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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Personal Volume

Astronomy of To-Day.*

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Astronomy of To-Day.*

Notes of a Lecture delivered by Sir Robert Stout, K.C.M.G., under the auspices of the Wanganui Astronomical Society, in September, 1906.

Do we realise when we look up to the sky how few stars we can see with our unaided vision? It is said that we can only see between and 8000, even if we examine the sky in both hemispheres. And yet the stars are innumerable. The more powerful we make our telescopes, the more stars we discover, and the most powerful telescope has found no place in the heavens devoid of stars.

We may consider the heavens in two or three aspects. Let us for a little see if we can realise (1) the immense distances of the universe. (2) the sizes of many of the stars. (3) the beauties of the heavens, and, lastly. (4) some theories of the beginning and end of the universe.

(1.) If we are in the Wanganui Observatory, we would perhaps ask to see the Southern Cross. Who has not seen that brilliant constellation? It is situated in that portion of the sky which is the richest in stars, and as we watch it from month to month in its varying altitude to us, we are always struck with its beauty. We will notice the pointers of the cross; they belong to a constellation called Centaur.

You are aware perhaps that the stars in each constellation are named by the Greek alphabet, or by numbers, and named according to their apparent brightness. For example, the brightest star in a constellation will be called Alpha, the next page 2 brightest Beta, the next Gamma, and so on. The brightest pointer is called Alpha-Centauri. When you come to examine it through a telescope you will find that it is not a single star, but it is a "double star"—there are two stars. It is a beautiful object. The reason, however, why I wish to direct your attention to it is, that so far as we know, it is the nearest star to this earth. It is from considering its distance that we can get some idea of the vastness of the distances in the heavens. The distance of the sun from the earth is, according to the latest calculation. 92,874,000 miles. This is the calculation of Sir David Gill, who I see has just been appointed President of the British Association; he is an eminent astronomer, and during his residence at the Cape of Good Hope has done good service for astronomical science.

One way of testing distances is to consider how long it takes for light to travel from the sun to the earth. Light travels at the rate of 186,300 miles a second, i.e. seven times round the earth in a second; this would show that light will travel from the sun in about nine minutes. Now, light takes nearly 4½ years to travel from Alpha-Centauri to our earth, so when we are looking at Alpha-Centauri we are looking at the star as it existed about years ago—it may have perished in the meantime. This shows that the distance of Alpha-Centauri from our earth is about—I am giving you round numbers only—25 billions of miles. Let me show you the distance in another way. You have no doubt seen an orrery constructed, that is you have round globes or balls showing the size of the sun and the different planets and their relative distances. Well, let us suppose that at this table there is the sun, and we place the earth, we shall say, a yard off from the sun; where will Alpha-Centauri be? Alpha-Centaur would have to be placed in our orrery 150 miles off. That will give you some idea of the distance of Alpha-Centauri, the nearest star to us.

I may illustrate the relative distance and size by quoting to you what Sir John Herschel said about our solar system. He said:—

Let us suppose we have a globe 2 ft. in diameter; this would stand for the sun. If Mercury is placed 82 ft. away it will be relatively to the sun the size of a mustard seed; Venus will be 142 ft. away, page 3 and the size of a pea; the earth 215 ft. away, or 3 chains and 17 ft., and the size of a pea a little larger; Mars will be 327 ft. away, and the size of a large shot; the Asteroids—small planets—will be 600 ft. away, and of the size of grains of sand; Jupiter will be ¼ mile off, and as large as an ordinary orange; Saturn will be four-tenths of a mile off, and of the size of a small orange; Uranus will be ¾ mile away, and like a large cherry; and, lastly, Neptune like a large plum 1¼ mile away. But the nearest star Alpha-Centauri would be a globe about 3 or 4 ft. across, and 10,000 miles distant.

Sometimes during the year we may cast our eyes to what is the brightest star in the southern sky—it is the star Sirius. Well. Sirius is double the distance of Alpha-Centauri from us. Let me try and give another illustration of the distance: We will suppose that we take a train—and it will be an express train going far faster than any express train runs in New Zealand—let us suppose that it travels at the rate of 60 miles an hour; travelling at that rate it would take us 130 years to reach the sun, but to reach the nearest star, namely, to reach Alpha-Centauri, it would take us about 35 millions of years.

There is another star which was at one time thought to be the nearest star—it is in the constellation of the Swan, and is named 61 Cygni. To reach it would take about 40 millions of years travelling at the same rate, and, remember, these arc the nearest stars to us. If we take some of the more distant stars, say for example Sirius, we could not reach it, going a mile a minute, under 72 millions of years.

Let me give you yet another illustration, so that we may try if we can dimly realise the vast distances in the heavens. There burst out in 1901 a brilliant star in the constellation of Perseus. A star had been known in about the same position, but it was not of Great magnitude or brilliancy. On the night of February 21st/22nd. Dr. Anderson of Edinburgh noticed a bright star which increased so rapidly in brightness as to become about the third brightest star in the sky. Afterwards it began to fade away slowly. Now, this star was so distant from us that what Dr. Anderson was seeing took place in the reign of Henry VIII. The star was trillions of miles from us.

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Many more illustrations might be given, but perhaps those used may impress us with the vast distances of the stars in the sky.

It is computed that the diameter of the known Sidereal universe is so great that light would take 90 millions of years to travel across it. This would make the diameter 374 trillions of miles, 374,340 326,400,000,000,000 or 374 with eighteen ligures following it. Can we comprehend it?

(2.) I have spoken about distances: let us consider the size of the stars we see in the sky. I assume that we are still looking through the telescope at Alpha-Centauri, but Alpha-Centauri consists of two stars about equal in size: they are really two vast suns, and each, compared with our sun, is more than seven times its size. They take 81 years to travel round their orbit. The one revolves round the other, There is another star that we sometimes see. It is called Arcturus or a Bootes, and was at one time thought to be the quickest-moving star in the sky. We see it in April in the northeast, in June in the north at S p.m. I refer to it now because it may give us an illustration of the vast size of some of these suns called stars. To try and realise the size of Arcturus, let us look at the size of the sun. The size of our earth is about 8000 miles in diameter, that is, if we bored a hole from pole to pole that would be about the diameter of the earth—I am giving you round numbers. The diameter of the sun is 865,000 miles, but the diameter of Arcturus is 86 millions of miles—about one hundred times the diameter of the sun. Let us not forget that the distance of the sun from us is nearly 93 millions of miles. If the star Arcturus came between us and the sun it would almost fill the space. It is in volume a million times the size of the sun, and there are no doubt many thousands of stars, perhaps hundreds of thousands of stars, as large as Arcturus. The fact is that our earth, relatively to the size of some of the heavenly bodies, is as a grain of sand is to the size of our earth. Sirius, also, is a large star, about 3½ times larger than our sun, and about 48 times as bright. There are no doubt stars smaller than our sun, but we may say that there are hundreds of thousands of stars larger than it.

We speak of the stars as "fixed" stars. Compared with the planets they appear immovable. page 5 The fact is, however, that some of them are exceedingly rapid in their movements. If we consider their velocity we will be further impressed with the vastness of the universe. There is a difference of opinion amongst astronomers as to what star, the movements of which can be approximately ascertained, is the most rapid. In 1893 it was said that Arcturus was the most rapid and Prof. Newcomb in his work on "The Stars" assumes that this is correct. The immense distances of the stars make accurate observation very difficult. It has been computed that Arcturus travels at the rate of 376 miles per second or 32,486,400 miles per day. A star called 1830 Groombridge—because that is the number of the star in Groombridge's catalogue of stars—situated in the northern contellation of the Great Bear, travels, it is said, at the rate of 231 miles per second, or 19,958,400 miles per day. And yet these stars, because of their immense distance from us, seem immovable or fixed.

The distance of Arcturus is so vast that light travelling at the rale of 186.300 miles per second would take 181 years to reach our earth from Arcturus. It is about 41 times more distant from us than Alpha-Centauri. From 1830 Groombridge light would take 30 years to reach us.

And now let me say something about the number of the stars. Through the aid of photogrophy, which has been of as great service to astronomy as the telescope, some of the most recent astronomers have come to the conclusion that there are perhaps known now a hundred millions of suns, and if you consider that each of these suns may have, like our sun, planets revolving round it, which, however, are never seen by us, and that these planets have other planets around them, such as our moon around our earth you may get some idea of the number of heavenly bodies that exist in the universe.

(3.) Let us pass to another stage—the beauties of the heavens. The first thing of beauty that you would likely have your attention directed to is in the Southern Cross. There are what arc termed in the sky clusters—magnificent clusters of stars. To the naked eye, if you have a keen vision, the cluster may appear a single clouded star, but when you look through the telescope you behold a most page 6 beautiful spectacle. You see thousands of stars sparkling, such as no diamonds or other precious stones ever sparkled in the finest piece of jewellery. Sometimes the stars in a cluster are of varied colours, white, yellow, red, violet. You will often stand in wonder at the beauty of many clusters.

The numbers in the clusters will surprise you. What appears as a single star may, with the aid of the telescope and the photographic lens, become thousands. You know the Pleiades, often called the Seven Stars. You see them on a clear summer night in the north-east heavens. You could see them about 11 p.m. on the 1st October. One with ordinary vision can count six stars. If one has extraordinary vision, twelve may be seen. When you look through a powerful telescope you may count about 2000. and in one photographic plate that had been exposed for some time, have been counted.

Around one of the stars in the cross—the star Kappa—there is a brilliant cluster. The stars are not so numerous as in some clusters, but they are brilliant and of different colours.

Another very fine cluster is round a star in the constellation of Toucan. This constellation is at present high up in the sky, lying between the constellations Hydrus and Grus (the Crane). to the west of the bright star Achernar. The cluster is round the star 47 Toucani. It is a large circular cluster, with the stars apparently closely compacted together, as seen through the telescope in Wanganui.

The cluster that is said to be the finest in the sky is Omega-Centauri, the constellation in which the Southern Cross pointers are. It is just within the border of the Milky Way. To the unaided eye, and on a clear night, it appears a hazy star of the fourth magnitude. Prof. Newcomb says over 0.000 stars have been counted in one photograph of this cluster, and the whole number is greater—some say perhaps 15,000 stars. It is a most beautiful cluster, and, if the sky is clear, is always visible to us in New Zealand.

There is a fine cluster between Alpha and Beta Scorpionis. It is near Antares, that beautiful red star otherwise called Alpha-Scorpionis. Sir John Herschel considered it the richest and most condensed mass of stars in the firmament. A strange thing happened in this cluster in 1860: one bright page 7 star appeared, almost blotting out the cluster by its brightness.

The beauties of these and other clusters will grow on you, and I doubt not but that, whenever you visit an observatory, you will again and again ask to see them. There are plenty to show you. 226 clusters have been observed in the milky way, and 38 outside.

One class of beautiful objects is the double stars. Many thousands of double stars have been catalogued. Most of the catalogued are binary, some are, however, multiple. Are they all physically connected? Some astronomers say so. Few seen as double or triple are not connected.

To the great credit and honour of Wanganui from 80 to 130 double stars, not hitherto catalogued as such, have been observed by Messrs. Ward and Allison, two of the Wanganui astronomers.

The orbits and length of time that binary stars take to revolve round each other have in the case of a few of these double stars been calculated. Some, it is said, take 11½ years to complete their revolution, others even 1000 years.

Some of the solar systems have two suns, some three suns, revolving the one round the other, and there are some stars that have companions that are not shining as they shine. One of the most notable of this class is Sirius: Sirius has what is called a faint companion. Another one is Procyon. It was noticed in reference to Sirius that the star did not move with a uniform and proper motion, and the astronomers determined that this irregular motion must be caused by some satellite near, but they were not able to see any. The discovery of his dark companion came by accident. A very fine telescope was made in Massachusetts, and the son of the maker was looking through the new telescope when he observed a faint companion near Sirius. It was in the position that astronomers had from their calculations predicted. In Procyon the astronomers had also stated that the variation of its motion must be due to some satellite near it, and it was not until 1895 that Schaeberle found the missing satellite through observations made with the Lick telescope in California.

Perhaps the most striking object in the sky (at present) is the planet Saturn. It is unique. There may be other planets that have a ring round page 8 them, hut none save Saturn is visible to us. The planets round the suns other than our own sun we cannot see, save the satellites of the planets of our solar system. Saturn is surrounded by a series of rings, beautifully radiant. It looks as if the planet hung in the rings, and you will not grow tired in looking at it for its beauty and uniqueness. These rings consist, of innumerable small moons, each kept in its place by the law of gravitation. Saturn is well supplied with moons, for in addition to its rings, which, it is said, are about 40 miles in depth and 40,000 miles in breadth, it has ten moons—one of them pretty large, namely. Titan.

After von have examined the clusters and Saturn, and perhaps looked at Venus. Mars, and Uranus, you may have your attention directed to some of the Nebulæ. They were once thought to be clouds of stars, but they are clouds of gas in process of being formed into stars.

One of the finest is the nebula in Orion. Every one knows the constellation of Orion—it is perhaps the finest in the sky. In summer and early winter we see it every clear night; you can see it in October in all its beauty about midnight. Orion was known to the ancient Babylonians and Semites, and is referred to in that ancient drama, the Book of Job. In it are most beautiful stars. Betelgeuse is a bright red star, and the star Theta is a multiple star. You can easily see four distinct stars, and it is said that some observers have seen seven.

The nebulæ in Orion, in Andromeda and in Argo are the only nebuæ that can be even dimly discerned by the naked eye. Each looks like a faint blur or small cloud round a star in each of the constellations named. When you examine them by the telescope you get some conception of their vastness and beauty.

Prof. Ball has thus spoken of the nebula in Orion: "The earth sweeps round the sun in a mighty path, whose diameter is not less than 185,400,000 miles. Let us imagine a sphere so mighty that this circle would just form a girdle round its equator, and let this gigantic globe be the measure wherewith to compare the bulk of the vast nebula of Orion. It can be demonstrated that a million of these mighty globes rolled into one would not equal the great nebula in bulk; though how much greater than page 9 this the nebula may really be we have no means of ascertaining."

Andromeda is a constellation not very well seen in our southern sky. You will see it in the evenings in September. October. November and December. It is right north of us now, and linked to Pegasus; you see a large square, and one of the stars in the square belongs to Andromeda. The nebula in Andromeda is, also, a most remarkable one. It is thought that in this nebula we see a stage in advance of the nebula in Orion, and that stars are nearer formation. It is so distant from us that light from it will take 160 years to reach us. The diameter of the nebula is 333,000 times the sun's distance from the earth. Light would take five years to pass from one side to the other of the nebula, that is, the distance is 30 billions of miles, that is more than the distance of Alpha-Centauri from us.

There is a fine nebula in Sagittarius. The forms of nebulæ vary. Many are spiral in form. The spiral form is the first step towards the formation of a sun or star. There are about 500,000 nebulæ within reach of our telescopes, and To per cent. of them are spirals. Then there are ring nebulæ—nebulæ in the form of rings. One beautiful one is near Vega in the constellation of Lyra, or the Lyre. It is half-way between Beta and Gamma of this constellation. There is another in the constellation of the Swan—Cygnus.

Then there is the great nebula in Argo, round the famous variable star Eta—you can see it now-lowm the horizon in the south-east, about 10 p.m. The bright star Canopus is in this constellation. In the brightest part of the nebula there is an opening known as the Keyhole. Regarding this nebula Sir John Herschel, in his "Outlines of Astronomy," says: "If placed at the distance I have assumed for the nebula in Andromeda, it must fill a vast extent of space, a space compared with which our solar system sinks into insignificance.

This nebula, as seen by Sir John Herschel at the Cape, greatly impressed him. He says: it is not easy for language to convey a full impression of the beauty and sublimity of the spectacle which this nebula offers, as it enters the held of view of a telescope fixed in right ascension, by the diurnal page 10 motion, ushered in as it is by so glorious and innumerable a procession of stars, to which it forms a sort of climax, and in a part of the heavens otherwise full of interest."

One peculiar feature of this nebula is that it has changed in appearance since it was observed by Sir John Herschel in 1834-38. Mr. Russell, the astronomer of Sydney, noticed in 1871 that part of the cloud had disappeared.

There are two objects that you see in a cloudless night, like two clouds. They are the Magellanic clouds, or Nebecula Major and Nebecula Minor. In the larger cloud is a famous nebula called 30 Doradus.

It has been descibed by Sir John Herschel "as one of the most singular and extraordinary objects which the heavens present." It has a keyhole perforation like the nebula in Argo, and because of its convolutions has been termed the "looped nebula."

The larger cloud shows evidence of a spiral structure, and the smaller cloud has, it is said, the same structure. In both of the clouds numerous small stars are mixed up with nebulous light.

(4.) What is a nebula? Tennyson in his "Princess" has said:

This world was once a fluid haze of light,
Till toward the centre set the starry tides,
And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast
The planets.

And this, in some respects, represents the theory of the nebula to-day. It is that a nebula is a fluid haze of vast extent of burning gas, but as this gas cools suns are formed, and that the suns cast off pieces which form into planets. This was explained by Prof. Darwin in his presidential address at Capetown and Johannesburg, when he dealt with the theories of astronomical evolution. For example, he stated that the moon separated from the earth gradually, and that at first it would be only a few thousand miles away. This took place, according to him, perhaps about 500 to 1000 millions of years ago.

Closely connected with these double stars is the question of variable stars. Some stars vary in magnitude. What is the cause? It is said that page 11 some dark body comes between us and the star, so seen to vary in brightness. Some five hundred stars have been observed as variable stars, and their number is being yearly increased. I mentioned the new star in Perseus; that is not a variable star. A star that suddenly blazes out is called a new star, and, so far as our record extends, no star has blazed out twice. Hut some stars have regular periods of brightness and dulness. Is this variability caused by an eclipse? That is the theory. Some dark body, perhaps a dark companion, intervenes between us and the star, and therefore we lose its light. There are many types of variable stars, and I must refer you to Newcombs' work on the stars for a full discussion of the subject.

Are there then dead suns in the universe? Most astronomers say there are. I notice in a number of Knowledge—in the July number of last year—that Mr. Gore. the author of several well-known astronomical works, states that the existence of such dark bodies has not been proved. He does not say there are none, and it appears to me the existence of such bodies is the most reasonable explanation of variable stars. Hall goes the length in his book on the heavens to state that there may be dark masses of matter not spherical in shape, and this may explain why we see dark patches or rifts in some of the nebulæ.

We know of one dead world, the moon, which appears a luminous body to us because of its borrowed light from the sun. If we admit, and we must admit, that the stars pass through various phases, why should we not accept the theory that there are dead worlds, dead suns?

There may be thousands or hundreds of thousands of such.

The existence of such bodies has an interesting connection with what has been observed, namely, the sudden appearance of new stars. There is a record of sixteen new stars having been seen, that is, stars suddenly appearing where no stars, or stars of a small magnitude, had been seen before. The earliest one recorded was discovered by the great Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, in 1572 in the constellation Cassiopeia. Its history is the history of them all. It was first seen by Tycho Brahe on the 11th November 1572, and was then a star of the first magnitude, as bright as Canopus. It con- page 12 tinned to increase in brilliancy till it was as bright as Venus—that object of beauty we now sec in our western sky. It was visible in day-light. It began to fade in December, and finally passed out of sight in May.

In 1901 a new star was discovered, as I have stated, by Dr. Anderson from observations made by him in Edinburgh, and it was the brightest new Star discovered since Kepler's star in 1604. When first seen it was a star of the second magnitude in the constellation of Perseus. In two days it increased in brilliancy till it was the third brightest star on the northern sky. Then it began to fade away. In March it was of the third magnitude, in April of the fifth, and it faded till it was of the eleventh magnitude. There was a star of the eleventh magnitude where it blazed out, so it rose from the eleventh to the first magnitude in three days.

How is the advent of these new stars to be explained? The suggestion is that through a collision of the star with perhaps one of the dark ones that have been referred to there is a sudden outburst of flame. Another suggestion is made by Newcomb. He says that it is "probable that stars, like our sun, have somewhat the character of masses of gas confined under enormous pressure, as if they were hollow globes of highly heated and compressed gas. "and" if, by the fall of a foreign body, an opening is suddenly made in the shell, the interior gases will burst forth." He does not venture to give this as a solution of the appearance of these new stars. It is only a suggestion.

One suggestion made as to the creation of stars is that two dead suns may collide and form one new hot, gaseous body, or star, and thus, though there would be one sun the less, we would have a live one instead of two dead ones. If this is happening, we may see endless succession of life for so long a time that it may be called Eternity, for our mind cannot fix a time when there will cease the new stars, new suns, and all that follows from such a creation; an evolution of star-life from the intense heat of the highest-known heated stars through myriads of ages, till we have fluids and then solids, millions of years giving their organic life, vegetable and animal. Then myriads of ages when life will be no more, and page 13 again a dead sun, and then after myriads of ages the process of another evolution from death to life. And so the universe is without beginning and without end.

Some may say that it is a sad outlook that just as man, through myriads of ages of development and civilisation, becomes only a little lower than the angels, that decay should set in or a cataclysm happen, and that all the fruits of the long evolution should pass into nothingness. Is it Nature's wav? Who knows? Our duty lies before us. It is to work whilst it is to-day, and to do our work as best we can and be kind. The destiny of the universe is not in our hand. We are a very humble part of the immensities that surround us.

The vastness of the universe, the distances of the stars, their sizes are overwhelming to us. Is it any wonder that a German was led to exclaim: "I will go no further, for the spirit of man acheth with this infinity. Insufferable is the glory of God; let me lie down in the grave and hide me from the persecution of the Infinite, for end I see there is none."

We can see systems being formed and systems dead, and with the aid of the spectroscope we may trace different stages of star development. A picture in Naysmith's Astronomy may give us some idea of the time it takes to make a planet suitable for life. If organic life has existed for 500 millions of years on our earth, the evolution of the earth from a superheated gaseous body till it was lit for organic life may have taken trillions of years—a time so great that it is beyond our comprehension, Truly it may be said that in the universe a day is as a million of years, and a million of years as a watch in the night, million years is to us infinity. We think the civilisation of Egypt old, and beyond our comprehension is the age of some of our fossils, but what are the ages of Egyptian civilisation and of the oldest specimens of organic life compared with the age of the world? There can be little comparison. What theory can we have of the end of the world any more than of the beginning? We may spin theories, but a solid basis of fact for any conclusion we have not. The recent scientific discoveries in physics and chemistry have altered our conceptions of matter and of life. And in view of these we should hesitate to say anything about page 14 either the beginning or end of the universe. Had it a beginning? Will it have an end? I doubt if we can conceive of a time when the universe was not, and I also doubt if we can conceive of a time when it will not exist.

Day by day. I may say, our knowledge of the universe, of its potentialities, of its hidden powers is extending. I see that in a recent number of the Atlantic Monthly there is a suggestion by Prof. See regarding the heat of the suns that was not the view of physicists even five years ago. He believes that the sun has not yet reached its maximum of heat and that the years of its decadence are far off. Perhaps 30,000,000 of years after this it may have got cold.

And we all know of the discovery of Radium and of Helium, and how the discovery of these metals has altered our whole view of the age and future life of the suns and of the stars. And who knows what other hidden things in nature may not yet be laid bare. Let me give you one illustration that was given by Prof. Darwin in his address about radium; it will make us appreciate the potentialities and powers of the universe of which a few years ago we knew nothing. It is said that the energy expended in towing a ship of 12,000 tons a distance of 6000 sea miles at 15 knots an hour is contained in 22 oz., of radium It would take about 5000 tons of coal to perform the same operation. And radium and its power were unknown twenty years ago.

Our attitude must be that of the patient observer, ever remembering that our knowledge is limited and ever will remain limited, and that it is a very poor conception of the universe that even the brightest of the intellects of men can ever attain. If there is one study more than another which should make us humble and point out to us the littleness of man and the insignificance of the earth, it is the study of astronomy.

We sometimes hear or read of people making confident and dogmatic statements as if our earth and its life were all; and that the rest of the universe was of no account. Do we realise that, as compared with the seen universe—and who dares venture to say what is unseen?—our little earth is not as large as the smallest particle of matter that can be seen in the most powerful microscope?

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It would be a good thing. I often think, if the study of astronomy were popularised. It might rid us of much dogmatism and make us humble when we become observers of nature and her ways.

Some people say that astronomy leaves no place for Deity, or for abodes for the Blessed. Others claim that it stimulates the religious emotions. A clergyman has thus replied to the former assertion:

Go not, my soul, in search of him.
Thou wilt not find him there,
Or in the depth of shadow dim.
Or heights of upper air.

For not in far-off realms of space
The spirit has its throne;
In every heart it findeth place.
And waiteth to be known.

Thought answereth alone to thought
And soul with soul hath kin;
The outward God he findeth not,
Who finds not God within.

And if the vision come to thee
Revealed by inward sign.
Earth will be full of Deity
And with his glory shine.

Thou shalt not want for company.
Nor pitch thy tent alone;
The indwelling God will go with thee.
And show thee of his own.

Oh gift of gifts! Oh, grace of grace.
That God should condescend
To make thy heart his dwelling-place
And be thy daily friend!

Then go not thou in search of him.
But to thyself repair;
Wait thou within the silence dim.
And thou shalt find him there.

F. L. Hosmer.

An old philosopher said the eye sees what the eye is prepared to sec, and I doubt if a man's religion page 16 is changed by the study of astronomy. We will read into the stars our creed.

I know no study so glorious, so uplifting, or so impressive as astronomy. A man who communes with the stars will get ideals that must be of immense service to him in his pilgrimage through life. Emerson, that great New-England prophet, said that "Every one should hitch his wagon to a star." High ideals in life were needed by men. May there not be a practical, as well as an idealistic, application of this aphorism? Let us keep our eyes on the stars. May they not guide us all and be a help to us amid the troubles and temptations of our existence?

But whether the stars will be an ethical help to us or not, they will ever brighten our imagination and develop our æsthetic and artistic sense. Has not Shelly told us what we see?

Palace-roof of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights.
Deep, immeasurable, vast.
Which art now and which wert then!
Of the present and the past.
Of th' eternal where and when—
Presence-chamber, temple, home.
Ever canopying dome
Of the ages yet to come!

Glorious shapes have life in thee.
Earth and all Earth's company.
Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wilderness.
And green worlds that glide along.
And swift stars with flashing tress.
Icy moons most cold and bright.
Mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.

three stars

Progress Print, Cuba Street, Wellington.

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* The lecture was illustrated by slides, and they were explained, and further information not in these notes given.