tenderest sentiments of the heart are aroused

a

feeling of awe and reverence, of softened melancholy mingled with a thought of God, comes over us, and awakens the better nature within us. Those far-off lights seem full of meaning to us, could we but read their holy message; they become real and sentient, and, like the soft eyes in pictures, look lovingly and inquiringly upon us. We come into communion with another life, and the soul asserts its immortality more strongly than ever before. We are humbled as we gaze upon the infinity of worlds, and strive to comprehend their enormous distances, their magnificent retinue of suns. The powers of the mind are aroused, and eager questionings crowd upon us. What are those glittering fires? What their distances from us? Are they worlds like our own? Do living, thinking beings dwell upon them? Are they carelessly scattered through infinite space, or is there an order of the universe? Can we ever hope to fathom those mysterious depths, or are they closed to us forever? Many of these problems have been solved; others yet await the astronomer whose keen eye shall be strong enough to read the mysterious scroll of the heavens. Two hundred generations of study have revealed to us such startling facts, that we wonder how man in his feebleness can grasp so much, see so far, and penetrate so deeply into the mysteries of the universe. Astronomy has measured the distance of many of the stars, and of all the planets; computed their weight and

size, their days, years, and seasons, with many of their physical features; made a map of the moon, in some respects more perfect than any map of the earth; tracked the comets in their immense sidereal journeys, marking their paths to a nicety of which we can scarcely conceive, and at last it has analyzed the structure of the sun and far-off stars, announcing the very elements of which they are composed.

Observing for several evenings those stars which shine with a clear distinct light, we notice that they change their position with respect to the others. They are therefore called "planets" (literally, wanderers). Others remain immovable, and shine with a shifting, twinkling light. They are termed the "fixed stars," although it is now known that they also are in motion-the most rapid of any known even to Astronomy-but through such immense orbits that they seem to us stationary. Then, too, diagonally girdling the heavens, is a whitish, vapory belt-the Milky Way. This is composed of multitudes of millions of suns-of which our own sun itself is one-so far removed from us that their light mingles, and makes only a fleecy whiteness. This magnificent panorama of the heavens is before us, inviting our study, and waiting to make kn wn to us the grandest revelations of science.

DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY.

HISTORY.

ASTRONOMY is the most ancient of all sciences. The study of the stars is doubtless as old as man himself, and hence many of its discoveries date back of authentic records, amid the dim mysteries of tradition. In tracing its history, we shall speak only of those prominent facts which will best enable us to understand its progress and glorious achievements.

THE CHINESE. This people boast much of their astronomical discoveries. Indeed their emperor claims a celestial ancestry, and styles himself "Son of the Sun." They possess an account of a conjunction of four planets and the moon, which must have occurred a century before the Flood. They have also the first record of an eclipse of the sun, which took place about two hundred and twenty years* after the Deluge. It is reported that one of their kings, two thousand years before Christ, put to death the principal officers of state because they had failed to calculate an approaching eclipse.

* October 13, 2127 B. C.

THE CHALDEANS.-The Chaldean shepherds, watching their flocks by night under the open sky, could not fail to become familiar with many of the movements of the heavenly bodies. When Alexander took Babylon, two centuries before Christ, he found in that city a record of their observations reaching back about nineteen centuries, or nearly to the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. The Chaldeans divided the day into twelve hours, invented the sun-dial, and also discovered the "Saros" or "Chaldean Period," which is the length of time in which the eclipses of the sun and moon repeat themselves in the same order.

THE GRECIANS.-In the seventh century B. C., Thales, noted for his electrical discoveries, acquired much renown, and established the first school of Astronomy in Greece. He taught that the earth is round, and that the moon receives her light from the sun. He introduced the division of the earth's surface into zones, and the theory of the obliquity of the ecliptic. He also predicted an eclipse of the sun which is memorable in ancient history as having terminated a war between the Medes and Lydians. These nations were engaged in a fierce battle, but the awe produced by the darkening of the sun was so great, that both sides threw down their arms and made peace. Thales had two pupils, Anaximander and Anaxagoras. The first of these taught that the stars are suns, and that the planets are inhabited. He erected the first sun-dial, at Sparta. The second

maintained that there is but one God, that the sun is solid, and as large as the country of Greece, and attempted to explain eclipses and other celestial phenomena by natural causes. For his audacity and impiety, as his countryman considered it, he and his family were doomed to perpetual banishment.

Pythagoras founded the second celebrated astronomical school, at Crotona, at which were educated hundreds of enthusiastic pupils. He knew the causes of eclipses, and calculated them by means of the Saros. He was most emphatically a dreamer. He conceived a system of the universe, in many respects correct; yet he advanced no proof, and made few converts to his views, and they were soon wellnigh forgotten. He held that the sun is the centre of the solar system, and that the planets revolve about it in circular orbits; that the earth revolves daily on its axis, and yearly around the sun; that Venus is both morning and evening star; that the planets are inhabited-and he even attempted to calculate the size of some of the animals in the moon; that the planets are placed at intervals corresponding to the scale in music, and that they move in harmony, making the "music of the spheres," but that this celestial concert is heard only by the gods-the ears of man being too gross for such divine melody.

Eudoxus, who lived in the fourth century B. C., invented the theory of the Crystalline Spheres. He