Off indeed! and where? The world must have been amazed that day to see the sun rise like a rocket and go dashing about the sky, north, south, east, west--anywhere, nowhere, everywhere! Well the horses knew that it was not Apollo, their master, who plied the whip and held the reins. They took their bits between their teeth, and--bolted. They kicked a planet to bits (astronomers know where the pieces are still): they broke holes in the chariot, which we can see, and call "sun-spots," to this day: it was as if chaos were come again. At last, Phaëthon, whose own head was reeling, saw to his horror that the horses, in their mad rush, were getting nearer and nearer to the earth itself--and what would happen then? If the wheels touched the globe we live on, it would be scorched to a cinder. Nearer, nearer, nearer it came--till a last wild kick broke the traces, overturned the sun itself, and Phaëthon fell, and fell, and fell, till he fell into the sea, and was drowned. And then the horses trotted quietly home. * * * * * The story of Phaëthon is always taken as a warning against being conceited and self-willed. But there are some curious things about it still to be told. The Greeks fancied that the great desert of Sahara, in Africa, is the place where the earth was scorched by the sun's chariot-wheel, and that the African negroes were burned black in the same way, and have never got white again. And the poplars are Phaëthon's sisters, who wept themselves for his death into trees. DIANA; AND THE STORY OF ORION. You know that the fixed stars are divided into groups, called constellations. A name has been given to every constellation; and each is supposed to be like the shape of some creature or thing--such as the Great Bear, the Swan, the Cup, the Eagle, the Dragon, and so on. Most of their names were given by the Greeks, who fancied they could see in them the shapes after which they were named. We have kept the old names, and still paint the supposed figure of each constellation on the celestial globe, which is the image or map of the sky. Now the grandest, brightest, and largest of all the constellations is named Orion. It is supposed to represent a giant, with a girdle and a sword, and is rather more like what is fancied than most of the constellations are. You are now going to read the story of Orion, and how he came to be placed among the stars. You may notice, by the way, that the planets, the sun, and the moon are named after gods and goddesses; the fixed stars after mortals who were raised to the skies. There was once a man named Hyrieus, whose wife died, and he loved her so much, and was so overcome with grief that he vowed never to marry again. But she left him no children. And when, in course of time, he grew old, he sadly felt the want of sons and daughters to make his old age less hard and lonely.