eddying luminous flood is intermingled and
boiling up together with another non-luminous
tide, without any actual mixture or
combination of the two taking place.

When the Jesuit Scheiner first discovered
the spots on the sun, he dared not publish
his discovery, although he confided it to a
few of his most intimate pupils. After
repeated observations had removed all doubt
as to their existence, he consulted the
Provincial Father of his Order, a zealous
peripatetic philosopher, who refused to believe in
anything of the kind, because Aristotle had
said that the sun is all over shining with
light. "I have several times read my
Aristotle," he sagely observed, "from beginning
to end, and I can assure you that he mentions
not a syllable about it. Go, my son; make
yourself easy, and take it for certain that
what you suppose to be spots on the sun are
nothing but flaws in your glasses, or your
eyes." Scheiner obeyed his superior's advice,
said no more about the spots on the sun,
and retired, after admitting that his eyes
must be in the wrong, and Aristotle in the
right. But the spots on the sun were not to
be so put down. A senator of Augsbourg,
named Veiser, who had heard whispers about
the novel heresy, wrote to Galileo. The
great astronomer replied that Scheiner's eyes
were as good as need be, and that he himself
had watched those spots for some time past.

The size of these ever-changing spots is
sometimes exceedingly great, covering a
superficies several times larger than the
whole surface of the earth, were it spread out
flat, instead of being spherical. The first
result of this discovery was the proof that
the sun, which had always been regarded as
perfectly motionless in the midst of the
universe, had a rotary movement on its
own axis. By observing the time that each
spot required to return to the same apparent
position, it was found that the sun performed
a complete revolution in about five-and-twenty
days and a half. Thus, the hour of a solar
day,—which day, however, can scarcely have
an alternation of light and darkness, like
ours,—is equal to a whole terrestrial day and
something more. The difference gives a
slight idea of the relative magnitude of the
two respective globes; time, or rather its
means of measurement, bears here a certain
proportion to space. The size of the sun is
oppressive to think of. If we suppose the
earth placed in the middle of the sun, like
the kernel inside a peach, so that their two
centres coincided, the entire orbit of the
moon would lie within the solid body of the
sun, about half-way between the centre and
the surface. To comprehend the truth,
therefore, we must conceive a spherical mass,
whose radius stretches from the centre of the
earth to twice the distance of the moon. A
vessel which circumnavigates the earth in
three years, would require considerably more
than the longest human life, namely, nearly
three hundred years, to perform a similar
feat of navigation, if sailing at the same rate,
round the sun. The study, therefore, of
solar geography, and anything like extensive
solar travels, must be difficult undertakings
for dwellers on the sun, unless their term of
life is very much more extended than our own.
After this, think of the magnitude of that
magnificent luminary, the Dog-star, which is
calculated to be eight times as large as the
sun.

Weight, or the force of gravity, is twenty-
eight times as powerful at the surface of the
sun as it is at the surface of the earth. A
full-grown man, like one of ourselves, if he
fell on the sun, from a height equal to his
own stature, would be smashed as if he had
thrown himself from an earthly steeple.
Elephants and rhinoceroses, weighing twenty-
eight times as much as they do in their
terrestrial haunts, would be immoveable
fixtures; their muscles would not serve to
stir them, were ill-luck to convey them to a
solar forest. A Daniel Lambert, sent to the
sun for exhibition, would sink to the ground,
and would be flattened and outspread by the
force of his own weight, like a loose bag of
quicksilver here. Supposing the existence of
a solar population—a hypothesis which is
generally accepted, and on rational grounds,
at present—we must believe them to be little
fragile creatures, with frames of the utmost
lightness and suppleness. The only bodily
constitution which seems possible under the
conditions in which they are placed, is
analogous to that with which popular imagination
has endowed the sylphs of the air, and
the fairies of the wood; they must be made
up of dew and vapour, held together by
gossamer bones, and cobweb muscles.

The spots on the sun also led to the
discovery of its physical constitution. It was
found by ingenious observations that those
spots are nothing else than holes through
which the body itself of the luminary is
caught sight of. The sun, therefore, is
composed of two very different materials, namely,
the internal mass, which is a solid body,
non-luminous, and black; and a superficial
envelope, which consists of a light stratum of
inflamed substance, whence the star appears
to derive its light-and-heat-giving power,
An elastic fluid, elaborated on the dark
surface of the sun, and floating upwards through
the luminous coat, would force it aside
temporarily, like the drawing back of a curtain,
and so produce the effect of spots. This
notion gives two distinct atmospheres to
envelope the interior globe of the sun. He
rejoiceth as a giant to run his course—
somewhere in the direction of the constellation
Hercules—and bedecks himself with light as
it were with a garment. The latest observations
suggest the belief that the sun has not
less than three distinct coats.

The opinions of the learned on this curious
point have changed completely and rapidly.