plant which requires higher priced coal, it is much
cheaper than any other gas.
As has been said, a non-luminous gas is bet-.
ter adapted for heating purposes than illumina
ting gas. Yet, in most. cases where this gas is
used for fuel, it, would be very convenient at
times to obtain light from it. This result seems
in a fair way to be accomplished, practically, by
the use of an incandescent burner, in which a re
fractory material, unaltered in the air at a white
heat, is heated to vivid ir.candescence by the non
luminous flame of fuel gas, thus yielding a much
whiter and steadier light than ordinary illumina
ting gas.
. Should this burner fulfill its present promise,
this cheap 'gas will doubtless be extensively dis-
tributed in the cities for both heat and light ;
while it is not improbable, that isolated plants
may be widely used to heat and light large build•
ings, or small groups of buildings.
FIZZZ^:
THE USE OF THE 1111,4GINATION
IN STUDY.
The imagination vitalizes whatever we study.
A fact or a definition is barren until the imagina
lion transforms and pictures it for us as a glowing
thought or emotion. Learning that nourishes
the mind, and gives, emotion and aspiration, can
only be had through the transforming power of
the imagination. We a•re apt to think that it is
the faculty of the poet only. To every student,
and to him with a longing to become a student, I
wish to declare that this is a fatal mistake.
There can be no worthy scholarship in any
line of study without the constant suffusing power
of this faculty. Food without digestion is
scarcely less useful to the body. True, formulas
may be learned by rote that will be of service in
various walks of life—just as a hoe or spade is
serviceable—but such knowledge is not educa
tion, for even.the bee and the beaver learn well to
perform a certain daily routine of labor. Milton's
noble conception of education is : "The light
THE FREE LANCE.
we have gained was given us not to be ever star
ing on, but by it to discover other and onward
things more remote from our knowledge." But
no light is gained, in gaining knowlege, until it
is vitalized and fused by our imagination or
spiritual forces. Even mathematics which has
ever been regarded as one, of the dryest subjects
in the college curriculum, may have • its "dry
bones" warmed into life by being breathed upon
by the imagination. Simple germinal principles
in its warmth 'are realized as the source of preg
nant laws which control the minutest and the
greatest objects and phenomena.
A feW primary definitions and fundamental
theorems, for instance, lead by constantly ascend.
ing steps to the determin . ation of the areas and
volumes of all magnitudes, whether those of
plane geometry or the infinite number of those
expressed by the higher and transcendental equa
tion, as the cycloids or spirals. But this harmo
ny of procession clearly reveals , itself only to
that student,' who frequently forgetting himself in
thought, bends "a pinion for the deeper sky."
The oftener the student shall free himself
from the fetters of the text, and brooding in im•
agination upon what he has learned, till it be•
comes pictured in his mind symmetrical in form
and parts, (as the statue in the sculptor's thought
e'er his chisel strikes a blow), the more clear and
perfect will his perception be, and the more the
"imprisoned splendor" of the thought will come to
view. It is only when science, in any of its nu,
merous departments, is approached thus with the
''open vision" of the imagination that• it blooms
and blossoms for us; otherwise approached it is a
desert of. dry and unrelated facts.
It is because of this spiritual and imagina
tive faculty that poetry has been the most endur
ing and pervading influence in the world. This
is why Homer sings to day in men's ears the
"Watch narrowly
The detnonstration of a truth, its birth,
And you trues back the influence to its spring
And source within us, where broods radiance vast,
To be elleted ray by ray."