anks
have in that atmosphere a distinctness and a glory unseen with us.
Perhaps no scene of beauty in the visible creation has proved a more
hackneyed theme for the poet and the philosopher than a starry night.
But not all the superabundance of simile and moral illustration with
which the subject has been loaded can rob the beholder of the freshness
of its grandeur or the force of its teaching; that noblest and most
majestic vision of the handiwork of GOD on which the eye of man is here
permitted to rest.

As the parson gazed he became conscious that he was not alone. Other
eyes besides his were watching the skies to-night. Dark, profound,
patient, Eastern eyes, used from the cradle to the grave to watch and
wait. The eyes of star-gazers and dream-interpreters; men who believed
the fate of empires to be written in shining characters on the face of
heaven, as the "Mene, Mene," was written in fire on the walls of the
Babylonian palace. The old parson was one of the many men of real
learning and wide reading who pursue their studies in the quiet country
parishes of England, and it was with the keen interest of intelligence
that he watched the group of figures that lay near him.

"Is this a vision of the past?" he asked himself. "There can be no
doubt as to these men. They are star-gazers, magi, and, from their
dress and bearing, men of high rank; perhaps 'teachers of a higher
wisdom' in one of the purest philosophies of the old heathen world.
When one thinks," he pursued, "of the intense interest, the eager
excitement which the student of history finds in the narrative of the
past as unfolded in dusty records written by the hand of man, one may
realize how absorbing must have been that science which professed to
unveil the future, and to display to the eyes of the wise the fate of
dynasties written with the finger of GOD amid the stars."

The dark-robed figures were so still that they might almost have been
carved in stone. The air seemed to grow purer and purer; the stars
shone brighter and brighter; suspended in ether the planets seemed to
hang like lamps. Now a shooting meteor passed athwart the sky, and
vanished behind the hill. But not for this did the watchers move; in
silence they watched on--till, on a sudden, how and whence the parson
knew not, across the shining ranks of that immeasurable host, whose
names and number are known to GOD alone, there passed in slow but
obvious motion one brilliant solitary star--a