de. Huggins and Miller eagerly studied the
star with the spectroscope, and their results were received with deepest
interest. They concluded that the light of the new star had two
different sources, each giving a spectrum peculiar to itself. One of the
spectra had dark lines and the other bright lines. It will be
remembered that a similar peculiarity was exhibited by the new star in
Auriga in 1893. But the star in Corona did not disappear. It diminished
to magnitude nine and a half or ten, and stopped there; and it is still
visible. In fact, subsequent examination proved that it had been
catalogued at Bonn as a star of magnitude nine and a half in 1855.
Consequently this "blaze star" of 1866 will bear watching in its
decrepitude. Nobody knows but that it may blaze again. Perhaps it is a
sun-like body; perhaps it bears little resemblance to a sun as we
understand such a thing. But whatever it may be, it has proved itself
capable of doing very extraordinary things.

We have no reason to suspect the sun of any latent eccentricities, like
those that have been displayed by "temporary" stars; yet, acting on the
principle which led the old emperor-astrologer Rudolph II to torment his
mind with self-made horoscopes of evil import, let us unscientifically
imagine that the sun _could_ suddenly burst out with several hundred
times its ordinary amount of heat and light, thereby putting us into a
proper condition for spectroscopic examination by curious astronomers in
distant worlds.

But no, after all, it is far pleasanter to keep within the strict
boundaries of science, and not imagine anything of the kind.

CHAPTER V

IN SUMMER STAR-LANDS

"I heard the trailing garments of the night
Sweep through her marble halls,
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
From the celestial walls."--H. W. LONGFELLOW.

In the soft air of a summer night, when fireflies are flashing their
lanterns over the fields, the stars do not sparkle and blaze like those
that pierce the frosty skies of winter. The light of Sirius, Aldebaran,
Rigel, and other midwinter brilliants possesses a certain gemlike
hardness and cutting quality, but Antares and Vega, the great summer
stars, and Arcturus, when he hangs westering in a July night, exhibit a
milder radiance, harmonizing with the character of the season. This
difference is, of course, atmospheric in origin, although it may be
partly subjective, depending upon the mental influences of t