The remarkable successes of astronomical photography, which depended upon the plate’s power of accumulation of a very feeble light acting continuously through an exposure of several hours, were worthy to be regarded as a new revelation.  The first chapter opened when, in 1880, Dr. Henry Draper obtained a picture of the nebula of Orion; but a more important advance was made in 1883, when Dr. Common, by his photographs, brought to our knowledge details and extensions of this nebula hitherto unknown.  A further disclosure took place in 1885, when the Brothers Henry showed for the first time in great detail the spiral nebulosity issuing from the bright star Maia of the Pleiades, and shortly afterward nebulous streams about the other stars of this group.  In 1886 Mr. Roberts, by means of a photograph to which three hours’ exposure had been given, showed the whole background of this group to be nebulous.

In the following year Mr. Roberts more than doubled for us the great extension of the nebular region which surrounds the trapezium in the constellation of Orion.  By his photographs of the great nebula in Andromeda, he had shown the true significance of the dark canals which had been seen by the eye.  They were in reality spaces between successive rings of bright matter, which appeared nearly straight, owing to the inclination in which they lay relatively to us.  These bright rings surrounded an undefined central luminous mass.  Recent photographs by Mr. Russell showed that the great rift in the Milky Way in Argus, which to the eye was void of stars, was in reality uniformly covered with them.

THE STORY OF THE HEAVENS.

The heavens were richly but very irregularly inwrought with stars.  The brighter stars clustered into well known groups upon a background formed of an enlacement of streams and convoluted windings and intertwined spirals of fainter stars, which became richer and more intricate in the irregularly rifted zone of the Milky Way.  We, who formed part of the emblazonry, could only see the design distorted and confused; here crowded, there scattered, at another place superposed.  The groupings due to our position were mixed up with those which were real.  Could we suppose that each luminous point had no relation to the others near it than the accidental neighborship of grains of sand upon the shore, or of particles of the wind-blown dust of the desert?  Surely every star from Sirius and Vega down to each grain of the light dust of the Milky Way had its present place in the heavenly pattern from the slow evolving of its past.  We saw a system of systems, for the broad features of clusters and streams and spiral windings marking the general design were reproduced in every part.  The whole was in motion, each point shifting its position by miles every second, though from the august magnitude of their distances from us and from each other, it was only by the accumulated movements of years or of generations that some small changes of relative position revealed themselves.