house, can form no accurate idea of the magnificence of the firmament. The peasant, the shepherd, or the labourer, spent with his daily work, prefers sleep to astronomical vigils; and even amongst those more favoured sons of fortune, who enjoy sufficient leisure, but few are found who feel a genuine pleasure in the study of the stars. Though they are the poetry of heaven, their music is inaudible to the majority of souls. We content ourselves with an occasional careless glance at their serene loveliness, and then turn again to the pleasures or avocations of commonplace life.

But, come; let us arouse ourselves! Let us quit the city for awhile; let us throw off all thought of its too-engrossing pursuits; let us find time to count the stars. Gentle readers, I ask you to follow me.

Ah, me! how small is the train of followers! How great my delusion in supposing that a complete phalanx of students of the celestial wonders would reply to my invitation!

We have now arrived in the open country; and here, on the summit of this gentle ascent, crowned with a clump of leafless trees, we pause. The sky glitters with a cold, keen light, which is reflected back by the snowy plains. While the eye ranges delightedly over the starry vault, the ear is struck by the distant sound of bells, which, at the midnight hour, ring in the infant year—ring in so many hopes and expected joys, and unexpected sorrows—ring out so many passing pleasures and rudely dissipated visions.

Fig. 1.

As the chime glides softly over the meadows, and along the resounding vales, and through the leafless woods, repeated by echo after echo, until its music dies away in the distance, like our recollections of the dreams of youth, we murmur to ourselves that solemn song of the poet, which so aptly blends the regrets of the past with the anticipations of the future; we exclaim—

The spectacle is majestic and impressive. Let us seek, in the first place, to ascertain our position in reference to the four points of the compass—the four cardinal points. But how is this to be done? By day it is easy enough. I have only to turn myself towards the sun when it has reached the highest point of its diurnal course, and there, in front of me, lies the south, in my rear the north, the east on my left, and on my right the west.

But is it possible to ascertain one's position during the absence of the "orb of day?"

Both possible and easy, provided the sky be clear and cloudless.

But this condition is as necessary by day as by night. How can we determine in which direction lies the south, if the sun be hidden from our gaze by an uniformly opaque atmosphere, and if objects, lit up by a diffuse light, project no shadow at any time of the day?

Endeavour to group together the stars which more particularly strike your gaze; and be careful, in these groupings, to define every fantastic figure which is suggested by your vivid imagination. Undoubtedly, our earliest ancestors, the "world's gray forefathers," proceeded in this manner, in their anxiety to lay hold of some definite guiding-marks in yonder ocean of sparkling atoms. And to study a science by its history is to follow up its successive development.

The Great and the Little Bear.

Observe yonder very remarkable group of seven stars; nearly all are of the same splendour, and they are so arranged as to figure an antique chariot, provided with a somewhat curved axle pole.

Observe it carefully. And not far from this group you will detect another, by no means so conspicuous, but exactly resembling it in form. This second chariot is turned in an inverse direction, and the stars composing it, with three exceptions, are much less brilliant.

Here, then, are two groups of stars, clearly distinguished by their configuration—two constellations, for such is the scientific name given to all the stellar groups.

Fig. 2.—The Great Bear and Little Bear.

It has been the fortune of the first of these two groups to strike the eye of the most indifferent observer from the remotest antiquity; and its likeness to a quadriga early procured it the name of a car or chariot. For those Christians who pleased themselves in studding the sky with Biblical personages, it is David's Chariot. This species of apotheosis was borrowed from the Pagans. They placed in the skies their divinities, their demigods, their heroes, and the principal facts and stories of their mythology. For the Greeks and Romans the "Chariot of David" was the female of the Bear, an ursa, or ἀρκτὸς. Whence came this transfiguration? Listen to the fanciful old myth.

Callisto was the most beautiful of the daughters of the King Lycaon. Jupiter, who may appropriately be styled the "Don Juan" or "Lovelace" of the heathen Olympus, fell in love with her; and she bore him a son, named Arcas, who gave his name to Arcadia, that land of song and fable, groves and streams, where Lycaon exercised his sovereign sway. Juno, the queen of heaven, and wife of the so-called king of gods and men, transported by her jealous rage, changed Callisto into a she-bear; who, one day, would have been unwittingly slain by Arcas, if Jupiter, opportunely appearing on the scene, had not metamorphosed the hunter into another animal, Ursa Minor, or the Little Bear. According to this myth, the Little Bear will be but a transformation of the former, who was the Great Bear, or, before all and above all, the Bear.

It is somewhat surprising, according to certain writers, that Homer should refer to only one of these constellations:—