98 



SCENERY OP THE HEAVENS. 



elements compared with that we enjoy ; but it is computed, that even the ninetieth part of 

 the solar light exceeds the illuminating power of three thousand of our moons at the full, 

 and would itself be amply sufficient for the purposes of life. If arrested in his orbital 

 course, and abandoned to the force of the solar attraction, Saturn would drop to the sun 

 in about five years and two months. His true form is a recent determination. Though 

 not so swift upon his axis as Jupiter, the two diameters exhibit a greater difference, the 

 polar being 6700 miles shorter than the equatorial, a degree of oblateness due to the 

 greater lightness of his material in connection with his axical speed. It was formerly 

 supposed that the diameter is not the greatest at the equator, but at some distance from 

 it, and that the north polar region is much more flattened than the south. This was the 

 conclusion of Sir W. Herschel ; and it still passes current. But the real shape is that of 

 an exact spheroid of considerable ellipticity. 



Men had long been upon terms of acquaintance and familiarity with Saturn without 

 suspecting the grandeur of his construction, or the remarkable apparatus with which he is 

 furnished. The shepherd astronomers of Chaldea the star-gazers of Egypt, Greece, and 

 Rome the astrologers of the middle ages Copernicus and Tycho Brahe saw the 

 planet only as a dull nebulous star slowly moving through the heavens. It was not until 

 the earth had performed its annual circuit round the sun many thousand times, that the 

 stately form and numerous attendants of the remote wanderer hitherto deemed obscure 

 and dreary were revealed. At length, in the year 1610, Galileo sent to Keppler the 

 enormous word, 



Smaiomrmilmepoetalevmibvnenvgttaviras 



which veiled the Latin sentence to uninstructed eyes, introduced in a former page, and 

 announced the most distant planet to be threefold. This was a glimpse caught of the 

 annular appendage of Saturn, which Huygens, with a more perfect instrument, found 

 to be a ring, at the same time discovering one of the satellites. The planet is now more 

 fully known to us. It occupies an illustrious place in the system, having a train of eight 

 moons, with two conspicuous rings encompassing its body a peculiarity of structure 

 without another example in the universe, so far as we are acquainted with it. The two 



rings are readily seen in good telescopes separated by a dark interval. But recently, using 

 mightier instrumental power, the discovery has been made of a third, inside the other two, 

 which seems to be composed of a substance altogether different. It is of a dusky aspect, 

 and semi-transparent, as the ball of the planet can be seen through it. It has also been 

 ascertained that there is a delicate sub-division of the outer ring, visible only near the 

 extremities. The planet is not exactly central with reference to the annuli, but a 



