104 The Midnight Sun. 



as tlio sun is below the horizon, the moon will be for a con- 

 sidei'able period in each month, and that before and after the 

 full, when her light is greatest, always shining, only sinking 

 below the horizon when in the crescent form, and giving little 

 light. Added to these constant phenomena are the brilliant 

 displays of Aurora, common to such latitudes, and the beauty 

 of the icy scenery, and we may yet understand that even in 

 these regions there is an amount of physical and intellectual 

 enjoyment to be derived from the bounty of the Creator, who 

 has left no district without its charms. 



Such are the astronomical causes of the Midnight Sun. 

 They may be condensed into the statement, that within the 

 polar circles the sun becomes circumpolar, for a period in- 

 creasing with the latitude ; and if we pay attention to the 

 constellations, which are so situated with respect to ourselves 

 as to be circumpolar, and also watch how very near the sun 

 sets to the north point of the horizon, on its western side, at 

 midsummer, and how, in a few hours, he rises again close to 

 the north, on the eastern side, having, as it were, only just 

 dipped out of sight — we shall readily undertand how a journey 

 of a few hundred miles further north may bring us to a posi- 

 tion, where, having reached the lowest part of his apparent 

 daily path, he begins to ascend without ever having been lost 

 to the gaze of the observer. The only difference between the 

 sun and stars is, that they have always the same declination, 

 and if circumpolar at a place at all, are always so ; but the sun 

 ranges from 23i degs. south, to 23i degs. north ; and it is 

 only when having north declination that he can be circumpolar 

 to any part of the northern hemisphere, and vice versa. 



Of the actual appearance of the Midnight Sun it is hardly 

 necessary to speak here. All my readers have seen, or will seq 

 descriptions of the effect in the books of northern travel they 

 may come across, and these accounts vary with the tempera- 

 ment of the traveller. Even fiction has borrowed the pheno- 

 menon for an incident. The charming Swedish novelist, 

 Frederika Bremer, in her talo of Tin 1 Midniijld Sim, takes 

 lier characters on a pilgrimage to the mountain of .Avisaxa, in 

 Lapland, to behold the glorious sight, which is not, however, 

 described in detail, the authoress being more occupied with, the 

 emol ions of her ideal personages than wil h the aspect of Nature, 

 although the beauty of the scene is there indicated by a few 

 graphic touches. Our "Old Bushman/' in his Sprung and 

 Summer in La/plwndj after indulging in (ho poetical reflections 

 called up by the glorious scene, says : — "In Hie north-easl , 

 where the fells were lower, the 1111 shone out of an unclouded 



sky, apparently about a foot from the horizon's edge — an angry, 



sullen, lurid globe of fire, without appearing to emit a single ray 



