to do so. We attend only, like most of our
neighbours, to what is easy to us. Sun is gold,
and moon is silver; Mars is iron, Mercury
quicksilver, which we, in fact, rather like still
to call Mercury, thinking nothing at all of the
imprisoned god with the winged heels, when we
ask how is the mercury in the thermometer.
Jove is tin, yes, by Jove, tin is the chief among
the gods, says little Swizzles, who, by a miracle,
remembers one thing that he learnt at school—
Jove's chieftainship among the heathen deities.
Venus is copper, for the Cyprian is Cuprian;
and as for Saturn, he is lead. A miserable old
fellow they made Saturn out in the days of the
star-decipherers. Mine, Chaucer makes Saturn
say, is the drowning in wan waters, the dark
prison, the strangling and hanging, murmur of
discontent, and the rebellion of churls. I am
the poisoner and the housebreaker, I topple
down the high halls and make towers fall upon
their builders, earth upon its miners. I sent
the temple roof down upon Samson. I give
you all your treasons, and your cold diseases,
and your pestilence. This is the sort of estimation
in which our forefathers held the respectable
old gentleman we are now going out to see.

When Galileo's eyes went out towards Saturn
through his largest telescope—which, great as
were the discoveries it made, was clumsier and
weaker than the sort of telescope now to be got
for a few shillings at any optician's shop—he
noticed a peculiarity in the appearance of Saturn
which caused him to suppose that Saturn
consisted of three stars in contact with one another.
A year and a half later he looked again, and
there was the planet round and single as the
disc of Mars or Jupiter. He cleaned his glasses,
looked to his telescope, and looked again to the
perplexing planet. Triform it was not. " Is
it possible," he asked, "that some mocking
demon has deluded me?" Afterwards the
perplexity increased. The two lesser orbs
reappeared, and grew and varied in form strangely:
finally they lost their globular appearance
altogether, and seemed each to have two mighty
arms stretched towards and encompassing the
planet. A drawing in one of his manuscripts
would suggest that Galileo discovered the key
to the mystery, for it shows Saturn as a globe
resting upon a ring. But this drawing is
thought to be a later addition to the
manuscript. It was only after many perplexities of
others, about half a century later, that Huygens,
in the year sixteen 'fifty-nine, announced to his
contemporaries that Saturn is girdled about by
a thin flat ring, inclined to the ecliptic, and not
touching the body of the planet. He showed
that all variations in the appearance of the ring
are due to the varying inclinations of its plane
towards us, and that being very thin, it becomes
invisible when its edge is turned to the spectator
or the sun. He found the diameter of the ring
to be as nine to four to the diameter of Saturn's
body, and its breadth about equal to the breadth
of vacant space between it and the surface of
the planet.

The same observer, Huygens, four years
earlier, discovered one of Saturn's satellites.
Had he looked for more he could have found
them. But six was the number of known
planets, five had been the number of known
satellites, our moon, and the four moons of
Jupiter, which Galileo had discovered; one
moon more, made the number of the planets
and of the satellites to be alike, six, and this
arrangement was assumed to be exact and final.
But in sixteen 'seventy-one another satellite of
Saturn was discovered by Cassini, who observed
that it disappears regularly during one half of
its seventy-nine days' journey round its principal.
Whence it is inferred that this moon has one of
its sides less capable than the other of reflecting
light, and that it turns round on its own axis once
during its seventy-nine days' journey; Saturn
itself spinning once round on its axis in as short
a time as ten hours and a half. Cassini afterwards
discovered three more satellites, and called his
four the Sidera Lodoicea, Ludovickian Stars, in
honour of his patron, Louis the Fourteenth.
Huygens had discovered, also, belts on Saturn's
disc. Various lesser observations on rings, belts,
and moons of Saturn continued to be made until
the time of the elder Herschel, who, at the close
of the last century, discovered two more satellites,
established the relation of the belts to the
rotation of the planet, and developed, after ten
years' careful watching, his faith in the double
character of its ring. " There is not, perhaps,"
said this great and sound astronomer, " another
object in the heavens that presents us with such
a variety of extraordinary phenomena as the
planet Saturn: a magnificent globe encompassed
by a stupendous double ring; attended by seven
satellites; ornamented with equatorial belts;
compressed at the poles; turning on its axis;
mutually eclipsing its rings and satellites, and
eclipsed by them; the most distant of the rings
also turning on its axis, and the same taking
place with the furthest of the satellites; all the
parts of the system of Saturn occasionally
reflecting light to each other—the rings and
moons illuminating the nights of the Saturnian,
the globe and moons enlightening the dark parts
of the rings, and the planet and rings throwing
back the sun's beams upon the moons when
they are deprived of them at the time of their
conjunctions." During the present century,
other observers have detected more divisions of
the ring, one separating the outer ring into two
rings of equal breadth seems to be permanent.
It is to be seen only by the best telescopes, under
the most favourable conditions. Many other and
lesser indications of division have also at different
times been observed. Seventeen years ago an
eighth satellite of Saturn was discovered by Mr.
Bond in America, and by Mr. Lassell in England.
Two years later, that is to say, in November,
eighteen 'fifty, a third ring of singular appearance
was discovered inside the two others by
Mr. Bond, and, a few days later, but
independently, by Mr. Dawes and by Mr. Lassell in
England. It is not bright like the others, but
dusky, almost purple, and it is transparent, not
even distorting the outline of the body of the