1876.] 
Sidereal Astronomy . 
7i 
instead of the white source of all light which bathes us, a 
blue light spread over the earth. What a change would 
instantly come across the face of nature ! The clouds losing 
the silver and golden hues, and spreading under the heavens 
in a sombre vault; the face of Nature veiled in a coloured 
penumbra ; the most beautiful stars remaining visible by 
day in the heavens; flowers hiding the brilliancy of their 
lustrous adornment ; the fields bathed in gloom to the 
invisible horizon ; a new day dawns in the heavens ; faces 
become old, and the human race, with astonishment, 
demands an explanation of so strange a transformation. We 
know so little, beneath the surface, of things, we go so much 
by appearances, that the entire universe would seem renewed 
by this slight modification of solar light. 
How would it be if, instead of a single indigo sun follow- 
ing with regularity its apparent course, bringing the years 
and the days by its single government, a second sun were 
suddenly to unite itself to it ; a blood-red sun disputing 
always with its partner the empire of the world of colours ? 
Imagine that at midday, when our sun spread over nature 
the penumbral light we have just described, the fire of a 
resplendent focus lighted the east with its flames. Green- 
ish shadows pass suddenly across the diffused light ; and 
opposite to every objedt a dark train obliterates the blue 
mantle spread over the world. Later, the red sun rises as 
the other sets, and objects are coloured to the east with red 
rays, to the west with blue. Later still, a new day dawns 
upon the Earth, while as the first sun sets, nature becomes 
bathed in a brilliant fiery red. As night approaches, hardly 
does west begin to fade like far off Bengal fires in the last 
rays of the purple sun, when a new morning dawns at the 
opposite side, tinted with the colours of the Cyclopean 
blue eye. Can the imagination of poets or the caprice 
of painters create on the pallet of fancy a world of light 
more daring than this. Hegel has said, that “ what is 
real can be imagined,” and that “ what can be imagined 
is real.” This daring thought does not quite express the 
whole truth. There are many things which do not ap- 
pear rational to us, and which, nevertheless, exist in reality 
in the other numberless creations of the infinities which 
surround us. 
There are, no doubt, living eyes there which contem- 
plated these marvels each day. Who knows ? It is very 
probable that they scarcely pay any attention to them, 
and being from their cradles accustomed, as we are, to the 
same things, they do not appreciate the picturesque beauty 
