ver the place where the
sun is."

M'Allister here asked me to tell him "What was supposed to be the actual
size of our sun, and how far it was away from the earth?"

I answered that "The sun is about 865,000 miles in diameter; and that he
would have some idea of what an immense body it is if he remembered that
it would require 64,000,000 globes the size of the moon to make one
globe the size of the sun! Yet, notwithstanding this immense size, our
sun is quite a small body as compared with some of the fixed stars,
which, as perhaps you may know, are really suns at an inconceivable
distance from us. The bright star Sirius, which is visible during our
winter time, is not only very much brighter in reality than our sun, but
must be many times larger; and there are others known to be very much
larger than Sirius. It has been computed that Arcturus is in mass
500,000 times as large as our sun!

"The sun revolves on its axis in a little over twenty-five days, but the
exact period of its revolution is difficult to determine. The mean
distance of the sun from the earth is about 92,800,000 miles. When we
are farthest from it its distance is 94,600,000 miles, and when nearest,
91,000,000 miles--these differences, of course, arising from the
eccentricity of the earth's orbit.

"The sun's density is only about one-fifth of the earth's density; so it
is evidently mainly gaseous--at all events in the outer envelopes.

"The spots upon the sun often cover such an immense area, that if our
earth were dropped into the cavity, it would be like placing a pea in a
teacup! Some of the spots entirely close up in a short time, but others
last for weeks."

We now turned from the sun and looked at the stars. Such a multitude
were visible as we had never seen from the earth; for small stars, which
there required a telescope to bring them into view, could now be plainly
seen without any such aid, and their various colours were seen much more
clearly. They all shone with a clear and steady light; the twinkling and
scintillation of the stars, as seen from the earth, being caused by the
vibrations and movements in our own atmosphere. We also saw many nebulae
without using a glass.

The Milky Way was a most gorgeous spectacle, and its beauty utterly
beyond description, as such an immense number of its component stars,
and their different colours, were visible to the unaided eye; besides,
we could trace wisps and branches of it to regions of the