and become comets, aërolites, or
asteroids, with orbits more or less elliptical, and
sometimes even irregular, causing them to
wander from system to system.

Olbers was of opinion that the telescopic
planets were simply the remains of a former
planet which had burst into fragments.
Arago favours this opinion, which receives a
powerful corroboration from the strange fact
related by Varro, which appears to have
occurred about eighteen hundred and thirty-
one years before the Christian era: "the
planet Venus was seen to change its diameter,
its colour, its shape, and its course." The
doubling, or division of several comets, is a
well-observed and well-proved phenomenon;
but the most remarkable circumstance is the
discovery, on the very same day of eighteen
hundred and forty-eight, in Europe and
America respectively, of a new satellite of
Saturn. According to M. Boutigny's ideas,
this new satellite was discovered immediately
after its birth, or projection; that is to say,
that Saturn is still agitated by grand vibratory
movements, in which the centrifugal
force predominates. It is scarcely possible
to admit that Saturn, who has been
constantly watched ever since the discovery of
the last satellite but one, should have been
able to hide from so many prying eyes the
new-hatched bantling, whose existence has
been so recently signalised.

Aërolites are presumed to be shot out
from volcanoes in the sun in a direction
parallel or obliquely inclined to its axis of
rotation. The opinion is confirmed by the
smallness of their size, and their property of
being self-luminous, which is a property
belonging exclusively to the sun. A meteor
has been seen to appear in the firmament, at
a distance double that of the moon from the
earth, and to direct its course towards our
planet; but, on passing in the neighbourhood
of the moon, it described a curve convex to
the earth, rushed towards the moon, and
disappeared. Its luminosity was, therefore, not
owing to any combustion in our atmosphere.
Aërolites have been supposed to come from
lunar volcanoes; but the moon has never
possessed volcanoes, though she has
mountains in plenty, and though she herself is of
volcanic origin.

To sum up. Planets, celestial meteors, and
aërolites, are all the immediate offspring of
the sun, as satellites are the offspring of their
respective planets. Consequently, the matter
of which our system is composed, must be
essentially of the same, or very similar nature,
throughout. Gold in Venus would tally
with gold in Jupiter. Earthly ice would be
homogeneous with the ice of Saturn.

But, if all the bodies of our planetary
system are the progeny of the sun, whence
comes the sun himself? From another
much more voluminous sun, to whom ours
would be nothing but a planet, or a
satellite merely. And this other sun?
From a third, vaster still. And, after that,
what then? And again, what then?
To what first commencement can we trace
the life, the laws, and the movement, which
the Eternal Almighty Ruler has ordained
to exist throughout His Universe? Whatever
he may do, and wherever he may seek,
the proudest human intellect is obliged at
last to bow and worship before the
incomprehensible power of the Supreme Governor
of suns and worlds. All we know is, that
before the mountains were brought forth, or
ever the earth and the world were made,
there was One who ruled from everlasting,
and who will rule world without end.

THE DEVIL'S MARK.

ON the morning of August the first, sixteen
hundred and fourteen, the village of
Hambledon was the scene of much lively bustle
which rallied chiefly round the dwelling of
Master Simon, farrier, blacksmith, and
wheelwright for the township. Master Simon's
only daughter Rose—the White Rose of
Hambledon, the folks called her—was going
to be married that day to her cousin, Richard
Nicholl, who had come to Hambledon about
a year before to work at the forge for his
kinsman, whose strength was declining, and
had fallen in love at once with the pretty and
warm-hearted Rose. They were a very well-
matched couple of young people, for if she
was as blooming and sweet as her name,
Richard was the goodliest man in that parish,
and many another. She was nineteen, and
he was twenty-six—both of them in the full
glow and excellence of youth.

The forge fire was out that morning, and
if any traveller's horse had chosen to cast a
shoe near the village, he must have gone a
couple of miles further, to Wistlebank, before
the damage could have been repaired. In
Master Simon's cottage were collected half
the women of the place, but Rose's chamber
was the favourite point, for there the young
maiden's toilet was being accomplished by
half-a-dozen of her particular friends. We
ought not to go into that mysterious sanctum,
I know; but for the telling of our story it is
necessary that we should look through the
doorway and over the heads of the crowding
gossips, and listen also to the remarks of the
handmaidens engaged in their agreeable
tasks. The costume of those days was not
remarkable either for its picturesqueness or
its grace; but Rose's pretty shape and sweet
face were proof against its disfigurements.
She stood in the centre of the room, fair and
blushing, in a petticoat of remarkable stiffness
and a bodice of preternatural length,
her gold-coloured hair rolled up elaborately,
and a highly-starched ruff lying close at hand
to imprison her round white throat.

There was not one of the half-dozen friends
so beautiful as Rose; but one of them—the
chief it seemed—from her being the putter