minions is our Sun,--so feeble are his rays after their long journey of thirty-one years toward Polāris.

In five or six hours the ray of light that we imagine to set out from the Pole-star, has passed the region of planets and entered the wide realms of space. For a time Polaris sends a bright and steady blaze behind the messenger. But the size of that receding star gets rapidly less, till what shone with the splendour of a glorious sun at the setting out of the ray becomes, in a day or two, only a bright speck in the dark heavens. The regions through which it then passes are cold, and dark, and silent. Although thousands of heat-giving suns are in sight, their distance is so vast, that Space, as this region has been named, is much more ungenial than the coldest spot on Earth at the severest season of the year. It is also dark as night; and, if there were an ear to listen, not a whisper would be heard to break the solemn silence. But the Almighty has not left these realms untenanted. They are filled with ether, and, at times, a wandering comet may pass slowly through them on its long and dreary journey from one sun to another.

As the ray of light speeds onward, the appearance of things is at times grand or astonishing. The stars, or suns, are not all of the same colour. Some are white; others blue; and some crimson, or green, or yellow. In one part is a patch of stars that looks like a collection of bright and sparkling jewels, green, blue, crimson, and white. Elsewhere are larger patches, that seem made up of innumerable sparkling points, so small that people on Earth call them the star-dust of the heavens. They present most curious appearances, according to the position from which they are viewed; some looking like a flight of birds rushing through the air, others arranged in a ring, and others resembling a spiral or a dumb-bell. In many places suns are passed with companion suns, revolving round each other, a few in five or ten years, while most take several centuries. The colours of these bright bodies are different. Frequently a green sun circles round a crimson, orange, or red; or a white round a yellow; or a blue round a white. If planets, like our dark Earth, revolve round these suns, their skies and clouds

will be brilliant crimson, or pleasant green, or dazzling yellow, or blue and white, like those to which we are accustomed. These planets at one season of their year can have no night. Their light is derived, it may be, from a red sun, which, on setting, is succeeded by the green light of another sun, rising in the opposite quarter of the sky. At other seasons of the year there is night, revealing to the inhabitants of these regions a starry firmament similar to what we behold. But the day is so different from ours, that, instead of one sun in the heavens, there will be two of different colours. And it also not unfrequently happens that sun eclipses sun, to the terror or delight of the inhabitants of these distant worlds, if there be any.

And so this swift messenger speeds onward, year after year, through these vast realms of space. If it had a tongue to speak, its course would be one song of praise, of which the burden would be, "Great and marvellous are thy works, thou King of saints!"

As the ray of light approaches the Earth, speeding along with its enormous swiftness, our Sun grows in brightness, till it shines as the most splendid star in the heavens. All others pale before its beams. On drawing within a day or two's journey of us, this messenger of Heaven encounters the outlying wanderers of the Solar System. In one place it passes a mass of vapour, or water, or, it may be, water cased in a solid shell of ice, thousands of times bigger than our Earth, and moving so sluggishly along as to travel over a foot or two in twenty-four hours. But sluggish though that watery mass may be, it is moving round the distant Sun in an ellipse which it takes one or two thousand years to describe. On drawing still nearer, the ray flashes past many others of these strange bodies, less sluggish, but without the tails or beards that excite our astonishment when they pay a visit to the Earth, and make a figure in our skies as fiery stars or terrible comets. The ray of light may pass twenty, or a hundred, or a thousand comets, of which we never see so much as one. But on approaching nearer, it finds them moving in that cold and far off region, not over a few fect in the hour or day, but at the rate of

mail coaches or railway trains; for the nearer a body gets to the Sun the faster it moves in its orbit.

When the messenger from Polaris arrives within four hours of the journey's end, it flashes past a dark, solid body, which we on Earth call the planet Neptune. It is attended by one, or, perhaps, two moons. The Sun in that region seems no bigger than a large sized pea, and the fixed stars are seen shining by day as well as by night. In an hour and a half the ray reaches another dark ball, attended by six or eight moons, and moving at a speed of four miles in a second. It is the planet Urănus, where the Sun looks larger, and the fixed stars may be also seen by day. An hour and a quarter further on the messenger from Polaris reaches a third dark ball, surrounded by many rings and moons, all lighted up by the now stronger and larger Sun. It is the planet Saturn, whose slow motion and dark colour have made it be looked on by all generations with suspicion and hatred, as the abode of an evil being. No fewer than seven moons and at least three solid rings are constantly wheeling round it, causing eclipses at one time to its surface, and being eclipsed themselves at another. In about thirtynine minutes more the swift messenger of God has flown across the vast space between Saturn and the next solid ball of our system, the planet Jupiter. That beautiful body is fourteen hundred times bigger than our Earth, and has four moons in attendance on it as it journeys round the Sun. Though without power to check the flight of this messenger of Heaven, it is able to delay comets, when they approach too near, for a month or two on their journey, or to turn them into another path from the one they are travelling. swiftly does it turn round on itself, that its day is not half the length of ours, notwithstanding its vast size. Its year is almost twelve times as long as ours. In twenty minutes more the ray of light from Polāris enters a curious region of the heavens, of which the history is not well known. It is called the Belt of Asteroids, or little stars. Instead of one dark body, there are at least seventy; and it is not unlikely that there are thousands, or millions, all close together, and all circling round the Sun. The biggest is not larger than the island of Madagascar; most of them

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are not so big as a good sized Highland estate; the smallest may be a stone that one could take in his hand. They are not all round like our Earth; nor have they all got atmospheres. Some are cornered, others not. But on the biggest of them a man making a leap would rise fifty feet in the air, and then fall to the ground without doing himself harm. Walking, instead of being a pleasure, would be a pain to beings constituted like us. Every step would lift a man high above ground, unless he were most careful not to exert his muscles more than was absolutely needed. If there are living beings on these little planets, they must be somewhat different from men.

The masses of water that the ray of light passed, on its approach to our system, sometimes assume a most splendid appearance in this region. They are drawn out into what seem clouds of immense length and amazing thinness. One end is nearing the Sun, while the other is lost among these little stars. In other words, it will take the ray of light from Polāris more than a quarter of an hour to rush with its enormous swiftness from one end of the cloud to the other. But the breadth and thickness are very small in comparison with the length; and the cloud is so thin that the faintest stars are distinctly seen through it. These strange bodies were anciently called bearded stars or comets: they are now known only as comets, from the long tail they sometimes throw out behind them on their journey.

In ten minutes after passing the boundaries of this region the ray from Polaris reaches the little dark ball known on Earth as the planet Mars. It is smaller than the Earth, and, like it, has summers and winters, sunshine and rain or snow. Its colour is fiery red, either from the reddish rocks that send back to us the Sun's rays, or from immense fields and forests of red plants. So fierce did the aspect of this planet seem to the ancient heathen, that they gave it the name of Mars, after the god of war and bloodshed. five minutes more the swift messenger rushes over the distance between Mars and the little ball that is the dwelling-place and the grave of man, and which we call the Earth. So closely nestled is it under the wings of the protecting Sun, that, though distant more

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than ninety millions of miles from that luminary, it may not be seen from Jupiter, and is certainly altogether unknown to Saturn and the planets beyond. A further flight for two minutes and a half brings the ray that proceeded from Polāris to a dark body called Venus, that is nearer the Sun than our Earth. We see it at times before sunrise as the morning star, and then after sunset as the evening star, shining as the brightest body in our heavens on moonless nights. So splendid is the light that it showers down on us, that the ancients counted it the star of hope and good fortune. In other two minutes and a half the messenger has reached the last visible planet of our system, Mercury; so named by the ancients after the god of thieves, because they never saw him except a little before sunrise and after sunset. He may sometimes be seen shining in clear nights a little above the place where the Sun has set; and occasionally an ardent star-gazer may detect both him and Venus looking out through the twilight shortly after sunset.

Whether the ray from Polāris passes any other planets or curious objects during its three minutes' flight from Mercury to the Sun, is at present not fully known. There may be planets nearer the Sun than Mercury, though they are invisible to us, just as the inhabitants of Jupiter may know nothing about Mercury and Venus, if, indeed, they ever see our Earth and moon.

THE NORTH POLE.

THERE are only two points on the earth's surface which do not turn round once every twenty-four hours. These points are the ends of the axis. One of them is called the North Pole, and the other the South Pole. There is nothing whatever to mark out the latter to ordinary observation; but the former may be discovered by means of the Pole-star, which is there right overhead. When a traveller comes to that spot on the earth's surface where this wellknown star shines exactly above him, or is in his zenith, as it is called, he knows that he is at or near the North Pole. But this test will, in course of ages, no longer hold; for what is now the