earth, what millions of thy creatures are adoring and praising thee! How then can I be insensible and silent at this view of universal beauty and universal goodness? From thee springs the splendour of the morning, from thee, the great fountain of light and life. Thou alone hast spread the horizon with these beauteous tints, and given pervading power and energy to that sun. The verdant earth, the smiling landscape around, is decorated by thy hand. The grateful emotions which the glorious scene inspires spring too from thee. Thou hast endowed me with understanding, with that celestial faculty, which thus enables me to discover thee in thy wondrous works. Continue, Best of Beings, to protect and guide me. Let me not be content with these morning aspirations. Beautiful as this solitude is, and charming as these reflections are, let me now return to social life and to active goodness. Ever grateful to thee, and kind to my fellow-creatures, may a life of uniform piety and virtue be accepted by thee as the noblest hymn of praise and adoration." Dr. Beattie's Melodies of Morning,' given in his Minstrel,' are too appropriate and elegant, not to deserve a place in this paper: 2 But who the melodies of morn can tell? The wild brook babbling down the mountain side; The pipe of early shepherd dim descried The cottage-curs at early pilgrim bark; Crowned with her pail the tripping milkmaid sings Through rustling corn the hare astonished springs, No. XLIII. ON THE SUN. Alme Sol, curru nitido diem qui Fair Sun, who with unchanging beam Dost from thy beamy car unfold The glorious day, Or hide it in thy setting ray Great source of day! best image here below From world to world, the vital ocean round, HORACE: FRANCIS. THOMSON. THE Sun has been justly styled the soul of the universe, as it not only produces all the necessaries of life, but has a particular influence in cheering the mind of man. He can never be satiated then, one would think, with the glorious scenes which the eye discovers, when this radiant orb sheds its lustre abroad; nor can imagination ever cease to contemplate, with pleasure, its wonderful use and essential importance in the creation. In my preceding paper, I considered the rising of the sun as forming one of the most beautiful appearances in a morning prospect. How striking the scene when we first observe the fiery rays which the sun scatters among the clouds, as harbingers of his approach. As the illumination increases, the earth seems all in a glow, and we expect the glorious orb long before he discovers himself above the horizon. We imagine, every moment, that we see him. At length he appears. His rays dart, like lightning, over the face of Nature, and darkness vanishes at the sight. Man glories in his habitation, and beholds it embellished with renovated beauty. The lawn is refreshed by the coolness of the night, and the light of the morning displays its increasing verdure. The dew-bespangled flowers that enamel its surface glitter in the sunbeams, and, like rubies and emeralds, dart their colours on the eye. The cheerful birds unite in choirs, and hail, in concert, the parent of life. At this enchanting moment, not one is silent. All Nature is enlivened by his presence, and gladdened by his gifts. Millions of glittering insects awake into existence, and flutter in his rays. The bleating flocks, and lowing herds, salute the welcome blessing. The hills, the valleys, and the woods, resound with rural harmony. All that is vocal unites in the general choir; and all that has breath exults in the enlivening influence. In man, in particular, the assemblage of so many pleasing objects imparts a glowing sensation, that seems to penetrate the soul. Who, indeed, can withstand the rapture of this short interval of enchantment? Who can behold with indifference a scene, at once so magnificent, so beautiful, and so delightful? But I am aware that, in my morning walk, I have already expatiated on this scene; a scene, however, productive of a pleasure that will ever bear repetition, and of a variety that never can be exhausted. The sun, that radiant orb, with which, as a part of the planetary system' to which our globe belongs, 'See No. vII, Reflections on the Solar System. we are so intimately connected, is defined, with respect to us, to be that great luminary which enlightens the world, and whose presence constitutes the day. In the infancy of astronomy it was reckoned among the planets; but it is now numbered among the fixed stars. It appears bright and large in comparison with them; because we keep constantly near the sun, and are at an immense distance from the stars: for a spectator, placed as near to any star as we are to the sun, would see that star a body as large and bright as the sun appears to us; and a spectator, as far distant from the sun as we are from the stars, would see the sun as small as we see a star, divested of all its circumvolving planets; and, in numbering the stars, he would reckon it among them. The figure of the sun is a spheroid, higher under the equator than about the poles. His diameter is computed to be 894,000 miles. His solid bulk is 24 million of times as big as that of the moon, and half a million of times bigger than that of the earth. His distance from the earth, in round numbers, is about 95 millions of miles; a distance so prodigious, that a cannon-ball, which moves at the rate of about eight miles in a minute, would be something more than twenty-two years in going from the earth to the sun. This account of the diameter, magnitude, and distance of the sun, is deduced from the determinations of the most eminent astronomers in Europe, who were sent out to the most convenient parts of the earth, for the purpose of observing the transits of Venus over the sun, in the years 1761 and 1769. The sun was generally considered by the ancients as a globe of pure fire; but, from a number of maculæ, or dark spots, which, by means of a telescope, may be seen on different parts of his surface, it appears that this opinion was ill-founded. The spots consist, in general, of a nucleus, or central part, which appears much darker than the rest, and seems to be surrounded by a mist or smoke; and they are so changeable in their situation and figure, as frequently to vary during the time of observation. Some of the largest of them, which are found to exceed the bulk of the whole earth, are often to be seen for three months together: and, when they disappear, they have been supposed to be converted into faculæ, or luminous spots, which appear much brighter than the rest of the sun'. About the time that the solar spots were first discovered by Galileo, forty or fifty of them might be frequently seen on the sun at a time; but, at present, we can seldom observe more than thirty; and there have been periods of seven or eight years in which none could be seen. Various have been the opinions concerning the nature, origin, and situation of the solar spots. It 1 But this conversion of the maculæ, or dark spots, into the faculæ, or luminous ones, has been denied. Hevelius, indeed, supports the opinion; but Huygens declares, that he was never able to discover any facule; and that all the foundation that he could see for the notion was, that in the darkish clouds that frequently surround the maculæ, little points, or sparks, brighter than the rest, are sometimes discerned. Many authors, after Kircher and Scheiner, have generally represented the sun's body full of bright, fiery spots, which they conceive to be a sort of volcanos in the body of the sun; but Huygens, and others of the latest and best authority, finding that the best telescopes discover nothing of the matter, agree to explode the notion of faculæ. The cause of what have been supposed to be such they attribute to the tremulous agitation of the vapours near our earth; the same as sometimes shows a little unevenness in the circumference of the sun's disk when viewed through a telescope. Strictly, then, the faculæ are not eructations of fire and flame, but refractions of the sun's rays in the rarer exhalations, which, being condensed in the neighbourhood of that shade, seem to exhibit a light greater than that of the sun. |