brothers were half seen in the blue light, and then almot instantly vanished again, swift as the fancies of a dream. At last the rushlight was re-lit, and Roger Greedy wrote swiftly over a piece of paper these words— From Mr. Woollcombe, by the hand of Ensign Holbeck, one ruby, unset. I say, received." to which Michael Greedy and Roger Greedy, respectively, signed their names. I was very reluctant to leave the stone, and my commission thus but half fulfilled. Nor would I go quite in this way. "When will Mr. Woollcombe hear from you, gentlemen ?" I asked. "To-night," responded Roger Greedy, promptly. This was the one satisfactory word I had heard in that place. I folded the receipt, carefully put it in an inner pocket, and walked towards the door. The blackness of my hands was not to be borne longer. Is there any place here where I can wash my hands?" I inquired. 66 We do not provide soap and towels free of expense to our customers," returned Roger Greedy, and both the old men chuckled again. 66 Mr. Coffin will doubtless inform you where the offensive ink stains can be removed. Young gentlemen whose hands have had ghastlier stains, might bear a little ink without anger, methinks." (To be continued.) EASY CHAPTERS ON ASTRONOMY. By F. M. HOLMES, Author of "Faith's Father," &c. &c. II.-Something about the Sun. WEAR!" they cried-those bitter, blackrobed monks-"Swear! that what you have tried to teach is false, and that this most astounding heresy is abjured by you for ever! Swear! or torture and a living death is your doom!" And the poor old man, immured in one of the most horrible cells of that most iniquitous institution-the Inquisition of the Romish Church-crushed and broken in mind and body, bowed his lofty spirit, bent his knee, and with his right hand resting on the Evangelists, swore to what he knew was a lie! Yet even as his lips uttered that lie his spirit indignantly rose, and his mind protested even if his tongue did not. "It is false; God has let me read His book of nature, and I know that the earth wheels her eternal flight around the sun, eternal until God Himself shall revoke the law. Your evil natures may torture me, my weakness may yield, but what are we? the eternal laws of God go on without us, no matter what we say, no matter whether we live or die !" And even as he spoke, and even as those wretched monks chuckled over his sufferings and thought in their evil minds that they had stopped the heresy as they called it, the sun and the earth were giving them the lie, for the former was stationary and the earth on which they stood was whirling around it. The noble old man, who was he? and the blackbrowed monks, who were they? and why did they torture him? Alas! his was one of the greatest names that Science can boast; theirs, history seems to have willingly let die. He was none other than the famous Italian astronomer Galileo, who recently had given to the world some of those great principles of astronomy which are now regarded as the basis of our present knowledge. These great principles the bigoted ecclesiastics had regarded as dangerous doctrines. So, first he was compelled to pursue his noble studies in silence, then he was imprisoned, harried, worried, tortured into confession, and at last, some time after his recantation, wearied out, blind, heavy with the infirmities of a great age, as well as worn with the cruelties of the horrible Inquisition, he was released and allowed to totter to Florence, but his spirit was so broken that he never talked or wrote on astronomy more. His work on earth was done! He lived in an age when the minds of men were beginning to break the chains of the idolatrous superstitions which bound them, and refused to be held longer in a galling thraldom. A spirit of inquiry and investigation was developed which has been productive of the happiest results. His chief crime appears to have been the defence, the extension, and the vigorous teaching of what is now known as the "Copernican system." This was the theory of the eminent astronomer Copernicus, whose book, a system of the "Revolution of the Celestial Bodies," is now accepted as a commonplace fact. This book was condemned by a decree of Pope Paul V. in 1616, and thus it comes about that, for asserting the great principle that the earth revolves round the sun, and that he is, moreover, the centre of our planetary system, and the source of our light, heat, and energy, for asserting and proving these, to us, common facts, noble men in past ages had to undergo torture and death. Thus Science has had her martyrs as well as religion. Now it will be impossible for me in this short article to describe the intricate and difficult calculations, or the patient observation by which the various phenomena of the sun have been noted and explained. It must suffice to mention the facts. About 130 years after the birth of Christ, Ptolemy, an eminent Egyptian astronomer, promulgated the doctrine that the earth was fixed and the centre of the universe, and that all the stars, the sun, and the moon, revolved round her. Many difficulties arose, however, when endeavouring to explain and develop this theory, and it was not until fourteen centuries afterwards, when Copernicus, a Pole (aided in some measure, doubtless, by the neglected opinion of Pythagoras, who lived 500 years before Christ, but aided more by his own meditations on the phenomena of the planetary system), had the glory of ascertaining the true principles. The great problem was: "Whether the sun predominant in heaven, This question he undertook to solve, and, as we have seen, Galileo caught at his grand idea, explained it, enlarged it, suffered for it, and, notwithstanding all opposition, sent it flying through the world; others took it up, and astronomy made grand, rapid strides. Then came the discoveries of our own Sir Isaac Newton, who finally established the true Copernican doctrine on the solid basis of the most infallible proofs. That mysterious body of light and heat, then, which we call the sun, is the centre of a system of worlds which we know as planets, and of which the earth is one: all, at certain distances, revolving around him, receiving from him light and heat. revolves around some other centre, of course dragging us and present unknown. We shall consider the relations of planetary system in a future paper. Prominences on the Sun's Disc. Whether the sun is fixed, or in his turn all our sister planets round with him, is at the planets to the sun more fully when we come to talk of the Our sun with his retinue of planets moving around him are known as the Solar system. There are many other systems, i.e., suns having planets revolving around them, although the distance is so immense that the whole-sun and planetsappears to us only as one bright speck, known to us as fixed stars! That glorious object, then, that we call the sun, and which appears to us as a flat, small luminous circle, is an immense globe about 92 millions of miles distant from us. These are the approximate figures, for up to the present it has been proved impossible to compute the actual distance with accuracy. We revolve around the sun once in every 365 days. The sun's light reaches us in 8 minutes, travelling to us across those millions of miles at the rate of 186,000 miles in one second of time! The diameter of this immense globe is about 860,000 miles, and its circumference 2,764,600 miles; its surface about twelve thousand times the number of square miles on our globe. These figures, however, convey no adequate idea to the mind, but the reader will be better able to judge of its immense size when I say that it has been computed that it would take one million and a quarter of globes as large as ours to make up the sun! Yet this orb, in the contemplation of which our highest powers are exhausted, is but one out of millions of similar globes which exist around us in the vast universe of space, and perhaps all of them with their attendant planets and moons revolving around one immense and common centre. If so, surely it must be here at this centre-that the Almighty makes His glorious home! Edge of Sun's Disc. Before passing on to consider what the physical condition of the sun is, let us pause one minute to try to comprehend more fully the sun's position in the Universe of God! The sun is, in comparison to some of those bright and twinkling stars we see in multitudes above us, by no means to be looked upon as either a bright or large luminary, and he with his attendant planets present but a faint beam to the inhabitants (if there should be any) of that bright and mighty star we call Sirius. Astronomically speaking our sun is a star-that is to say, he is similar to those twinkling lights above us, inasmuch as he remains apparently immovable and is self-luminous, and has a train of planets or wandering stars revolving round him and dependent upon him for light and heat. The average distance from, say, a dozen of the brightest stars in the sky, is computed to be such, that light, travelling at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, would require 15+ years to reach our system, and the whole of our system appears to the inhabitants thereon but one faint star! Still more, there are some of the stars that we can but just see in the sky, the light from which takes 3,500 years to reach us! When, therefore, a new star is seen, it is not at all improbable that the light by which we see it left its shining surface thousands of years ago, and that these may be its first beams! Sun Spots. Before the telescope was invented and brought to bear upon the sun, little, if anything, was known of his physical character. He seems to have been regarded as being a globe of fire and having a broad round face, giving out an even glare of light, and if spots were at any time noticed they were supposed to be planets coming between the earth and the sun and mottling his surface. Buffon supposed the sun to be an immense furnace fed by comets, which from time to time precipitated themselves into it and thus kept up its heat and light unimpaired. We need hardly add that in the early days of the earth many nations worshipped him as their chief, if not their only, god. The researches of Galileo, however, demonstrated that the face of the sun was not of uniform brightness, but was speckled here and there with dark spots, whilst the instruments of more modern astronomers have shown that the entire surface is mottled with spots, and is, moreover, uneven in brilliancy. Some of these "spots" have been measured mathematically, and the smallest appear to be nearly 1,000 miles in width, whilst others are more than twice the diameter of the earth. They appear, however, to be constantly changing. Sometimes they remain on the solar disc for weeks and even months, sometimes they disappear in a few days. Dr. Dick observed two spots, each of them larger than the earth, which were formed near the centre of the solar disc, and of which no trace was seen forty hours before, and they frequently disappear as suddenly. Numerous opinions have been offered as to what these "spots" may consist of. Galileo supposed them to be a sort of scoria or lava formed at the surface of the sun, and floating on an ocean of liquid matter. He, however, inferred from their motions that the sun revolves on his own axis like our earth, taking some twenty-five days to complete the rotation. It was not until some 150 years after Galileo that another theory, and one which now seems to find general acceptance, was advanced. This was by Dr. Wilson, of Glasgow, who, in the year 1769, showed it to be probable that the sun consists of a dark nucleus, which, says Sir William Herschel, may be a cool, habitable globe like our own, which is covered with luminous matter, through which cavities or rents are made by volcanic or other action, and thus permitting the dark interior to be seen. The outer shining surface is called the photosphere, and may be some distance from the nucleus of the sun. Whether this is exactly so remains to be proved, but the truth of much that Wilson said seems to have been abundantly confirmed by the solar photographs and modern instruments. When astronomers observe a spot on the sun's disc, what they generally see seems to be this: in the centre of the spot is an intensely black speck, which is known as the nucleus, and can rarely be distinguished, except by a powerful telescope; around this is a dark patch called the umbra, and surrounding this is a much lighter shade of black, which is spoken of as the penumbra. Surrounding the penumbra, the photosphere is frequently much brighter, and these light places are known as facula, a Latin word signifying torches. face, the penumbra appears comparatively equal on When the spot is in the middle of the sun's sureither side, but as it approaches the edge of the sun, the penumbra on the side nearest the centre of the disc becomes gradually smaller and smaller, whilst on the other side it grows larger and larger, until at length the dark part or nucleus disappears, and then presently the whole spot with its entire surroundings is gone. From this it is judged that every spot on the sun's surface presents the appearance of a funnelshaped opening (the penumbra being the sloping sides) in the outer covering of the sun, extending, it may be, far into the interior; their motion, too, over the sun's surface giving evidence of his rotation on his own axis. If our readers will care to take a funnel or a cup, and look at it first full in the face and then move it round in a circle they will see the value of this reasoning. Outside the spots the bright surface of the sun which have received the name of rice grains, from appears to be dotted over with bright "specks," their similarity in appearance to those little elongated objects. Mr. Nasmyth, however, called them known. The whole solar surface, including the "willow leaves," and by this name they were long faculæ, but excluding of course the spots, appears to be covered in this manner with these bright elongated round-edged dots, whilst underneath them appears to lie a less luminous background. Eclipse of 1860.-Views of Sun's Disc. We now come to consider the complex envelope or halo of flame and light which exists around the sun's photosphere, and which is shown by what is known as the corona, observable during eclipses. But perhaps first we ought to explain that an eclipse of the sun occurs when in journeying around the earth the moon comes between us and our great luminary. Then darkness reigns at midday, and the stars appear as at night, and when the moon entirely covers the surface of the sun a glorious halo is seen to surround him; this is called the corona. Within the corona are masses of red flame called prominences, and also a lower level of flame or red light which appears to be shining through the corona itself. This lower level was observed by Mr. Airy in the eclipse of 1851, and to it he gave the name of "sierra." This name has now been changed by astronomers to cromosphere or chromatosphere. The light given by the "corona" has been decomposed by the spectroscope, and it has been found that it consists of a comparatively cold absorbing atmosphere, containing various elements with which we are acquainted on this globe, such as hydrogen, sodium, magnesium, &c., in a state of vapour. It is hardly within the range of this paper to explain this beautiful instrument the spectroscope; sufficient to say that its function is to separate the variously coloured rays of which sunlight is composed, and by its aid it has been discovered that metallic vapours give out certain definite rays of light, and that it has been shown by Professors Stolus and Stewart that substances when comparatively cold absorb the same coloured rays of light that they give out when heated; thus, by treating the light from the corona spectroscopically, conclusions can be drawn as to its nature. We find, therefore, that, scientifically speaking, the sun is now described as an immense solid or liquid body, surrounded by a luminous "cloud" called the photosphere, which is being constantly rent into immense openings known as "spots," and that over this photosphere is a far-reaching atmosphere, only to be seen in eclipses, in which strange red "flames " make their appearance, and in which the spectroscope reveals the vapours of various metals and other elements in a state of great heat. Here we will pause; but for one moment let us think what would be the result upon our earth if the sun ceased to shine! Darkness impenetrable, cold surpassing that of the severest Arctic winter, and death to every living thing! Thus familiarity with our blessings often produces indifference to their value. For do we not too frequently regard the sun as but an "every-day" and commonplace thing! Thank God it does shine every day. Should He but stop those mighty and mysterious operations that are now going on in that immense globe, at such a distance from this earth, what terrible consequences would ensue to us! OUR PRIZE PIGS. UR little village has become immortalised at last. In future, when anyone asks "Where's Whoever heard of Sloshley-in-the-Marsh ? Sloshley?" it will be to expose the interrogator's own ignorance. "Not to know Sloshley Argues himself unknown." We have been within an ace of becoming famous We once had a calf with two heads several times. born in our midst, and we tried to get this important phenomena written up in the Clayton Sentinel, our nearest local paper. But the editor said he could not insert the paragraph till he came over and satisfied himself, and when he came the beast was dead. We had a farm labourer who won the prize for grinning through a horse-collar at Clayton fair, but his moral character was overbalanced by his success; he fell into evil ways, so that he was no credit to us. We have a good deal to be proud of in some of our inhabitants, and in our village itself, but then all this requires to be made widely known, and after all is not the sort of thing to make a stir. Then thé Clayton people are so jealous that they snub the Once a flash of lightning set a villages out around. large hay-rick on fire, but in the accounts our village was suppressed, and it only appeared as occurring near Clayton. It is notorious, amongst all in our neighbourhood, that the best sausages in the country are made in our village by Mr. Miller, but because he supplies the dealers in Clayton, who send them to London, they are known as "Clayton sausages." We But we have had justice done us at last. have invaded London and taken it by storm; our fame is sounded in the Agricultural Hall. you seen the Sloshley pigs ?" is in every mouth. "Have It is no more than we expected, it is no more than our due. We who watched the daily progress of those pigs; who saw them grow under our very eyes; who would have given up our own oil-cake, if we had had any, to contribute to their welfare, we have indeed been rewarded. We not only fed them, We took it in turns to but we watched over them! stay up at night with them, fearing lest they should be got at by someone jealous of our fame. They were washed on the last night before their departure, so as to give the people an idea of the wholesomeness of our pork, and we noted with pride how their legs got gradually shorter as their bodies approached the ground, and how their eyes receded more and more terested in them, and in the morning the first question into their heads. The whole village were inasked by one neighbour of another was, "How is them pigs?" The whole village patted their fat sides, and wished them luck as they went laway, some, indeed, throwing slippers at them, till, the noble creatures grunted back their appreciation of all the kindness they had received. "What hams!" "What pork-pies!" "What rashers!" What sausages!" What Bath chaps!" "What pigs' feet!" "What roast pork!" were variously exclaimed by friendly critics, who thus indicated their individual preferences, as these village pets appeared outside Miller's, and |