In 1878 the United States steam-ship Enterprise was sent to survey the Amazon.  Every night a “star party” went ashore to fix the exact latitude and longitude by observations of the stars.  Our real landmarks are not the pillars we rear, but the stars millions of miles away.  All our standards of time are taken from the stars; every railway train runs by their time to avoid collision; by them all factories start and stop.  Indeed, we are ruled by the stars even more than the old astrologers imagined.

Man’s finest mechanism, highest thought, and broadest exercise of the creative faculty have been inspired by astronomy.  No other instruments approximate in delicacy those which explore the heavens; no other [Page 58] system of thought can draw such vast and certain conclusions from its premises.  “Too low they build who build beneath the stars;” we should lay our foundations in the skies, and then build upward.

We have been placed on the outside of this earth, instead of the inside, in order that we may look abroad.  We are carried about, through unappreciable distance, at the inconceivable velocity of one thousand miles a minute, to give us different points of vision.  The earth, on its softly-spinning axle, never jars enough to unnest a bird or wake a child; hence the foundations of our observatories are firm, and our measurements exact.  Whoever studies astronomy, under proper guidance and in the right spirit, grows in thought and feeling, and becomes more appreciative of the Creator.

Celestial Movements.

Let it not be supposed that a mastery of mathematics and a finished education are necessary to understand the results of astronomical research.  It took at first the highest power of mind to make the discoveries that are now laid at the feet of the lowliest.  It took sublime faith, courage, and the results of ages of experience in navigation, to enable Columbus to discover that path to the New World which now any little boat can follow.  Ages of experience and genius are stored up in a locomotive, but quite an unlettered man can drive it.  It is the work of genius to render difficult matters plain, abstruse thoughts clear.

[Illustration:  Fig. 19.]

A brief explanation of a few terms will make the principles of world inspection easily understood.  Imagine a perfect circle thirty feet in diameter—­that is, create [Page 59] one (Fig. 19).  Draw through it a diameter horizontally, another perpendicularly.  The angles made by the intersecting lines are each said to be ninety degrees, marked thus deg..  The arc of a circle included between any two of the lines is also 90 deg..  Every circle, great or small, is divided into these 360 deg..  If the sun rose in the east and came to the zenith at noon, it would have passed 90 deg..  When it set in the west it would have traversed half the circle, or 180 deg..  In Fig. 20 the angle of the lines measured on the graduated arc is 10 deg..  The mountain is 10 deg. high, the world 10 deg. in diameter, the comet moves 10 deg. a day, the stars are 10 deg. apart.  The height of the mountain, the diameter of the world, the velocity of the comet, and the distance between the stars, depend on the distance of each from the point of sight.  Every degree is divided into 60 minutes (marked ’), and every minute into 60 seconds (marked “).