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THE INTERESTING CHARACTER OF ASTRONOMY. 
A POPULAR COURSE OF ASTRO- 
NOMY*. 
I. 
Introduction. 
There can have been no period in the 
history of mankind, in which they did not 
behold, with a desire to comprehend them, 
the changes which are daily taking place in 
the face of the heavens above them ; and 
there can have been none in which they did 
not perceive these changes to sympathize 
with others in the surface of the earth around 
them. He who looks out upon the heavens, 
beholds a canopy spread forth like the half of 
a great sphere, of which he appears to oc- 
cupy the centre. In the day-time, when it 
is of the colour of azure, — the hue of light in 
which his perception of its existence is most 
pleasant to him, — the sun daily takes his 
course, in a zone, across this fair canopy, 
** like a giant that renews his strength.” As 
night approaches, the curtain of the heavens 
gradually loses its transparent azure tint, 
becomes opaque, darkens, and at length it is 
black as sackcloth of hair ; then come the 
millions of the stars, and are strewed like 
gems upon its surface ; and in her season the 
moon walks foi’th in her brightness, and 
holds sway amid the dreary watches of the 
night. These daily changes in the heavens 
appear to have but little relation to the 
changes of vegetable life, but over the whole 
of the animated creation their power is 
absolute. The song of the birds be- 
comes mute at nightfall, and again 
wakes only to welcome the returning sun. 
The beast lies down in the forest, the reptile 
crawls to his lair, and man himself sinks 
under the mysterious influence of the chang- 
ing heavens : and returning to that state of 
oblivion, out of which his birth first brought 
him, he stretches himself out to sleep. Such 
is the experience of a day. That of a year 
brings a still further knowledge of the won- 
derful sympathy between the changes in the 
heavens above him, and those in the things 
around him. He sees the sun not daily to 
describe the same path in the heavens, but at 
one time to travel obliquely across them in a 
higher, and at another time in a lower zone, 
so as at one time to have a longer course to 
run, and at another a shorter ; and thus at one 
time to give him a longer, and at another a 
shorter day. This chauge in the elevation and 
consequent length of the sun’s oblique path in 
the heavens, he soon perceives to be coupled 
with a change in his own perceptions of the 
intensity of heat and cold; when the sun’s 
path is lowest or most oblique, he is colder 
than when it is highest. And not only do his 
own feelings sympathize with this change, 
but all nature around him. The hand, that 
covered the beast of the forest with a coat of 
fur, now thickens its garment. The bird, 
whose path is free in the heavens, now guided 
by a spark of that intelligence which called it 
• This course will be succeeded by similar 
ones on other subjects. 
into being, becomes conscious of the existence 
of a warmer sky in some remote unseen region 
of the earth, and seeks it. The green herb 
withers, the blossom dies, the leaf becomes 
sapless, and falls to the ground. Is it pos- 
sible, that he who beholds all these changes 
around him, and who is thus deeply interested 
in them, who cannot but see that they are all 
bound together as by a chain, and made to 
sympathize with one another, should not 
seek to trace out still more of the mystery of 
their union, to know more of its nature and 
laws, and to unravel its cause. 
Man is necessarily, and from the very mode 
and nature of his existence, a speculative 
being. And of all subjects of speculation, the 
changes in the heavens are probably those 
which first arrested his attention. How 
earnestly must the master spirits of those 
days, when the secret of the universe was un- 
known, have wished and have laboured to 
account for phenomena which we now so 
readily explain, by means of our knowledge 
of the form of the earth : how must the mys- 
terious alternation of day and night, and the 
march of the seasons, have distracted them, 
wearied their imagination, and perplexed their 
reasoning. 
Quae mare compescaiit causae ; quid temperet 
annum; 
Stellas sponte sua,jussaBne vag'enter et erreut; 
Quid premat obscuruin lunae, quid proferat 
orbem ; 
Quid velit et possit rerum Concordia discors*. 
It was in these words that Horace described 
the sublime but very unsatisfactory specula- 
tions of his friend Grosphus. 
The mighty changes in the heavens con- 
trolling, as they do, all the phenomena of 
animal and vegetable life, necessarily couple 
themselves in the mind with the direct agency 
of the supernatural world, and thus it was 
that the astronomy of the ancients became 
incorporated with their mythology. The sky 
was Atlas or Uranus, — it was eternal and 
unchangeable ; the fixed stars were its organs 
of vision ; the planets, of which the control- 
ling power was the sun, rolled eternally, 
according to their notion, in concentric orbs 
of crystal around the earth. These planets 
they called gods, and their path was along the 
milky way. 
Est via sublimls, cnelo manifesta sereno ; 
Lactea nomeii habet; candore notabilis ipso. 
Hac iter est Superis ad magni tecta Tonantis, 
Regalemque domumt. 
* “ What causes set bounds to the sea, or 
vary the returning seasons ? Whether the 
stars move of themselves, or by the order of 
a higher power ? What darkens the face of 
the moon, or extends her to a full orb ? what 
is the nature and power of those principles of 
things, which, although always at variance, 
yet always agree ?” 
t “ There is a way in the exalted plain of 
heaven, easy to be seen in a clear sky, and 
which, distinguishable by a remarkable white- 
ness, is known by the name of the milky way. 
Along this the road lies open to the courts of 
the nobler deities, and to the palace of the 
great Thunderer.’'— Ovid. 
