planet seen through it. This ring was very
easily seen by good telescopes, and presently
became visible through telescopes of only four
inch aperture. In Herschel's time it was so
dim that it was figured as a belt upon the body
of the planet. Now it is not only distinct, but
it has been increasing in width since the time
of its discovery.

These were not all the marvels. One of the
chief of the wonders since discovered, was a
faint overlapping light, differing much in colour
from the ordinary light of the ring, which light,
a year and a half ago, Mr. Wray saw distinctly
stretched on either side from the dark shade
on the ball overlapping the fine line of light
by the edge of the ring to the extent of about
one-third of its length, and so as to give the
impression that it was the dusky ring, very
much thicker than the bright rings, and seen
edge-wise, projected on the sky. Well may
we be told by our guide, Mr. Proctor, that no
object in the heavens presents so beautiful an
appearance as Saturn, viewed with an instrument
of adequate power. The golden disc,
faintly striped with silver-tinted belts; the
circling rings, with their various shades of
brilliancy and colour; and the perfect symmetry
of the system as it sweeps across the dark
background of the field of view, combine to
form a picture as charming as it is sublime and
impressive.

But what does it all mean? What is the
use of this strange furniture in the House of
Saturn, which is like nothing else among the
known things of the universe? Maupertuis
thought that Saturn's ring was a comet's tail
cut off by the attraction of the planet as it
passed, and compelled to circle round it
thenceforth and for ever. Buffon thought the ring
was the equatorial region of the planet which
bad been thrown off and left revolving while
the globe to which it had belonged contracted
to its present size. Other theories also went
upon the assumption that the rings are solid.
But if they are solid, how is it that they exhibit
traces of varying division and reunion, and
what are we to think of certain mottled or
dusky stripes concentric with the rings, which
stripes, appearing to indicate that the ring
where they occur is semi-transparent, also are
not permanent? Then, again, what are we to
think of the growth within the last seventy
years of the transparent dark ring which does
not, as even air would, refract the image of
that which is seen through it, and that is
becoming more opaque every year? Then, again,
how is it that the immense width of the rings
has been steadily increasing by the approach of
their inner edge to the body of the planet?
The bright ring once twenty-three thousand
miles wide, was five thousand miles wider in
Herschel's time, and has now a width of twenty-eight
thousand three hundred on a surface of
more than twelve thousand millions of square
miles, while the thickness is only a hundred miles
or less. Eight years ago, Mr. J. Clerk Maxwell
obtained the Adams prize of the University of
Cambridge for an essay upon Saturn's rings,
which showed that if they were solid there
would be necessary to stability an appearance
altogether different from that of the actual
system. But if not solid are they fluid, are
they a great isolated ocean poised in the
Saturnian mid air? If there were such an ocean,
it is shown that it would be exposed to influences
forming waves that would be broken up
into fluid satellites.

But possibly the rings are formed of flights
of disconnected satellites, so small and so closely
packed that, at the immense distance to which
Saturn is removed, they appear to form a continuous
mass, while the dark inner mass may have
been recently formed of satellites drawn by
disturbing attractions or collisions out of the bright
outer ring, and so thinly scattered that they
give to us only a sense of darkness without
obscuring, and of course without refracting, the
surface before which they spin. This is, in our
guide's opinion, the true solution of the problem,
and to the bulging of Saturn's equator, which
determines the line of superior attraction, he
ascribes the thinness of the system of satellites
in which each is compelled to travel near the
plane of the great planet's equator.

Whatever be the truth about these vast
provisions for the wants of Saturn, surely there
must be living inhabitants there to whose needs
they are wisely adapted. Travel among the
other planets would have its inconveniences
to us of the earth. Light walking as it might
be across the fields of ether, we should have
half our weight given to us again in Mars or
Mercury, while in Jupiter our weight would be
doubled, and we should drag our limbs with
pain. In Saturn, owing to the compression of
the vast light globe and its rapid rotation, a
man who weighs twelve stone at the equator,
weighs fourteen stone at the pole. Though vast
in size, the density of the planet is small, for
which reason we should not find ourselves very
much heavier by change of ground from Earth
to Saturn. We should be cold, for Saturn gets
only a ninetieth part of the earth's allowance
of light and heat. But then there is no lack of
blanket in the House of Saturn, for there is a
thick atmosphere to keep the warmth in the old
gentleman's body and to lengthen the Saturnian
twilights. As for the abatement of light, we
know how much light yet remains to us when
less than a ninetieth part of the sun escapes
eclipse. We see in its brightness, as a star,
though a pale one, the reflexion of the
sunshine Saturn gets, which if but a ninetieth part
of our share, yet leaves the Sun of Saturn able
to give five hundred and sixty times more light
than our own brightest moonshine. And then
what long summers! The day in Saturn is
only ten and a half hours long, so that the
nights are short, and there are twenty-four
thousand six hundred and eighteen and a half of
its own days to the Saturnian year. But the
long winters! And the Saturnian winter has its
gloom increased by eclipses of the sun's light
by the rings. At Saturn's equator these eclipses