During the present clear, cold spring nights the starry heavens are very beautiful. Jupiter, just below Castor and Pollux, is at his brightest, and very favourably situated for observation, his cloudy belts and bright diamond-point-like satellites being visible in an instrument of very moderate powers. If between nine and ten o'clock the reader will turn to the north-east, he will find a constellation pretty high up in the heavens, and consisting of five or six principal stars, none of them, however, of the first magnitude, opening towards the pole star in the form of a widely spread-out W. This constellation will be an object of more than usual interest during the present year. It is Cassiopeia, or The Lady in her Chair, the scene of a very startling and strange phenomenon in 1572, which, it has been asserted with some confidence, is not at all unlikely to be repeated in 1872. In 1572 a new star of great splendour appeared in Cassiopeia, occupying a place that had hitherto been blank. It was first observed on the 6th August, by Schuler, of Wittemburg, shortly after which it arrested the attention of the celebrated Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who watched its rapid increase of brilliancy night after night with the liveliest interest. Its magnitude at last rivalled, if it did not even exceed, that of Jupiter, with an effulgence equally bright and vivid. After shining with great splendour some time, and attracting the earnest gaze of the most distinguished astronomers of the period, its brilliancy began steadily to decline, changing its colour in a very remarkable manner as it became fainter and fainter, until finally it became invisible in March 1574, and has never been seen since. Sir John Herschel and other astronomers have suggested that its reappearance in 1872 is by no means an improbable event; and towards no constellation in the northern heavens, in consequence, will the observer's eye be so constantly turned throughout the present year as to Cassiopeia. The reappearance of such a star would be certain to give rise to the most startling theories. With the spectroscope in our possession, however, and the marvellous telescopic power at our command now-a-days, we could not fail to arrive at more intimate terms with such a stranger than was possible in the days of Tycho Brahe. The interest and excitement in the astronomical world in connection with the sudden burst of splendour in the star in Corona a year or two ago was very great, but would be still greater in the event of the reappearance of the long absent stranger in Cassiopeia. In the one case it was only a remarkable increase of light and lustre in the star already existent and visible; but the reappearance of a new orb in a spot blank and starless in the most powerful telescopes for three hundred years, would be almost equal to the sudden creation of a new sun. Here, by the way, good reader, if you are ambitious, is a chance for fame. Be but the