but there are not a few others which no one ever saw in a telescope, which apparently no one ever could see, though the photograph is able to show them.  We do not, however, employ a camera like that which the photographer uses who is going to take your portrait.  The astronomer’s plate is put into his telescope, and then the telescope is turned towards the sky.  On that plate the stars produce their images, each by its own light.  Some of these images are excessively faint, but we give a very long exposure of an hour or two hours; sometimes as much as four hours’ exposure is given to a plate so sensitive that a mere fraction of a second would sufficiently expose it during the ordinary practice of taking a photograph in daylight.  We thus afford sufficient time to enable the fainter objects to indicate their presence upon the sensitive film.  Even with an exposure of a single hour a picture exhibiting sixteen thousand stars has been taken by Mr. Isaac Roberts, of Liverpool.  Yet the portion of the sky which it represents is only one ten-thousandth part of the entire heavens.  It should be added that the region which Mr. Roberts has photographed is furnished with stars in rather exceptional profusion.

Here, at last, we have obtained some conception of the sublime scale on which the stellar universe is constructed.  Yet even these plates cannot represent all the stars that the heavens contain.  We have every reason for knowing that with larger telescopes, with more sensitive plates, with more prolonged exposures, ever fresh myriads of stars will be brought within our view.

You must remember that every one of these stars is truly a sun, a lamp, as it were, which doubtless gives light to other objects in its neighborhood as our sun sheds light upon this earth and the other planets.  In fact, to realize the glories of the heavens you should try to think that the brilliant points you see are merely the luminous points of the otherwise invisible universe.

Standing one fine night on the deck of a Cunarder we passed in open ocean another great Atlantic steamer.  The vessel was near enough for us to see not only the light from the mast-head but also the little beams from the several cabin ports; and we could see nothing of the ship herself.  Her very existence was only known to us by the twinkle of these lights.  Doubtless her passengers could see, and did see, the similar lights from our own vessel, and they probably drew the correct inference that these lights indicated a great ship.

Consider the multiplicity of beings and objects in a ship:  the captain and the crew, the passengers, the cabins, the engines, the boats, the rigging, and the stores.  Think of all the varied interests there collected and then reflect that out on the ocean, at night, the sole indication of the existence of this elaborate structure was given by the few beams of light that happened to radiate from it.  Now raise your eyes to the stars; there are the twinkling