The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862

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Various. The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862

THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION

WORD-MURDER

STEWART, AND THE DRY GOODS TRADE OF NEW YORK

UNHEEDED GROWTH

RED, YELLOW, AND BLUE

ONE OF THE MILLION

LAS ORACIONES

MY MARYLAND!

THE SEPTEMBER RAID

A MERCHANT'S STORY

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

THE UNION

II

THE WOLF HUNT

THE POETRY OF NATURE

MACCARONI AND CANVAS. IX

ROMAN FIRESIDES

THE VIOLETS OF THE VILLA BORGHESE

THE CARNIVAL

THE VERMILION MIRACLE

THE POPOLO EXHIBITION

'MISSED FIRE!'

THE PROCLAMATION

THE PRESS IN THE UNITED STATES

OUR FRIENDS ABROAD

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

AURORA

HOW THEY DID IT

FROM MOUNT LAFAYETTE, WHITE MOUNTAINS

INDEPENDENCE

THE HOMESTEAD BILL

LITERARY NOTICES

EDITOR'S TABLE

THE. CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

EDITORS: HON. ROBERT J. WALKER, CHARLES G. LELAND, HON. FRED. P. STANTON, EDMUND KIRKE

EQUAL TO ANY IN THE WORLD!!!

Отрывок из книги

The time has come when we must have an entirely new lot of superlatives—intensifiers of meaning—verifiers of earnestness—asserters of exactness, etc., etc. The old ones are as dead as herrings; killed off, too, as herrings are, by being taken from their natural element. What between passionate men and affected women, all the old stand-bys are used up, and the only practical question is, Where are the substitutes to come from? Who shall be trusted to invent them? Not the linguists: they would make them too long and slim. Not the mob: they would make them too short and stout.

There are plenty of words made; but in these times they are all nouns, and what we want are adverbs—'words that qualify verbs, participles, adjectives, and other adverbs.' We could get along well enough with the old adjectives, badly as the superlative degree of some of them has been used. They are capable of being qualified when they become too weak—or, rather, when our taste becomes too strong—just as old ladies qualify their tea when they begin to find the old excitement insufficient. But even this must be done with reason, or we shall soon find with the new supply, as we are now finding with the old, that the bottle gives out before the tea-caddy. The whole language is sufficient, except in the excessives—the ultimates.

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The intervals, or relative pitches of the notes to the tonic C, appear expressed in the fractions, which are determined by assuming the wave length or amount of vibration of C as unity, and finding the ratio of the wave length of any other note to it. The value of an interval is therefore found by dividing the wave length of the graver by that of the acuter note, or the number of vibrations of the acuter in a given time by the corresponding number of the graver. These fractions, it is seen, comprise the simplest ratios between the whole numbers 1 and 2, so that in this scale are the simple and satisfactory elements of harmony in music, and everybody knows that it is used as such. Now nature exposes to us a scale of color to which we have adverted; it is thus:

Let us investigate this, and see if her science is as good as mortal penetration; let us see if she too has hit upon the simplest fractions between 1 and 2, for a scale of 7. We can determine the relative pitch of any member of this scale to another, easily, as the wave lengths of all are known from experiment.

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