Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1886 — The Music of the Spheres. [ARTICLE]

The Music of the Spheres.

The spectrum is the eye what the gamutisto tke-car; each color represents a note, and the different colors represents notes of different pitch. The vibrations which produce the impression of red are slower, and the waves which they produce are longer, than those to which we owe the sensation of violet; while the vibrations which excite the other colors are intermediate between the two extremes. This, then, is the second grand analqgy between light and sound: color answers to pitch. There is, therefore, truth in the figure, when we say that the gentian of the Alps sings a shriller note than the wild rhododendron; and that the red glow of the mountain at sunset is of a lower pitch than the blue of the firmament at noon! The ancients had their shperal melodies; but have we net ours, which only want a sense sufficiently refined to hear them ? Immensity is filled with this music; whether a star sheds its light its notes are heard. Our sun, for example, thrills concentric waves through space, and every luminous point that gems our skies is surrounded by a similar system. I have spoken of the rising, climbing, and crossing of the tiny ripples of a calm tide upon a smooth stand; but what are they to those intersecting ripples of the ÜBctfntented deep by which infinity is engineturned. Crossing solar ancf stellar distances, they bring us the light of the sun and®"stars, thrilled back from ouk atmosphere, they give us the

blue radiance of the sky; rounding liquid spherules, they clash at the; other aide, and the survivors of the tumult hear to our vision the wondrous cloud-dyes of Monte Itosa.