thunder, and also dissipated pestilent air. All which may be also from the concussion of the air, and not from the sound." Ever since the introduction of bells, the English have been distinguished for their proficiency in the art of ringing, and for their partiality to this amusement.

ADAM'S AWAKENING TO LIFE.

MILTON.

New-waked from soundest sleep,

Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid,
In balmy sweat; which with his beams the sun
Soon dried, and on the reeking moisture fed.
Straight towards heaven my wand'ring eyes I turn'd,
And gazed awhile the ample sky; till, raised
By quick instinctive motion, up I sprung,
As thitherward endeavouring, and upright
Stood on my feet. About me round I saw
Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains,
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams; by these,
Creatures that lived and moved, and walk'd or flew ;
Birds on the branches warbling all things smiled;
With fragrance and with joy my heart o'erflow'd!
Myself I then perused, and limb by limb

Surveyed; and sometimes went, and sometimes ran
With supple joints, as lively vigour led:
But who I was, or where, or from what cause,
Knew not. To speak I tried, and forthwith spake ;
My tongue obeyed, and readily could name
Whate'er I saw. "Thou sun," said I, "fair light!
And thou, enlighten'd earth, so fresh and gay!
Ye hills and dales! ye rivers, woods, and plains!
And ye that live and move, fair creatures! tell,
Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus ?-how here?"

From the earliest period the sun has necessarily been an object of daily observation. Appearing to rise in one quarter of the heavens, and to set at a point nearly opposite to be the cause of day by his presence and of night by his absence, the motions, real or apparent, of an

object so magnificent and so useful, would be marked, even in the infancy of society, with more than ordinary care. Twice only in the year would he appear to rise exactly in the east ; and his deviations from this point towards the north in summer, and towards the south in winter, could not fail to be noticed, and measured, and recorded. His return to the same point, at rising and setting, would naturally and obviously mark out the length of the year; but simple as the observation may be in theory, it was long, either through the irregularity of observation, or the rudeness of the instruments employed, or through both causes united, before the real length of the year was decided with any tolerable accuracy. This rising and setting, too, would appear to be the effect of a real motion of the sun itself, while the earth remained stationary to receive the benefit of his warming and enlightening beams; and many ages did mankind in general remain under this delusion as to the theory of the universe.

The apparent motion of the sun indicates to us the changes which occur as to the length of days and nights, and the points of the horizon at which he makes his first appearance

in the mornings, and takes his departure from us in the evenings; the changes in the latter case being the causes of the variations in the former. If, about the 20th March, we place ourselves, a little before sunrise, so as to front the south, we may observe the sun to rise on our left hand, or due east; and if we resume our station at his departure, we shall find him setting on our right hand, or due west. Every succeeding morning we shall find him rising, and every succeeding evening setting, somewhat behind us, more and more towards the north, so as to make the day longer, and its noontide elevation greater, until the 21st June, or the summer solstice, when his meridian altitude will be at its maximum, and the day also at its greatest length. After this his rising and setting will approach nearer and nearer to the east and west, until the 23rd of September, when he will again rise and set at those points. From this period the observer will perceive the sun to rise and set more and more to the southward of the east and west until the winter solstice, about the 21st of December, when the arc that the sun describes in the heavens will be the smallest, and consequently the day will be shortest. Then the points of rising and setting will return nearer and nearer to the east and west, and the days will increase in length until about the 20th of March, when the sun will again appear and disappear at those points precisely.

All these changes seem at first sight, and for many ages were thought, to be occasioned by the motion of the sun around the earth, which, by perpetually changing its direction, produced all that diversity in the length of days and nights, and all that alternation and variety of seasons, which are so agreeable and so beneficial. Pythagoras, however, conjectured, many ages ago, and Galileo afterwards asserted, that the sun had no such motion, but that all the phenomena supposed to be produced by it were in reality to be ascribed to the daily rotation of the earth upon its axis, and its annual revolution round the sun. How contrary soever such an opinion may be to the first impressions of the senses, nothing short of

infallible certainty and absolute demonstration can be more satisfactory than the evidence upon which it is established and maintained.

From the best observations that, in a long course of years, have been made on the sun, and the planetary bodies most fitted for the purpose of ascertaining his distance from us, the main distance of that luminary from the earth is ascertained to be about ninety-one and a half millions of miles. From this distance, and his mean apparent diameter, it will be an easy process to determine his real diameter, and thence his magnitude, both absolutely in cubical miles, or other dimensions, and relatively with regard to the magnitude of the earth. The result of the calculation is, that the diameter of the sun is about one hundred and eleven times that of the earth; and consequently, on the supposition (the most probable one) that his shape is spherical, and from the known fact that bodies, similarly shaped, are to each other as the cubes of their like dimensions, the magnitude of the sun is 1,367,631, or more than one million three hundred thousand times that of the earth, and many times greater than the combined mass of all the planets. If the accuracy of these results should be questioned on account of the errors to which even the best and most careful observations are liable, it may somewhat remove this suspicion to recollect that the accuracy with which the rising, setting, revolutions, and positions of the heavenly bodies, their eclipses, &c., are determined and foretold, even to a second of time, shows that in some respects, at least, they may be depended on with infallible certainty; and that, therefore, in others it may be wise to avail ourselves of them as far as they can be applied and verified.

To illustrate the comparative magnitudes of the earth and sun, suppose that as many earths as would equal the sun in bulk were laid together side by side, in a circular form, in close contact; they would fill a circumference more than eighteen times the magnitude of the earth's orbit, and be nearly equal to the orbit of Uranus, which was considered the

most distant planet in our system, until the discovery of Neptune by Adams and Leverrier in 1846. If these globes were placed in close contact instead of in a single ring, as above, they would fill a circle of nearly ten millions of miles in diameter.

Indebted as we are to this luminary for benefits and blessings of the most valuable kind, and not the less, but the more, valuable because they are common and perennial, the sun is naturally classed among the most wonderful of the Creator's works. His unrivalled splendour, his surpassing magnitude, the situation he occupies in our system, and the influence he exerts upon it, all unite in claiming for so glorious an object no common portion of regard and admiration.

THE SUN.-PART II.

Such is the general brilliancy of the solar disc that, for many ages, the surface of the sun was supposed to be one uniform and uninterrupted blaze of light. When we view it, however, with a telescope even of moderate magnifying power, furnished with a piece of dark or smoked glass to interrupt a portion of its rays, we perceive occasionally a number of dark spots upon its surface, of various magnitudes and forms. They are sometimes so large as to be distinguishable by the naked eye. Our countryman, Harriot, and Fabricius of Cologne, appear to have been among the first observers of these spots, early in the 17th century. About the same time, Scheiner of Ingoldstadt, and the celebrated Galileo, made similar observations; but neither of them published an account of them immediately, though they circulated the intelligence among their friends. The times were not then favourable to the diffusion of even astronomical truth; the fear of the censure of the Church cramped the energies of the human mind, and might, if possible, have extinguished the light of science itself. Speculations on the cause and nature of these spots would, of course, soon follow their discovery; and