ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤTHE STARS, SUNS OF THE INFINITEWorld, flooding it with joy. Bu we must not rejoice too quickly. This splendid blaze will not endure. The faming star will pale once more fade back to its mini mum ; and then again revive. Such is the nature of this capricious sun. It varies in three hundred and thirty one days, and from yellow at the maximum, turns red at the minimum. This star, Mira Ceti, which is one of the most curious of its type, varies from the second to the ninth magnitudes : we cite it as one example hundreds of others might be instanced.
Thus the sky is no black curtain dotted with brilliant points, no empty desert, silent and monotonous. It is a prodigious theater on which the most fantastic plays are continually being acted. Only there are no
spectators.
Again, we must note the temporary stars, which shine for a certain time, and then die out rapidly. Such was the star in Cassiopeia, in 1572, the light of which exceeded Sirius in its visibility in full daylight, burning for five months with unparalleled splendor, domi nating all other stars of first magnitude after which it died out gradually, disappearing at the end of seventeen months, to the terror of the peoples, who saw in it the harbinger of the world’s end: that of 1604, in the Con stellation of the Serpent, which shone for a year of
1866, of second magnitude, in the Northern Crownㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
