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was the ground on which they were selected. Professor Henderson commenced his calculations with a different object, and only diverted them into the channel of distance when he ascertained the amount of proper motion which the star has. His observations were not undertaken with a view to this question; they were ordinary meridian observations. And it is not to be wondered at that astronomers were very cautious in admitting results so obtained, when it is considered that observations of this kind are beset with such numerous sources of error, in refraction, aberration, and the like. The method adopted by Bessel, on the other hand, obviates those sources of error. It has some analogy to the method of obtaining the distance of the sun by means of a transit of Venus, inasmuch as the observations are not those of the absolute position of one body, but of the relative positions of two.

The basis on which the operations are conducted is this:-Certain stars are so nearly in the same direction in the heavens as not to be easily separated. Some of these are in reality doubletwin stars revolving about each otherat any rate, physically connected. Others have no such connexion; and it is argued that, in certain cases, the smaller of the two is likely to be at an enormous distance behind the other. When such is actually the case, there will be a change of the relative positions of the two as viewed from different parts of the earth's orbit, and the amount of that change will depend on the proximity of the nearer star to our system, in precisely the same way as a tree will shift its place more or less rapidly, with respect to a distant hill, as the spectator is carried along in his journey. It is on stars so circumstanced that observations with the view of detecting a parallax were instituted by Bessel. No absolute measures of position of either star are required; simply the relative distances and directions of the one with respect to the other. Thus all sources of error due to refraction, aberration, and many other causes, which equally effect both stars,

The conclusion may be stated in a single sentence. The star selected by Henderson is only a little beyond the parallactic unit (twenty millions of millions of miles); that selected by Bessel is about three times as far away. Other stars have been reached, but these two are the nearest known. With a trembling and uncertain hand, astronomers have stretched out their line to one or two stars ten times as far away as the farthest of these. But the great host of heaven lie incalculably farther back. Shall we ever reach them? Judging from present appearances, we are compelled to answer in the negative. The stars, as we gaze into the sky, seem to defy us. For what do we see there? Close around us we see bright lamps pretty equally distributed over the vault of heaven. They twinkle and dance before us, as though conscious of the close proximity of our gaze. But let us look again. Clasping the whole vault of heaven, we see a belt of faint light, some twelve degrees in breadth. This is the milky way, the galactic circle. To the ancients, it was part of the milk which washed the purple stains from the lily; to the moderns, it is the universe itself-the stupendous whole, of which the brighter stars are but the portions which lie nearest to this little spot of earth. You may understand this if you bear in mind that the spherical appearance of the heavens is a necessary consequence of vast and unknown distance. There is no reality in this appearance. The arrangement of the stars is somewhat like an extended sheet of cardboard, of small thickness. Or, rather, you should imagine a vast plain planted with orange trees, all loaded with yellow fruit. These oranges in countless myriads are the stars. We are situated near the centre of this grove. Our sun is a small orange; the earth and the planets are tiny buds grouped around it. The neighbouring branches are thinly supplied with fruit, and few fruit-stalks bear more than a single orange. the grove is of boundless extent. Look

But

myriads of golden balls, extending away right and left, until individual oranges are no longer distinguishable, except by the glow of light which they send to the eye. This glow is the milky way. Looking upwards, or downwards, from the milky way, there is no such profusion of scattering. Much bright fruit does, indeed, cluster on the upper and lower branches; and an unpractised eye is deceived into the belief that the number is infinite. But the eye of an astronomer, armed with proper instruments, finds it far otherwise. He can count the stars; he can gauge the heavens; and the conclusion to which he will arrive is, that the number which the eye takes in diminishes gradually from the galactic circle upwards or downwards. And this diminution is not only regular, but is very great indeed. From such considerations as these, conjecture has ripened into conviction, that the solar system is a part of the milky way; that the scattered bright stars are those parts of the same which lie in our immediate neighbourhood; and that the whole group forms a vast, extended, rolling prairie of stars. The milky way is, therefore, to human apprehension, nothing less than the universe itself. True, there may be other galactic systems, other prairies, other orange groves, as far separated from ours as the prairies of America are from the groves of Europe. Some of the remarkable nebulæ seem to hint at the possibility of the thing. On such a subject it is premature to speculate. Now, it is only those oranges that cluster round us, those which grow on the same branch with our sun, that we have succeeded in stretching out our hand to. What arithmetic shall suffice to count the distance of those which lie on the remoter trees of our grove, the faintest groups of the milky way?

What imagination shall wing its flight to those still more shadowy groups which constitute the unresolved nebulæ ? The yard-measure is too puny; the hand of man is too feeble. An angel's hand must grasp the rod that shall mete out the length and breadth of this golden grove. Man has gone up through the immensity of space and strained his line till it will bear no more. Other generations may mount higher, but only to find the vast circles ever widening beyond. The position. which we have reached is a lofty one; but, lofty as it is, future ages shall use it as their point of departure. It is an ennobling thought to console us amid our many failures. Man rises by the aid of that Divine faculty which pertains to him alone of all created beings-the faculty of accumulating stores of knowledge, of working in succession, of acting on intelligence transmitted from age to age. The great English philosopher, Bacon, describes man as the "interpreter of nature." But this is not his highest, not his characteristic designation; for, are not the beasts, are not the birds, are not the very insects interpreters of nature? It is as the interpreter of man, the interpreter of man's records, that man stands distinguished. Herein reason transcends instinct, that its gifts are transmissive and cumulative. Mind does not stand supported by the mind which exists around it, not simply, not mainly. There is a higher and a broader support. The minds of the great of bygone ages live and work in the breasts of their successors. The old Greeks, I suppose, knew this, and embodied it in the fable of Athene, the goddess of knowledge, who sprang into existence not as a naked, helpless child, but as a grown-up being, clad in complete armour, from the head of Zeus.

was the ground on which they were selected. Professor Henderson commenced his calculations with a different object, and only diverted them into the channel of distance when he ascertained the amount of proper motion which the star has. His observations were not undertaken with a view to this question; they were ordinary meridian observations. And it is not to be wondered at that astronomers were very cautious in admitting results so obtained, when it is considered that observations of this kind are beset with such numerous sources of error, in refraction, aberration, and the like. The method adopted by Bessel, on the other hand, obviates those sources of error. It has some analogy to the method of obtaining the distance of the sun by means of a transit of Venus, inasmuch as the observations are not those of the absolute position of one body, but of the relative positions of two.

The basis on which the operations are conducted is this:-Certain stars are so nearly in the same direction in the heavens as not to be easily separated. Some of these are in reality double-twin stars revolving about each otherat any rate, physically connected. Others have no such connexion; and it is argued that, in certain cases, the smaller of the two is likely to be at an enormous distance behind the other. When such is actually the case, there will be a change of the relative positions of the two as viewed from different parts of the earth's orbit, and the amount of that change will depend on the proximity of the nearer star to our system, in precisely the same way as a tree will shift its place more or less rapidly, with respect to a distant hill, as the spectator is carried along in his journey. It is on stars so circumstanced that observations with the view of detecting a parallax were instituted by Bessel. No absolute measures of position of either star are required; simply the relative distances and directions of the one with respect to the other. Thus all sources of error due to refraction, aberration, and many other causes, which equally effect both stars,

The conclusion may be stated in a single sentence. The star selected by Henderson is only a little beyond the parallactic unit (twenty millions of millions of miles); that selected by Bessel is about three times as far away. Other stars have been reached, but these two are the nearest known. With a trembling and uncertain hand, astronomers have stretched out their line to one or two stars ten times as far away as the farthest of these. But the great host of heaven lie incalculably farther back. Shall we ever reach them? Judging from present appearances, we are compelled to answer in the negative. The stars, as we gaze into the sky, seem to defy us. For what do we see there? Close around us we see bright lamps pretty equally distributed over the vault of heaven. They twinkle and dance before us, as though conscious of the close proximity of our gaze. But let us look again. Clasping the whole vault of heaven, we see a belt of faint light, some twelve degrees in breadth. This is the milky way, the galactic circle. To the ancients, it was part of the milk which washed the purple stains from the lily; to the moderns, it is the universe itself-the stupendous whole, of which the brighter stars are but the portions which lie nearest to this little spot of earth. You may understand this if you bear in mind that the spherical appearance of the heavens is a necessary consequence of vast and unknown distance. There is no reality in this appearance. The arrangement of the stars is somewhat like an extended sheet of cardboard, of small thickness. Or, rather, you should imagine a vast plain planted with orange trees, all loaded with yellow fruit. These oranges in countless myriads are the stars. We are situated near the centre of this grove. Our sun is a small orange; the earth and the planets are tiny buds grouped around it. The neighbouring branches are thinly supplied with fruit, and few fruit-stalks bear more than a single orange. the grove is of boundless extent. Look

But

1

myriads of golden balls, extending away right and left, until individual oranges are no longer distinguishable, except by the glow of light which they send to the eye. This glow is the milky way. Looking upwards, or downwards, from the milky way, there is no such profusion of scattering. Much bright fruit does, indeed, cluster on the upper and lower branches; and an unpractised eye is deceived into the belief that the number is infinite. But the eye of an astronomer, armed with proper instruments, finds it far otherwise. He can count the stars; he can gauge the heavens; and the conclusion to which he will arrive is, that the number which the eye takes in diminishes gradually from the galactic circle upwards or downwards. And this diminution is not only regular, but is very great indeed. From such considerations as these, conjecture has ripened into conviction, that the solar system is a part of the milky way; that the scattered bright stars are those parts of the same which lie in our immediate neighbourhood; and that the whole group forms a vast, extended, rolling prairie of stars. The milky way is, therefore, to human apprehension, nothing less than the universe itself. True, there may be other galactic systems, other prairies, other orange groves, as far separated from ours as the prairies of America are from the groves of Europe. Some of the remarkable nebulæ seem to hint at the possibility of the thing. On such a subject it is premature to speculate. Now, it is only those oranges that cluster round us, those which grow on the same branch with our sun, that we have succeeded in stretching out our hand to. What arithmetic shall suffice to count the distance of those which lie on the remoter trees of our grove, the faintest groups of the milky way?

What imagination shall wing its flight to those still more shadowy groups which constitute the unresolved nebulæ ? The yard-measure is too puny; the hand of man is too feeble. An angel's hand must grasp the rod that shall mete out the length and breadth of this golden grove. Man has gone up through the immensity of space and strained his line till it will bear no more. Other generations may mount higher, but only to find the vast circles ever widening beyond. The position which we have reached is a lofty one; but, lofty as it is, future ages shall use it as their point of departure. It is an ennobling thought to console us amid our many failures. Man rises by the aid of that Divine faculty which pertains to him alone of all created beings-the faculty of accumulating stores of knowledge, of working in succession, of acting on intelligence transmitted from age to age. The great English philosopher, Bacon, describes man as the "interpreter of nature." But this is not his highest, not his characteristic designation; for, are not the beasts, are not the birds, are the birds, are not the very insects interpreters of nature? It is as the interpreter of man, the interpreter of man's records, that man stands distinguished. Herein reason transcends instinct, that its gifts are transmissive

and cumulative. Mind does not stand supported by the mind which exists around it, not simply, not mainly. There is a higher and a broader support. The minds of the great of bygone ages live and work in the breasts of their successors. The old Greeks, I suppose, knew this, and embodied it in the fable of Athene, the goddess of knowledge, who sprang into existence not as a naked, helpless child, but as a grown-up being, clad in complete armour, from the head of Zeus.

RAVEN SHOE.

66

BY HENRY KINGSLEY, AUTHOR OF GEOFFRY HAMLYN.”

CHAPTER XLIV.

ANOTHER MEETING.

LORD ASCOT had been moved into South Audley Street, his town house, and Lady Ascot was there nursing him. General Mainwaring was off for Varna. But Lord Saltire had been a constant visitor, bringing with him very often Marston, who was, you will remember, an old friend of Lady Ascot.

It was not at all an unpleasant house to be in. Lord Ascot was crippled he had been seized with paralysis at Epsom; and he was ruined. But every one knew the worst, and felt relieved by thinking that things could get no worse than worst, and so must get better.

In fact, every one admitted to the family party about that time remembered it as a very happy and quiet time indeed. Lord Ascot was their first object, of course; and a more gentle and biddable invalid than the poor fellow made can hardly be conceived. He was passionately fond of reading novels (a most reprehensible practice), and so easily amused. Lord Saltire and he would play picquet; and every evening there would be three hours of whist, until the doctor looked in the last thing, and Lord Ascot was helped to bed.

alarmed. William would come sometimes and sit quietly behind Marston, or Lord Saltire, watching the game. In short, they were a very quiet pleasant party indeed.

One night-it was the very night on which Adelaide had lost her hat in the Park-there was no whist. Marston had gone down to Oxford suddenly, and William came in to tell them so. Lady Ascot was rather glad, she said, for she had a friend coming to tea, who did not play whist; so Lord Saltire and Lord Ascot sat down to picquet, and William talked to his aunt.

"Who is your friend, Maria?" asked Lord Saltire.

"A Mr. Bidder, a minister. He has written a book on the Revelations, which you really ought to read, James; it would suit you."

They both laughed.

"About the seven seals, hey?" said Lord Saltire; "septem phoco,' as I remember Machynleth translated it at Eton once. We called him 'Vitulina' ever after. The name stuck to him through life with some of us. was A capital name for him, too! His fussy blundering in this war-business is just like his old headlong way of looking out words in his dictionary. He is an ass, Maria; and I will bet fifty pounds that your friend, the minister, is another."

Marston was always set to play with Lord Ascot, because Lord Saltire and Lady Ascot would not play against one another. Lord Saltire was, of course, one of the best players in Europe; and I really believe that Lady Ascot was not the worst by any means. I can see the party now. I can see Lady Ascot laying down a card, and looking at the same time at her partner, to call his attention to her lead. And I can see Lord Saltire take out his snuff-box

"How can you know? at all events, the man he brings with him is none." "Another minister?"

"Yes, a Moravian missionary from Australia."

"Then certainly another ass, or he would have gone as missionary to a less abominably detestable hole. They were all burnt into the sea there the other day. Immediately after which the rivers rose seventy feet, and drowned the rest of

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