wards the station with
your money. When you did get there and asked for a ticket at the rate
of one hundred miles for a penny, do you think you would get any
change? No doubt some little time would be required to count the
money, but when it was counted the clerk would tell you that there was
not enough--that he must have nearly two hundred millions of pounds
more.

That will give some notion of the distance of the nearest star, and we
may multiply it by ten, by one hundred, and even by one thousand, and
still not attain to the distance of some of the more remote stars that
the telescope shows us.

On account of the immense distances of the stars we can only perceive
them to be mere points of light. We can never see a star to be a globe
with marks on it like the moon, or like one of the planets--in fact,
the better the telescope the smaller does the star seem, though, of
course, its brightness is increased with every addition to the
light-grasping power of the instrument.

The Brightness and Color of Stars.

Another point to be noticed is the arrangement of stars in classes,
according to their lustre. The brightest stars, of which there are
about twenty, are said to be of the first magnitude. Those just
inferior to the first magnitude are ranked as the second; and those
just lower than the second are estimated as the third; and so on. The
smallest points that your unaided eyes will show you are of about the
sixth magnitude. Then the telescope will reveal stars still fainter
and fainter, down to what we term the seventeenth or eighteenth
magnitudes, or even lower still. The number of stars of each magnitude
increases very much in the classes of small ones.

Most of the stars are white, but many are of a somewhat ruddy hue.
There are a few telescopic points which are intensely red, some
exhibit beautiful golden tints, while others are blue or green.

There are some curious stars which regularly change their brilliancy.
Let me try to illustrate the nature of these variables. Suppose that
you were looking at a street gas-lamp from a very long distance, so
that it seemed a little twinkling light; and suppose that some one was
preparing to turn the gas-cock up and down. Or, better still, imagine
a little machine which would act regularly so as to keep the light
first of all at its full brightness for two days and a half, and then
gradually turn it down until in three or four hours it declines to a
feeble glimmer. In