son would be a sore injustice to both ladies.

Bernhardt and

Davenport represent two very different dramatic schools: one is the school of avoirdupois, and the other is essentially so different that it must be estimated only under the accepted rules of troy weight. To be more explicit, we will say that, while you would properly weigh Miss Davenport's art on a hay-scales, you must use a more delicate machine if you would seek to learn the true magnitude and concinnity of Bernhardt's art. It is quite true that to both Fedoras the same amount of practical appreciation is paid her in Chicago. When Miss Davenport played "Fedora" at the Columbia Theatre last January, she was applauded rapturously by 2,000 delighted tradesfolk at 50 cents a piece: now Bernhardt comes along with her subtile impersonation, and does business to 3333 of the crême de la crême of our pork-packers at $3 per head. You see that the box-office receipts are the same in both instances: it would be impossible, therefore, to compare the merits of each actress by the amount of money derived from the performance of each.

It is far from our purpose to institute any invidious comparisons between these two gifted women: each excels in her way; and the way of the one is as far from the way of the other as the beauties of a fat-stock show are removed from the beauties of a floral display. If there is in Fanny's art a breadth and a weight that remind us of the ponderous thud of a meat-axe, there is (it must also be confessed) in Sara's art a daintiness and an insinuation that remind us of the covert swish of a Japanese paperknife. Horace has explained this very difference in that charming ode wherein he tells of Næera, who, "with ruddy, glowing arm, holds out an earthen cup of goat's milk," while, on the other hand, Lydia extends to the parched poet a silver flagon, "filled to the brim with old Falernian chilled with snow." Now, there is no doubt in our mind that Horace chose the Falernian; but we are not all Horaces; and we presume to say that, as between goat's milk at popular prices, and Falernian at war-rates, a vast majority of Chicagoans would choose the former.

"The last act was a great disappointment,” said one of our most cultured beef-canners. "It is there that Davenport gets away with this French woman. Why, Davenport's tussle with that young Rooshan is the grandest piece of art I ever saw! she just tears around and horns the furniture like a Texas steer in a box-car."

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George Bowron, leader of the orchestra at the Columbia, says that he knew, just as soon as he saw the score of the incidental music, that Bernhardt's Fedora was very unlike Davenport's.

"Bernhardt's score," says he, "is interspersed throughout with 'pianissimo,' 'con moto,' and 'andante.' On the other hand, the music of Davenport's Fedora is in big black type, and every other bar is labelled 'forte' or 'fortissimo;' and our tromboneplayer blew himself into a hemorrhage last January, trying to keep up with the rest of the orchestra in the death-struggle in the last act."

We can see that Bernhardt labors under one serious disadvantage, and that is the fact that her plays are couched in a foreign language. We asked Col. J. M. Hill why Sardoo did not write his plays in English, and he said he supposed it was because Sardoo was a Frenchman. This may be all very well for Paris, but we opine that it will not do in Chicago. What protection has a Chicago audience in a case of this kind? What assurance have we that, while we are admiring this woman's art, the woman herself is not brazenly guying and blackguarding us in her absurd foreign language?

Now, we would not seek to create the impression that Sardoo's work is not meritorious: on the contrary, we are free to say, and we say it boldly, that we recognize considerable merit in it. We fancy, however, that Sardoo is not always original: we find him making use of a good many lines that certainly were not born of his creative genius. As we remember now, Sardoo introduces into his dialogue the very "pardonnez-moy," the very "mongdu," and the very "too zhoors," which we hear every day in our best society; and will he have the effrontery to deny that he has stolen from us-ay, brazenly stolen from us--the very "wee-wee" which is the grand commerical basis upon which Chicago culture stands and defies all competition?

Oh, how glad-how proud-Chicago is that Bronson Howard, and William Shakespeare, and Charley Hoyt, and her other favorite dramatists, have been content to put their plays in honest but ennobling Anglo-Saxon !

LECTURES ON ASTRONOMY.

BY JOHN PHOENIX.

INTRODUCTORY.

THE following pages were originally prepared in the form of a course of Lectures to be delivered before the Lowell Institute, of Boston, Mass., but, owing to the unexpected circumstance of the author's receiving no invitation to lecture before that institution, they were laid aside shortly after their completion. Receiving an invitation from the trustees of the Vallecetos

THE ASTRONOMER.

Literary and Scientific Institute, during the present summer, to deliver a course of Lectures on any popular subject, the author withdrew his manuscript from the dusty shelf on which it had long lain neglected, and, having somewhat revised and enlarged it, to suit the capacity of the eminent scholars before whom it was to be displayed, repaired to Vallecetos. But, on arriving at that place, he learned, with deep regret, that the only inhabitant had left a few days previous, having availed himself of the opportunity presented by a passing emigrant's horse-and that, in consequence, the opening of the Institute was indefinitely postponed. Under these circumstances, and yielding with reluctance to the earnest solicitations of many eminent scientific friends, he has been induced to place the Lectures before the public in their

present form. Should they meet with that success which his sangine friends prognosticate, the author may be induced subsequently to publish them in the form of a text-book, for the use of the higher schools and universities; it being his greatest ambition to render himself useful in his day and generation, by widely disseminating the information he has acquired among those who, less fortunate, are yet willing to receive instruction. SAN DIEGO OBSERVATORY, September 1, 1854.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

THE term Astronomy is derived from two Latin words—Astra, a star, and onomy, a science; and literally means the science of 'stars. "It is a science," to quote our friend Dick (who was no relation at all of Big Dick, though the latter occasionally caused individuals to see stars), "which has, in all ages, engaged the attention of the poet, the philosopher, and the divine, and been the subject of their study and admiration."

By the wondrous discoveries of the improved telescopes of modern times, we ascertain that upwards of several hundred millions of stars exist, that are invisible to the naked eye-the nearest of which is millions of millions of miles from the Earth; and as we have every reason to suppose that every one of this inconceivable number of worlds is peopled like our own, a consideration of this fact and that we are undoubtedly as superior to these beings as we are to the rest of mankind-is calculated to fill the mind of the American with a due sense of his own importance in the scale of animated creation.

It is supposed that each of the stars we see in the Heavens in a cloudless night is a sun shining upon its own curvilinear, with light of its own manufacture; and as it would be absurd to suppose its light and heat were made to be diffused for nothing, it is presumed farther, that each sun, like an old hen, is provided with a parcel of little chickens, in the way of planets, which, shining but feebly by its reflected light, are to us invisible. To this opinion we are led, also, by reasoning from analogy, on considering our own Solar System.

THE SOLAR SYSTEM is so called, not because we believe it to be the sole system of the kind in existence, but from its principal body the Sun; the Latin name of which is Sol. (Thus we read of Sol Smith, literally meaning the son of Old Smith.) On a close examination of the Heavens, we perceive numerous brilliant stars which shine with a steady light (differing from those which surround them, which are always twinkling like a dew-drop on a cucumber-vine), and which, moreover, do not preserve constantly the same relative distance from the stars near which they are first discovered. These are the planets of the SOLAR SYSTEM, which have no light of their own-of which the Earth, on which we reside, is one-which shine by light reflected from the Sunand which regularly move around that body at different intervals of time and through different ranges in space. Up to the time of a gentleman named Copernicus, who flourished about the middle of the Fifteenth Century, it was supposed by our stupid ancestors that the Earth was the centre of all creation, being a large flat body, resting on a rock which rested on another rock, and so on "all the way down," and that the Sun, planets and immovable stars all revolved about it once in twenty-four hours.

This reminds us of the simplicity of a child we once saw in a railroad-car, who fancied itself perfectly stationary, and thought the fences, houses and fields were tearing past it at the rate of thirty miles an hour; and poking out its head, to see where on earth they went to, had its hat—a very nice one with pink ribbons -knocked off and irrecoverably lost. But Copernicus (who was a son of Daniel Pernicus, of the firm of Pernicus & Co., wool dealers, and who was named Co. Pernicus, out of respect to his father's partners) soon set this matter to rights, and started the idea of the present Solar System, which, greatly improved since his day, is occasionally called the Copernican system. By this system we learn that the Sun is stationed at one focus (not hocus, as it is rendered, without authority, by the philosopher Partington) of an ellipse, where it slowly grinds on for ever about its own axis, while the planets, turning about their axes, revolve in elliptical orbits of various dimensions and different planes of inclination around it.

The demonstration of this system in all its perfection was left to Isaac Newton, an English Philosopher, who, seeing an apple tumble down from a tree, was led to think thereon with such