174 NETHER LOCHABER. 



attention of the celebrated Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who 

 watched its rapid increase of brilliancy night after night with the 

 liveliest interest. Its magnitude at last rivalled, if it did not even 

 exceed, that of Jupiter, with an effulgence equally bright and vivid. 

 After shining with great splendour some time, and attracting the 

 earnest gaze of the most distinguished astromomers of the period, 

 its brilliancy began steadily to decline, changing its colour in a very 

 remarkable manner as it became fainter and fainter, until finally it 

 became invisible in March 1574, and has never been seen since. 

 Sir John Herschel and other astronomers have suggested that its 

 reappearance in 1872 is by no means an improbable event; and 

 towards no constellation in the northern heavens, in consequence, 

 will the observer's eye be so constantly turned throughout the 

 present year as to Cassiopeia. The reappearance of such a star 

 would be certain to give rise to the most startling theories. With 

 the spectroscope in our possession, however, and the marvellous 

 telescopic power at our command now-a-days, we could not fail to 

 arrive at more intimate terms with such a stranger than was 

 possible in the days of Tycho Brahe. The interest and excitement 

 in the astronomical world in connection with the sudden burst of 

 splendour in the star in Corona a year or two ago was very great, 

 but would be still greater in the event of the reappearance of the 

 long absent stranger in Cassiopeia. In the one case it was only a 

 remarkable increase of light and lustre in the star already existent 

 and visible ; but the reappearance of a new orb in a spot blank and 

 starless in the most powerful telescopes for three hundred years, 

 would be almost equal to the sudden creation of a new sun. Here, 

 by the way, good reader, if you are ambitious, is a chance for fame. 

 Be but the first to detect the reappearance of this remarkable star- 

 stranger, and your immortality into all time shall be more secure 

 than if you wrote an epic to rival the Iliad, or a tragedy equal to 

 Hamlet or Othello. The name and memory of George Palitch, the 



