We Never See the Stars. 47 



WE NEVER SEE THE STAES. 



Take a man out into the fields on a calm, quiet night, when the 

 moon is absent, the air clear, and as he looks upward, the " floor 

 of heaven" seems " inlaid with patines of bright gold." Let 

 him see Yega beaming, with steady lustre, like a benevolent 

 sapphire eye keeping watch over the world; Capella fitfully 

 flashing ; the Bear careering round the silent pole ; Orion with 

 his diamond belt ; and Sirius blazing in such splendour as to 

 vindicate his title as "■ the leader of the host of heaven," and 

 leave no wonder that the old Egyptians worshipped him as a 

 sacred orb, and formed the sloping sides of their pyramids 

 that his beams should fall straight and full upon them when he 

 reached his highest point in the skies that over-arched their 

 wondrous land. Let our observer gaze steadily as the 

 smaller stars come out from their homes in the deep unfathom- 

 able blue, until, between what the eye sees, and what the mind 

 imagines, the broad fields of space are all alive with light, and, 

 from every point of the compass, stars innumerable seem to 

 gleam. When the eye has thus been filled with brightness, we 

 could scarcely make a more startling assertion than is conveyed 

 in the words, " we never see the stars," and yet no statement 

 can be more true. What then, do we see ? The answer is, we 

 see certain rays of light which, in popular phraseology, left the 

 celestial orbs some time ago : years ago we know in some in- 

 stances, centuries perhaps in others, and thousands of years, it 

 may be, in still other cases, and possibly millions might be 

 required to state the time at which, in the remote past, that 

 force was exercised, or vibration excited, by which we recognize 

 the existence of the most distant of those suns whose beams 

 are able to affect our sight. The nearest star is, however, too 

 far off for his light-rays to bring to us a picture of his face. In 

 the moon we see, with the unaided eye, certain indications of 

 the form and character of the surface of our satellite. In the 

 planets, minute discs, in which all features have vanished, pro- 

 claim by the low power that makes them distinctly visible, com- 

 parative nearness to ourselves ; but of the stars another story 

 must be told. They are not like the moon, partly decipherable 

 by the unassisted eye ; not like the planets, surrendering more 

 or less of the secret of their form to the glasses of the telescope — 

 they defy alike the eye of the mortal, and the grandest optical 

 machinery which he has been able to invent. They do indeed, 

 in fine weather, look like small regular discs in a telescope, but 

 increasing the power of the eye-piece does not enlarge their 

 apparent diameters as it does that of nearer objects, and in the 

 most perfect instruments they look the least. We sec their 



