the beautiful constellations near the southern pole, and I could never raise my eyes towards the starry vault without thinking of the Cross of the south. The pleasure which we felt on first discovering this beautiful constellation, was warmly shared by such of our crew as had lived in the southern colonies." This I should have told you was written on shipboard. "In the solitude of the seas, we hail a star with which we have been familiar, as a friend from whom we had been separated for a long time. The two great stars which mark the summit and the foot of the cross are so situated, that the constellation affords a more easy method of observing the hour than any other group. This circumstance is well known to every nation that lives beyond the tropics, who are all acquainted with the hours at the different seasons, when the cross is erect or declining. How often have we heard our guides exclaim, in the plains and deserts of South America, Midnight is past, the cross begins to decline!'"*

MOTHER.

I am not surprised that warm feeling should be excited by the contemplation of the heavens. I myself never look at the stars without emotion,

Humboldt's Personal Narrative, 4to. vol. i. pp. 207, 8, 9.

and I often recollect with pleasure those beautiful lines which a French poet is said to have spoken extempore on a fine starlight night :

"Tous ces vastes pays d'azur et de lumiere
Tirés du sein du vide, et formés sans matiere;
Arrondis sans compas, et tournans sans pivot,
Ont a peine couté la depense d'un mot."

ELIZABETH.

I have often attempted to translate those lines, but never could succeed to my satisfaction.

37

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

MOTION OF THE EARTH ROUND THE SUN.-CARDINAL POINTS.-POLES OF THE HEA

VENS.-ZODIAC.-SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC.

-HORIZON. FERGUSON.

MOTHER.

You see that it is possible to distinguish the different quarters of the sky, because the stars which appear to be scattered over it are always in the same place with respect to each other; and you can now understand that if there were other shining bodies moving about, between the earth and those fixed stars, it would be possible to trace their courses by referring them to those

stars.

ELIZABETH.

Just as we refer to Newcastle, York, and the other places we passed through, when we talk of our journey from Edinburgh to London.

MOTHER.

This is one of the chief reasons for the great pains which astronomers have always taken to determine exactly the places of the fixed stars. When you know more of the subject you will be surprised at the astonishing accuracy they have attained; still they are not yet satisfied, and are every day making improvements in the instruments invented for this purpose, and in the mode of using them.

That you may have some idea of the movement of the earth, and of the other bodies, which I shall show you revolve in their orbits round the sun, we will suppose the lamp on the table in the middle of the room to be the sun, we the earth, and that the stars are studded all around us on the walls, floor, and ceiling of the room.

ELIZABETH.

But the stars are not really placed on a flat surface, I thought they had been distributed, revolving or floating as it were, in open space, at different distances from us and from each other.

MOTHER.

So they are; but the nearest are all at such vast distances from us, that any change in our

place makes no perceptible alteration in our situation with regard to them, and they all seem to be studded over the arched roof and walls of the firmament. When I move from the place I now stand to the side of your chair, Elizabeth, William, at the other side of the table, seems to have changed his place as I did; but if William were on the top of that tree on the other side of the river, his distance would be so great in proportion to my change of place; that he would appear to be immoveable, and if he could see me from thence he would hardly perceive that I had stirred.

Well, now William, if the ceiling and walls of this room were studded all over with gilded spots like the stars, and in the same places, we should have a representation of the starry vault as it appears to us, and we could point out the constellations formed by those studs as we do of the stars in the real heavens. But since we have not studs let us make constellations for ourselves, and our constellations shall be the objects that we really have in the room; at one end, the chimneypiece, at the side next it to the right, the folding doors; at the end opposite the chimney-piece, the book-case; and opposite the folding doors the middle window. The lamp you know is the sun,