be precise, mechanical flight, will have become a general means of locomotion, that it is a matter of importance to state its case fully and without prejudice.

It is not my purpose to dwell at any length on the question of dirigible balloons or airships, for there is little doubt that in their development a certain stage of finality has now been attained. The case may be stated in a few words. The practical utility of an airship depends in the first place on its speed, and secondly on its carrying capacity. Now it has been computed that the average velocity of the wind below a moderate altitude (1,000 feet) is inferior to twenty miles an hour on about three hundred days in the year; but at a higher level its speed exceeds twenty miles an hour on at least three hundred days in the year.

For practical purposes, therefore, the speed of an airship would have to be at least twenty-five to thirty miles an hour to enable it to navigate near the surface of the earth, while a speed of forty to sixty miles an hour would be required for an airship which could venture to rise to a higher level; and it need scarcely be pointed out that, for military purposes at any rate, a steerable balloon will usually navigate at a height considerably exceeding 1,000 feet. But if we consider the speed actually attained by existing airships, we find that the "Zeppelin" has developed a maximum of thirty-five miles an hour, while neither the "Patrie" nor the "Ville de Paris" have ever exceeded twenty-five miles.

At the first glance the former would thus seem to come within the range of practical utility. As a matter of fact, in order to attain this speed, a rigid aluminium hull of such enormous dimensions is required as to render the huge airship practically unmanageable in anything even remotely approaching a high wind. Every airship of

the present day is deficient both in speed and carrying power; and in order to remedy this defect larger hulls are being introduced, with the result not only that more power is required to overcome the increased resistance, which means a consequent increase of weight (so that we move in a vicious circle), but that such accidents as befell the "Patrie" are likely to become more numerous. Furthermore, owing to the fact that a change, whether accidental or designed, in the elevation at which the airship is moving, entails a large expenditure of ballast, or in other words that a large quantity of dead weight has to be carried, the radius of action is narrowly circumscribed. The first cost of an airship, finally, and the expense attached to its inflation with hydrogen gas, renders it prohibitive to any but a government.

With the flying machine, on the other hand, far from having attained to anything like finality, we have not even yet emerged from the first stage of development. Here we have a contrivance which remains in the air not because it is lighter than the air like a balloon, but actually because it is heavier. Herein, in a nutshell, lies its superiority. On consideration the paradox vanishes. For it is obvious that a body liberated in the air will fall with a force of gravitation so long as it is heavier than the air. But if the body takes the shape of an inclined plane surface it will be sustained to a greater or less degree by the very resistance of the air which it encounters. Not only is the fall thereby retarded, but, owing to the inclination of the plane, the flow of the air round the surface forces the fall to assume a horizontal direction.

In

a gliding machine the weight of the machine is, therefore, actually the propelling power; but in a propelled machine the plane surfaces are continually driven on to fresh masses of air,

until finally the fall is entirely arrested and only horizontal motion remains: in other words, the force of gravitation is overcome. This, very briefly, is the theory of the flying machine; not only, be it observed, of the aëroplane proper, but of the machines sustained by ascensional screws or beating wings as well, for they are all dependent for their sustentation on plane or curved surfaces, whether moving in a straight line or revolving.

The question naturally arises why, if this be so, has it taken so many years of unceasing activity before even a slight practical success has been achieved, and, above all, to what must this sudden, if slight, success be attributed?

To this it may be replied that in the first place there has always been a wide gulf fixed between a theory and its application, a gulf which can only be bridged by the labor of long years. The steam-engine was not evolved in a day, nor did the electric telegraph follow as a matter of course from Benjamin Franklin's discovery. And in the present case we are dealing with a subject of extraordinary complexity, and undoubtedly one of the most difficult that the engineer has ever set his hand to. We have to deal with a medium which is an invisible, almost imponderable, fluid, whose very laws of motion are scarcely known. The fact that the wind consists, not of a steady current, but of a series of swiftly succeeding gusts of ever-varying intensity was only established by Langley a few years ago; and yet this is the medium in which we have to work.

Secondly, the chief factor which has rendered success possible has been the development of the light motor. Every student of the history of aëronautics must have been struck by the fact that in almost every case the weight of the motor has proved the insuperable obstacle by which the experimenter has

been defeated.

Motors weighing 3lb.

to the horse-power are now currently available, where ten years ago every horse-power meant a weight of 2016. or more; and in this respect aviation may well be called the daughter of the automobile industry. Yet, having due regard for the importance of the light motor, there remains a factor in default of which nothing ever has been or will be achieved.

Let us suppose that a perfect type of flying machine, perfectly efficient, exquisitely stable, were in existence at the present time. It may be asserted with the utmost confidence that such a machine would be absolutely useless, for no man would be able to control it. A modern bicycle is a useless mass of machinery until one has learned to ride it. Yet the art of flying is incomparably more difficult; for on a bicycle we have only to preserve lateral equilibrium, whereas in a flying machine we have also to maintain our longitudinal equilibrium, and all this, it must be remembered, at a speed approaching that of an express train. It is said that when he glided to the ground after flying some six miles, M. Delagrange was lifted from his machine in a state of utter exhaustion which alone prevented him from continuing his flight indefinitely. Nor is it to be wondered at when it is remembered that the slightest touch of the rudder or balancing plane in the wrong direction will hurl the machine to immediate destruction.

But the importance of practice in flight-nay, its all-essential character -is illustrated even more forcibly by the example of Farman and Delagrange. Mr. Farman's first flight-of a few yards-was made on September 30 of last year; and within six months he succeeded in flying nearly two miles in a circle. Yet the machine which after the first attempt obstinately refused for two whole months to fly

more than a few yards at a time, was precisely the same machine which manœuvred under perfect control round the ground near Paris shortly afterwards. M. Delagrange's experience, with the same type of machine, has been exactly similar. In both cases success was eventually due, not to the perfection of the machine, but solely to the experience gained by the driver in actual practice and to his growing familiarity with the conditions and sensations of flight.

There is, therefore, every reason to believe that, as soon as sufficient practice in actual flight has been obtained, the perfect flying machine will develop in due course and, as it were, of its own accord. The first step has been taken; there already exist many completed machines, not only in France, but in Germany, in Austria, in America and in Great Britain. It is true that these are of widely divergent types, some of which, at any rate, have but small chance of ultimate success; but this is a matter of comparatively small importance: the significant point is that practice and experience are being obtained; and given these, as I have said, there can be no doubt of the ultimate issue.

But here arises a question of the gravest import: will the flying machine in a more perfect form-for the cumbrous, ponderous machines now in existence will before long appear as ludicrously antiquated as "Puffing Billy" beside a modern express engine-ever provide a useful means of transport?

There can be but one final answer to this question: there is not the slightest doubt but that it will. But it is far more difficult even to attempt to adumbrate the lines along which the carrying surfaces of these machines will ever be greatly extended, though they will undoubtedly be rendered more efficient; but the most far-reaching increase of efficiency will undoubtedly be

effected in the improvement of constructional details. Dead weight will be diminished, head-resistance will vanish almost entirely by the substitution of forms which do not interrupt the continuous flow of the air, the shape of the surfaces and their distribution admits of great improvement. By such means, where it is now necessary, in order to carry a single man through the air, to employ a machine with a surface of nearly six hundred square feet, weighing over half-a-ton, and propelled by a fifty horse-power motor, it will be possible before long to carry at least four passengers or an equivalent weight of baggage.

As a form of sport mechanical flight is already alive, as the crowds numbering thousands who watch the flights of Farman and Delagrange near Paris testify; as a means of commercial transit its future is more distant, though assured. For military purposes-and it is in this direction that aërial navigation has hitherto, unfortunately, found its chief application-it may serve as an unequalled defensive arm. Neither the airship nor the flying machine are ever likely to be of much value in an offensive capacity, but for such purposes as reconnoitring they may well prove invaluable.

It is difficult to form an adequate idea of the infinite possibilities of the thing. This much is certain, that the flying machine, even though it should not revolutionize the course of development of the world as we foresee it at the present time, will at any rate have a most important bearing on international relations of every kind; for it should be remembered that for it none of the obstacles that interfere with our existing means of communication exist. The flying machine will take no account of mountains, rivers, frontiers or seas; nor is there any apparent limit to the speed which it may attain.

John H. Ledeboer.

So much has already been written upon the character of Iago that it may seem a needless temerity to add anything to the tale. Every line has been scrutinized, every feature interpreted, there is, it would seem, no corner to which a further explanation can penetrate. And yet, when all is said, the result is not wholly satisfying. The "motiveless malignity" which is Coleridge's interpretation, the "Artist in Tragedy," which is Mr. Swinburne's, both seem to imply that for once Shakespere has abandoned human nature: that he has described a temperament which is wholly diabolic. Mr. Robert Bridges believes that "the whole thing is impossible": that the Iago presented to the audience is not the Iago who lives among the other characters of the play. Mr. Bradley, though he comes nearer than any one else to a complete picture, yet leaves one or two points in darkness. It may be worth inquiring whether the facts cannot bear a simpler explanation than they have yet received: whether, when Kean played the part as a human being he may not have been more in the right than Hazlitt who censured him: whether, in short, Shakspere's "Villain," as the first Folio bluntly describes him, may not be a consistent villain of flesh and blood, rather than an impossible combination of mere malice and hypocrisy.

At the outset of the play he is twenty-eight years of age, which means that he has been about ten years in the service. He is a capable soldier, who has fought well "at Rhodes, at Cyprus and on other ground, Christian and heathen," who has risen to the office of Standard-bearer, and who believes himself to have a claim to that of Lieutenant. Again, he is evidently popular, a genial companion at the canteen, who can take his glass and sing a good

song; and, what is more to the purpose, he is the trusted adviser of everybody upon the stage. "Honest Iago," they call him, and when any one of them is in trouble-Roderigo, Cassio, Othello, Desdemona herself, he is the one person in whom they all confide, and to whose counsel they all appeal. It is clear that he has never been found out in any act of treachery or mischief, and, accomplished hypocrite though he be, ten years is a long period for a successful masquerade. Again, he is wholly and inherently selfish: intent on his own advancement, and unscrupulous as to the means of securing it; but there are two qualities which, from a certain form of selfishness, are almost inseparable. The first is a superficial good-nature which likes popularity, and is quite ready to purchase it by gift and service so long as they involve no serious cost. Many of the most selfish men in the world are agreeable, and even kindly, until you cross their interests: then they are adamantine. The second is an instinctive dislike of the sight of pain, except where the temper is made cruel by anger or fear or jealousy. It is not pity, it is not compassion, it is a personal feeling of discomfort which is a spurious counterfeit of these.1 And because the world takes little pains to distinguish counterfeit from sterling, such persons are accredited with a sympathetic disposition when in reality they are only anxious to rid themselves of an annoyance. We have therefore but to suppose that, up to the scene which immediately precedes the play, Iago had never found any occasion to sting: that his life had run on a straight course with no rival to remove and no

I The extreme instance of this is the char acter which can command tortures, but cannot bear to see them inflicted. A common type is the temper which grows irritable at the sight of suffering..

injury to avenge; if this be granted there is no difficulty in explaining his popularity and the confidence which every one reposes in him. He had all the external qualities of "a good fel low," and nothing had as yet occurred to bring out the latent evil below the surface. Thirdly, his intellectual power, (though extraordinarily keen and subtle,

has very obvious limitations. He can treat the immediate situation, he can weave the immediate strand of the plot, with a skill and a dexterity that are almost uncanny; and it is evident as the play proceeds that he takes an intense pleasure in the exercise of his sinister ingenuity. But he has almost no foresight. His plot, as will be seen presently, is from hand to mouth, it constantly puts him to new shifts, it hurries him into a catastrophe of the nature of which he had, when he began, no expectation. His intellect, in short, is comparable to that of a chess player who can make a brilliant next move, but who cannot see six moves ahead.

Fourthly, and this is in some respects the most important point of all, he is "a filthy cynic" in his estimate of women. He simply does not believe in woman's purity, nor does he regard his disbelief as a matter of any moment. He takes the view, which was commonly held by medieval satire and comedy, that all women are "guinea-hens," that all love is appetite, and that a deceived husband is a target for laughter. He uses the vilest terms when he tells Brabantio of Desdemona's flight, and has evidently no idea that they are offensive. He sets forth his doctrine to Roderigo in an easy, familiar tone as though it were a commonplace of reasonable judgment.' His way of entertaining Desdemona, on her arrival in Cyprus, is to regale her with epigrams upon the unchastity of her

2 Act I. sc. 1. He evidently thinks that he is expressing the ordinary view.

3 Act I. sc. 3.

Such is the character-cold, selfish, unscrupulous, not gratuitously malicious, impure, and therefore sceptical of purity, keen witted, but almost wholly devoid of imagination-into which there falls like poison a rankling sense of injustice. His friends have applied that he may have the Lieutenancy; it has been given to Cassio, whom, rightly or wrongly, he regards as his inferior. It is idle to inquire (though it has often been inquired) whether his description of Cassio is a fair statement: you do not expect an angry man to speak fairly of a successful rival. The keynote of the play is that he is mortally aggrieved and offended by Othello's action. When Roderigo says:

Thou told'st me That thou didst hold him in thy hate. Iago answers, not with a plain affirmation, but with a flash of rage:

Despise me if I do not;

and then breaks, like a flame, into the tirade about favoritism and neglected merit, which is one of the most genuine outbursts of emotion in his entire part. There is, I believe, no understanding of the play unless we realize that Iago's first motive is a rankling sense of personal wrong. He hates Cassio because he is jealous of him; he hates Othello for having given him cause of jealousy; he makes up his mind to cry quits upon both of them. But it is not a diabolic attraction to evil for evil's 4 Act II. sc. 1.

5 In Act 1. sc. 3, he doubts, "I know not if't be true." In Act II. sc. 1, his suspicions have ripened, "I do not suspect the lusty Moor hath leaped into my seat." By Act IV. sc. 2, he has certainly accused Emilia, for she speaks of the false informer "That made thee to suspect me with the Moor." Yet through the intervening time he makes her not only his comrade, but his accomplice.