of preparing oneself for any of these professions naturally varies, and especially so according as one may give to their study three or four, or five or six years, in a good university, or under competent experts.

Kindly inform me how best to judge what a young man, aged nineteen, and having had a thorough English education, has a talent for as an occupation in life.

You can best judge what a boy has a talent for by observing how he employs himself and noticing the bent of his tastes. Much can be determined, also, by the character of the education he has had, and to what branch or department of study-whether the practical or the literary- he has shown inclination for. Sounding him by catechizing is another mode of learning what the lad would like to take to for a life's occupation. By such means, as well as by other indications of his general inclinations and tastes, you can ascertain whether he would make a good business man, has a liking for

outdoor life, or has attainments for and a bent towards scientific or professional work.

Will you please inform a reader through the valuable columns of your SELF CULTURE, (1) What is meant by the term "Preparing for College?" (2) Is it necessary for a young man to have gone through a High School, to have a successful career at a College or University? (3) I am a good stenographer and have a knowledge of bookkeeping. you think I can make my qualifications help me in paying my way through, either by teaching shorthand, or doing office work outside of the lecture hours? (4) Will you kindly name a few of the best Colleges or Universities for taking a thorough law course?

"Preparing for college" means to get up the work, a knowledge of which is exacted from candidates in the entrance examinations at a university. Most of the higher colleges have a standard for entrance which those offering themselves for matriculation must attain before they are admitted. To take a satisfactory Arts course in a university, you would have either to be prepared by a tutor privately or to have gone through a High School or other preparatory institution. You should have a good English education, with a knowledge of Latin, if not of Greek, mathematics, and some science. In the best colleges, these are essential requirements before you are matriculated. In entering a school of law, the standard of preliminary training may not in all cases be so exacting, though you should be able to do the work taught in the lower forms, at least in High Schools, and have acquaintance with Latin. There are admirable law schools in connection with the great universities of Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Pennsylvania, etc., and you can learn what their fees are and the length of the course by

applying to the registrar in each case and desiring a curriculum to be sent you. We do not doubt that at some, perhaps in all, of these institutions you could pay your way by doing work as a stenographer or other clerical duty.

By

In our advertising pages you will find advertised several good schools of law, apart from universities, and of some near home. writing to any of these, you can find out what prospect there may be of giving your services as a shorthand writer in part payment of the college fees, etc.

In my reading lately I have seen mention made of an American scientist,

named Count Rumford. Will SELF CULTURE state who he was and when he lived, and say where I can learn anything about him? He was, I gather, a man of some distinction.

Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (17531814), was a native of Massachusetts, who sympathized with the pre-Revolutionary movement, but the jealousy of his fellow-officers in the New Hampshire regiments alienated him from the patriotic cause and he afterwards served on the royal side. In the Encyclopædia Britannica, under Thompson, Sir Benjamin, Count Rumford (Vol. XXIII, page 309), you will find an account of his life. At the close of the war he went to Bavaria, and soon rose high in royal favor, exerting himself to bring about reforms in many directions, but continuing his investigations in physics, which he had early begun in America. In the meantime he was created a count, choosing his title from Rumford, near Concord, New Hampshire. In 1795 he visited England, where he was well received. Various economical appliances of heat engaged his attention; but he is especially remarkable for the experiments on which he founded the modern theory that heat is a mode of motion. Having observed the heat produced in the metal of a cannon while it was being bored, he found that by rotating rapidly a metal cylinder in water, sufficient heat was produced to boil the water. From the conditions of this experiment he inferred that heat is not matter but motion. (For details, see Ellis's Life, appended to the works of Count Rumford, in 5 volumes; also, see Appendix to Chap. II, of Tyndall's "Heat as a Mode of Motion.") This conclusion paved the way for one of the greatest discoveries of the nineteenth century—“The conservation of energy." Count Rumford founded a professorship at Harvard, and he was the founder and the first recipient of the Rumford medal of the London Royal Society. He died near Paris in 1814.

Will you do me the favor of giving me a few thoughts for an essay on George Eliot's more notable female characters?

It has been said of George Eliot that it is in creating her characters that she especially shows her genius. There are some artists who, in their novels, concentrate the light of an intense intelligence and passionate sympathy upon two or three chief personages who move in an oppressive glare of consciousness, while towards the remainder they show themselves almost indifferent. But so varied, and full of reasonableness and oftentimes vigor, are the sympa

thies of George Eliot that they spread with a powerful and even flow in every direction. Her sketches of women, as one might expect, are especially interesting, and yet, on reviewing the male characters in her works, we find in them a like psychological profundity. In the portrayal of all her characters we find the same glance, which divines all motives, which lays bare all feelings, and which would be more pitiless than remorse itself, if the author's penetration were not equalled by her tenderness for human weakness and human suffering. Her Tito is condemned, decreed to death, but he is understood far too truly to be disliked. Hetty, with her little butterfly soul, pleasure-loving but not passionate, luxurious, vain, hard of heart, is viewed with the sincerest and most intelligent sympathy. Hinda, who has no more soul than a pigeon, is still lovable, after her kind; and up from these through the hierarchy of human character to Romola and Fedalma, to Zarca and Savonarola, there is not one a grade too low, nor one too high, for love to reach. Poverty of nature and the stains of sin do not alienate the passionate attachment of this author's heart to all that is natural and human.

George Eliot has created a kind of character in fiction in which she will probably have no successor. Her's is the novel of moral analysis. Two of her strongest creations are those of Gwendolen and Grandcourt. Some inconsistencies may be detected in the outlining of these characters, but if she has elsewhere drawn figures more thorough, stronger, and more remarkable for their moral unity, she has created none more constructively and of such depth. One can see Grandcourt, with his pale face, his placid and disdainful demeanor. Between his fingers is the eternal cigar, on his lips the oath of ill-temper or the yawn of ennui. A stranger to all moral life, he knows nothing of men but their foibles and their follies. A thorough blasé, he has no pleasure left but in oppressing others. His last enjoyment is in ill-treating his dogs, giving pain to his inferiors, tyrannizing over his wife, provoking rebellion in order to crush it. There is meanness under the elegant manners, and cruelty under the well-bred coldnessa monster inside the correct and polished gentleman.

The portrait of Gwendolen is still more carefully studied. She possesses the formidable power of beauty. She knows it, and she has early acquired the egotism which often accompanies the consciousness of recognized superiority. Accustomed from her infancy to see her mother and sisters the slaves of her caprice, she will carry with her into society the assurance of victory, which is one of its guarantees, the haughty

grace which is made more piquant by her spoiltchild's fancies, her impatience, her very imprudence itself. She is wilful, but purposelessly so; ambitious, but with no passionate desires. She asks nothing of life but excitement, brilliant success, the intoxication of flattery, the exercise of despotic power. And, yet, Gwendolen's nature is not corrupt. Frivolous and worldly as she is, she still possesses a kind of innocence. There is in her the germ of a higher life, which only waits for the contact of some proper influence to shoot forth.

It is this germination of the ideal in the heart of a woman given up to society that George Eliot has tried to paint. She represents her heroine as needing some attachment to abandon her commonplace life, and a man to serve her as a conscience. She marries Grandcourt to escape the mediocrity of her fortune, and becomes the victim of a hateful tyrant. The picture of this hidden agony of her heroine has been powerfully portrayed by the author. Even in the work of George Eliot there are few things so powerful as this moral tragedy.

George Eliot, especially in her portrayal of feminine character, does not aspire to paint irreproachable characters, but characters in which good and evil are mixed, which call for indulgence, for which we feel attachment, even while we condemn them. It is character in process of change that engages all her interest. We have soul speaking to soul - Dinah to Hetty; Felix to Esther; Dorothea to Ladislaw; Savonarola to Romola.

George Eliot shows in her characters some terrible examples of the crippling of another's life by one's egoism, as in Rosamond Vincy and Lydgate, to whom Casaubon and Dorothea form so fine a parallel and contrast. She also shows the strong claims of race and family love. Maggie Tulliver's action at the end of "The Mill on the Floss" is entirely based on the claims of family, as opposed to personal affection for Stephen Guest. This comes out still more strongly in the characters of Romola and of Daniel Deronda in the claims of race. Fedalma, also, sacrifices everything to the claims of race. Another example of ruin wrought by egoism, is in the overthrow of the great schemes of Zarca by the egoistic loves of Silva and Fedalma.

George Eliot has given us some charming portraitures of religious natures, conspicuously that most noble one of the female Methodist preacher. Dolly Winthrop's feeling of religious truth "in her inside" and the naïve anthropomorphism of her Raveloe theology, contain the essence of all religion and differ from the sublimest devotion of saint or mystic not in kind

but in degree. It has been said that the "dramatic appropriateness of the humorous utterances of George Eliot's characters renders them unpresentable by way of extract. Each is like the expression of a face which cannot be detached from the face itself." The tragic aspect of life, as viewed by this great writer, is derived from the Titanic strife of egoistic desires, with duties which the conscience confesses, and those emotions which transcend the interest of the individual. It seems to her no easy thing to cast away self. All the noblest characters she has conceived, the heroic feminine characters or those that might have been heroic, characters of great sensibility, great imaginative power, great fervor of feeling, Maggie, Romola, Fedalma, Armgart - cling with passionate attachment to the joy which has to be renounced. The dying to self is the dying of young creatures full of strength and the gladness of living. The doctrine of the necessity for self-renunciation, of the obligation laid upon men to accept some other rule of conduct than the desire of pleasure, is enforced in the destinies of the characters of George Eliot with terrible emphasis.

I think the number over the note h (in parenthesis) should be 7, because in the natural scale, in German, we have no note called "b." Again, you say that the musical sounds consist of the seven letters a, b, c, d, e, f and g and in German h, in addition. Now the difference lies here, what we call "b flat" in our language, is simply called "b" in German. It ought to be called "h flat," but instead the German calls it simply "b." I hope I have made my idea plain.

I want to add that I am more than pleased with SELF CULTURE. Your articles are not only highly instructive, but combine with them exceedingly interesting and entertaining reading matter. For its careful and painstaking preparation, I for one wish to thank you.

NEW YORK, Oct. 12.

G. FRED. STEIL.

NEW INFORMATION NOTES

The new Chicago public library was opened on October 9. The building was begun five years ago, and has cost nearly $2,000,000. While the structure itself is massive and plain, the interior decorations are costly and beautiful. The mosaic work is especially fine; its total area covers 10,000 square feet more, it is said, than is to be found in any building since the thirteenth century. The book capacity of the library is 2,000,000 volumes; it now contains a trifle over 220,000. An annual expenditure on books of $35,000 is authorized, à larger sum than is expended by any library except the British Museum. Appointments in the library will be made under civil-service rules.

While climbing a staircase or ladder a man can exert about 2,000,000 foot-pounds in a day of eight hours. An average military ration is the equivalent of about four pounds of meat, of which fully three-fourths are water, and onehalf of the remaining fourth only is carbon, so that half a pound of carbon, burnt in the human furnace, will do as much work as four times the quantity in form of coal used through the medium of an engine and boiler. For the present, at least, therefore, the most economical form of stored energy which one can carry about with him is a good square meal, although its conversion into effective work may not be so pleasant an operation as that of permitting the coal to expend its own latent energy.

The Congress of San Salvador has passed a Bill putting the country on a gold basis, a crisis having been caused by a "slump" in silver. The President was authorized to negotiate a foreign loan of $2,500,000. The Bill will come into effect in two months, when the customs duties will be payable in gold only.

The building of a railroad through Chilkoot Pass, Alaska, will be undertaken by the Chilkoot Railroad and Transportation Company, of Tacoma. It will be eight miles long and will connect Dyea at tidewater with the mouth of the

Dyea Cañon. Transportation through this cañon and across the pass to Crater Lake will be effected, says the "Scientific American," by a system of tramways, the contract for which has been awarded to the Trenton, N. J. Iron Company, which agrees to have them in operation by June 15, 1898. The tramway will be of the Bleichert system. The first one will be four miles in length, reaching from the cañon to Sheep Camp, with a rise of 1,000 feet. A second tramway will extend from Sheep Camp to Summit, three and one-half miles, with a rise of 2,500 feet, and thence to Crater Lake, with a fall of 500 feet. Iron supports will be put in every 100 feet. The tramway will have a capacity of 120 tons daily-sufficient for the outfits of 200 miners.

Providence, says a contemporary, has vouchsafed to the American farmer this year crops that are unusually gratifying. The unfortunate condition which bears so heavily upon other great grain-producing countries is aiding in bringing to him splendid financial returns. Recent statistics show that in twenty-six farming countries of Ohio the total acreage of 6,972,777 acres is worth to-day $300,774,636, as against

$261,931,225 a year ago - an average increase of $5.70 per acre, and a total increase of nearly $40,000,000. In Indiana, forty-nine counties, or more than one-half of the whole number, show a total farm acreage of 9,670,886, with a present valuation of $345,835,762, as compared with $303,385,331 twelve months ago. The reports

from other quarters are equally favorable.

Even the most ignorant, said the London "Times" the other day, will soon be ashamed to repeat the old cry that the rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer. It was once neccessary to refute this popular sophism. Now it is not; on all hands there is overwhelming evidence that the poor are steadily becoming richer, and that a smaller proportion of the produce of industry goes to the wealthy. In the report on changes in rates of wages and hours of work in England, issued by the London Board of Trade, there are striking signs of this transformation, which is going on, rarely with the intervention of strikes or unions, over almost the whole face of industry. The figures are free from some of the infirmities of earlier returns on this subject. They claim to cover industries wherein are employed eight millions and a half of persons; and they all testify to an improvement in the position of the workers -an improvement probably greater in the United Kingdom than in any other country.

For one fall in wages in 1896, adds the authority we have quoted, there were about ten rises. For one person disadvantageously affected by changes, more than two-thirds were benefited. In the four years 1893-96 there was a decrease in the hours of labor per week, and in the last of the four the changes affected a far larger number of persons than in any of the three previous years. Lying outside the world described in this report, is a multitude of persons, who, it is pretty certain, have not shared in the rises in remuneration. For them there is no talk of a "fair day's wage" or an eight hours' day. It is possible that in many cases their remuneration has decreased just as their toil has increased. Their grievances are rarely heard of. They have no means of coercing their employers. They have no special Acts passed for their relief, no privilegia of any kind. There is a dark side to modern industry, but it is not so much the fate of the manual worker or artisan as that of the small employer, saddled with all the risks of a capitalist, the solitary worker whose means are his brains and education, the poor teacher or governess, the clerk with all his crushing load of respectability, the struggling professional man whose remuneration is small, uncertain and deferred.

The New South Wales Government states that it has found such difficulty in placing in England an order for 2,000 tons of steel rails of high carbon quality that it has been compelled to order them in America, where the manufacturers readily undertook the contract at the price of £5 ($25.00) a ton.

A quasi-official commission has reached this country from Japan charged with the duty of giving publicity to the merits of Japanese teas,

and the best methods of preparing them as a beverage. The commission is planning to open tea bazaars in many of the chief cities in the United States and Canada, where ladies can enjoy a cup of fine Japanese tea made by experts, and at the same time receive instructions which will enable them to make it equally well at home. More than half the tea consumed in the United States and Canada is of Japanese growth, yet the majority of Americans apparently do not understand how to prepare it so as to develop the delicious qualities which it contains. It is believed by these gentlemen that, when Americans are in possession of the secret of making good tea, the consumption in this country will fully equal that of Europe in proportion. The Japanese Government has appropriated a large fund to aid the Japanese tea growers and tea merchants in prosecuting this educational work, and it is hoped that American ladies will be apt students. The main Bureau of the Japanese Tea Guild has issued an official recipe for making Japanese tea, the translation of which is as follows:

First. Use a small, dry and thoroughly clean porcelain teapot.

Second. Put in one teaspoonful of tea leaves for each cup of tea desired.

Third. When using Japanese teas, pour on the required quantity of fresh boiled water, and let stand with closed lid from two to three minutes. Never boil the leaves. In order to retain the natural flavor, Japanese tea leaves should be kept in a tight can or jar, free from moisture.

To thoroughly enjoy the natural, delicate and sweet flavor of Japanese teas, neither sugar nor cream, it is said, should be used.

The shipments of iron ore through the Sault Ste. Marie canal this season to October I were about 9,750,000 tons. There is now no doubt that all records will be broken and that the tonnage for the year will exceed 11,000,000. Stocks on hand are also melting away and the coming winter promises to be a most busy one at the mines.

The gold production of the Witswatersrand (Transvaal) in August was 259,608 ounces, which was a great increase over that of the previous month, and is the largest for any single month in the history of the district. The production in 1896 was 2,281,875 crude ounces, and in the first eight months of 1897 it was 1,890,513. Other gold fields are doing much better than last year, especially in the United States. The outlook is for a large increase in the world's total supply of gold this year.

A French journal has recently expressed surprise at how little the telephone is used in France in comparison with neighboring countries like Germany and Switzerland, for while the number of "communications" in France last year was only seventy-four millions, the total for Germany, excluding Bavaria and Würtemberg, was over four hundred and twenty-four millions. Switzerland, with a population barely the tenth of France, had, at the end of last year, over 1,000 miles of telephone lines, with 29,533 subscribers and about fifteen million communications. While the cost of the telephone in Switzerland is more than covered by the receipts, the contrary is the case in France, though the subscription is much higher than in any of

the other countries, being as much as $80 a year, and from $40 to $60 in provincial towns, to say nothing of each subscriber having to contribute towards the cost of laying down the wires.

What the man of to-day needs most is not athletics in a gymnasium, but plenty of fresh air in his lungs. Instead of a quantity of violent exercise that leaves him weak for several hours afterward, he needs to learn to breathe aright, stand aright and sit aright. And if the woman who spends so much time and strength getting out into the air would dress loosely and breathe deeply and so get the air into her, she would have new strength and vigor, and soon be freed from many aches and pains and miseries.

The recent recovery of some remains of the famous triremes (state-barges) of the Emperor Tiberius, which lie at the bottom of Lake Nemi, is of great interest both to artists and antiquaries. The lake of Nemi, which is situated about seventeen miles southeast of Rome, is formed by the crater of an extinct volcano. Upon its broad bosom once floated the magnificent pleasurehouse of the luxurious and licentious Emperor, Tiberius Claudius Nero, who, leaving his duties at Rome in the year A.D. 26, retired the year following to the island of Capreæ, where he indulged in the greatest sensuality. His love of luxury and display was exhibited in the two famous pleasure triremes which bear his name, and the remains of which now lie buried in the lake of Nemi. The discovery referred to consists of the finding of several massive metal mooring-rings and tops of stakes by which the vessels could be moored to the quay. The rings are fixed in the mouths of bronze heads of lions, wolves and Medusa, by the teeth of which they are retained in their proper places. These bronze heads are marvellously modelled, and the faces are characterized by a life-like similarity to the animals represented. Despite their long immersion in the mud of Lake Nemi, they are all perfectly preserved.

An important subject to engineers and builders, about which very little experimental information is on record, is that of the supporting power of soils, but recently the city engineer of Vienna has taken up the investigation and designed an instrument for exact measurement, and also a practical apparatus for the use of builders and bridge builders. He has ascertained that up to a certain limit the depth to which a given loaded area sinks is directly proportional to the load which it bears, and this Îimit should in no case be exceeded. His apparatus consists of a base plate and cylinder into which a plunger is fitted and upon which weight can be placed corresponding successively to uniform pressure per unit of area. The corresponding sinking of the plunger into soil is then very precisely measured by a micrometer upon a multiplying column. For the practical use of builders this apparatus is replaced by a rod carrying a divided head, upon which a tube containing a spiral spring is fitted. The end of the rod is provided with a number of tips of various determined areas, in order that one adapted to the nature of the soil may be selected, and, by pressing this on various portions of the ground to be tested and taking readings from the spring scale, the relation between the pressure and the penetration may be obtained.