ing currents from the transmitter vary the countless number of electrons set free in the stream, and so the picture made up of glowing patches on the screen is a replica of the object, or face, or scene that is being transmitted. Another great advantage of this receiver, in addition to its efficiency, is that it is simple and could be made, by mass production, cheaply. People would buy it as they now buy a wireless valve. Prof. Dieckmann's mind goes a step further. He says that since electrons are so suitable for the receiver they also should be used at the transmitter. True, they are just what we need there; but how are we to make them explore a face or, more difficult still, a scene, and report their discoveries to a photo-electric cell, or by some other means enable the impressions to be seen miles away over land and sea? That is what Prof. Dieckmann is trying to discover, and he tells us that he believes he can succeed. I have to admit that I cannot see how this welcome wonder is to be attempted, and Dr Dieckmann admitted to me that his ideas were then equally vague. But I believe that our hope of realising perfect television within a year or two depends on some different method of approach from the now orthodox discs and mirrors. That television will come at some time I am convinced. So many men and companies are now engaged in the search for its active principles, and in order to appear to be keeping pace with their rivals they have had to make so many promises, that the public expects television soon to be in practice regularly. A necessity has been created, and Invention is certain at some time to supply it. And, forgetting such intangible laws of supply and demand, I am confident that it will come, for we know enough about its principles to work on until we achieve success. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company frankly consider television as simply the natural development of the telephone; and, as an ordinary matter of business progress, they organised extensive and costly research. Dr Herbert E. Ives, who led the research to the stage of a public demonstration, and is still experimenting, talks of television as he would of the telephone or of petrol waggons. 'It must be clearly understood that television will always be a more expensive service than telephony,' he told a convention of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. He says that a television service from individual to individual, parallel and as an adjunct to the telephone service, first will come. Secondly, there will be a popular address service by which the face of a speaker at a distant point can be viewed by an audience while his voice is transmitted by a loud speaker. The third consideration, he says, is the broadcasting of scenic events of public interest. The first two types of service, adds Dr Ives, 'lie within the range of physical practicability with apparatus of the general type already developed.' These are the statements of a matter-of-fact telephone man. In America they have already reserved wave-lengths for television transmission, several radio companies are preparing for television, and even the Metro-GoldwynMayer film corporation are proposing to go into the television business. In Great Britain the Post Office have offered Mr Baird the use of their beam system for trans-Atlantic experiments; and, of course, here we have the first television company of the world-the Baird Television Development Company, Limited, with a capital of 125,000l. The facts show what the commercial world thinks is the answer to the question, Can Television Come? Television of faces is already here, and television of a small group of people soon will be here. Television of great and swiftly moving scenes will come; but it is not safe, without knowing how soon some new and simple principle may be discovered, to say when that will be. If this new principle does not come, we may have to wait two, three, five years. For, in the progress of mechanical methods, years may pass imperceptibly in the slow processes of trial and adjustment. WILLIAM J. BRITTAIN. Art. 6. THE REVOLT OF THE CAMISARDS, 1702-1704. Cévennes sous le Col Frank Puaux. Paris, 1. Mémoires sur la Guerre des 2. Histoire des troubles des Cévennes ou de la guerre des 3. Précis Historique de la Guerre des Camisards, 17021710. Nîmes, 1892. 4. Fragment de la guerres des Camisards par un anonyme, 1692-1709. Ed. Marius Tallon. Privas, 1887. ONE day at Nîmes we were at a loss for a motor expedition, and the concièrge of the Hotel du Luxembourg suggested the Musée du Desert. We had no idea where or what the Musée was, but found it to be about thirty miles north-west of Nîmes, and this was as good a way as another of seeing the country of the Lower Cévennes. The road from Nîmes to Alais climbs up a wild moorland country covered with rock and scrub, known as Les Garrigues, drops to the valley of the Gardon, and sweeps round the foot of a hill to the little town of Anduze, famous in the war of the Cévennes. The road crosses the river, passes between two great rocks about 1000 feet high, and about a gunshot apart at their base, known as the 'Gate of the Cévennes,' winds up country for a bit, then turns left-handed in the direction of St Jean du Gard, and some four or five miles north-west of Anduze a narrow and very rough track leads up through groves of Spanish chestnuts to the Musée du Desert. The Musée is, in fact, an irregular group of farm buildings which was once the home of Roland the famous leader of the Camisards and now contains relics of the war of the Cévennes-Roland's sword (a beautiful little rapier), Camisard pikes, proclamations by the Duke of Berwick and Marshal Villars to the Protestants, and a bill offering 100 pistoles for Roland alive or dead; Roland's bed, and a cupboard with a false bottom in which he hid. Apart from its historical associations the Musée contains nothing of artistic value, and the building has no architectural interest. Yet it is a sort of Mecca of Protestantism and Roland is still regarded not only as the hero of the Cévennes, but almost as its Saint, if such things are possible in what is a Protestant district. Visitors are desired to take off their hats on entering, and there is something intensely pathetic in this lonely building, miles from anywhere, and its piteous relics of the fight put up by a handful of peasants against most cruel persecution. With one exception all my people were Puritans in the 17th century, and the appeal of this war to some latent Puritan instinct, tempted me for once to leave the familiar track of architecture. These wild rocks and gorges of the Cévennes, deep-set valleys and mountain streams seem still instinct with the spirit of the Camisards, their appeal is quite different from that of the mountains east of the Rhône, and though the revolt was broken, and though it took another three-quarters of a century to establish religious tolerance in France, Protestantism is very much alive in the Cévennes and Languedoc. The better educated classes and more than half the population of Nîmes are said to be Protestants, and the great Jesuit church in which Protestant services are now held is crowded on Sundays. The preacher in a black gown occupies the top part of a lofty threedecker at the east end facing the congregation. There is no altar and the hymns are sung sitting with astonishing zeal and sincerity. Incidentally, the singing is fairly in tune and not in the least discordant. The rising in the Cévennes has been represented by Roman Catholic writers as a deep laid plot against the State imposed by some imaginary conclave of Protestant pastors at Nîmes; but it is quite certain that it was nothing of the sort, and that it was a genuine revolt against intolerable oppression of long standing. Its leaders declared again and again that if only Louis XIV would allow them liberty of conscience, they would submit at once, and become his most faithful subjects; but it was no good. Louis XIV, urged on by Mme de Maintenon, the Roman Catholic clergy, and unscrupulous ministers, was determined not to undo the worst blunder of his reign, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He would not hear of any tolerance of Protestantism, and his own ministers said that the king would sooner lose his kingdom than fail to force the whole of his subjects into the Roman Catholic faith. It is said that fully 300,000 Protestants filed from France between 1686 and 1705. At first the authorities were inclined to consider the dispersion of the Protestants as a good riddance. Bossuet in 1691 saw in it the hand of God, and Mme de Maintenon thought it absurd to attribute the decline of trade in France to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and that in any case that decline could be amply compensated by 'La France toute Catholique'; but the danger was too obvious to be ignored. The provincial governors called the attention of the Court to the serious injury to France caused by the flight of thousands of skilled handicraftsmen, and the authorities resolved to stop the flight by imposing severe pains and penalties on all Protestant refugees. Louvois, the notorious Minister of Louis XIV, was all for fire and sword. The frontiers were closed, the relations of refugees were imprisoned, ten pistoles a head was the price offered for the capture of a fugitive, and the penalty for flight was the galleys for men and imprisonment for women. No Protestant could hold any office, Protestant marriages were not recognised as legal, with the result that children born of them were considered bastards and could not inherit. Protestants, in fact, were treated as pariahs and outcasts of the State. Louvois even indemnified anybody who robbed a Protestant. Protestant services were strictly forbidden, though they continued to be held in disused quarries and secret places in the mountains with sentries posted at commanding points to give notice of the approach of troops. In 1686 the royal dragoons came on one of these assemblies at Cambe du Cautel. They at once opened fire, and finished up those that were not killed with the butts of their musquets. Six hundred men, women, and children are said to have been left dead on the ground. Dragoons were billeted in Protestant houses with power to torture, flog women in public, and commit every outrage but rape and murder, which were forbidden pro forma, but Louvois' orders were to spare nobody. In the thirty years between 1685-1715, 3000 Protestants are said to have been sent to the galleys, a fate almost worse than death. A rising was attempted in 1690, and it seems that towards the end of the 17th century, the government having lost its head |