The writer’s only real excuse for appearing again in this particular field is that he has never yet finished a book, and seen it go forth, without feeling that he had overlooked, or cast aside, or of necessity omitted a multitude of things quite as interesting and important as any he had touched upon. Accordingly, he yields once more to the lure of this inexhaustible and illimitable subject, and strives again to find expression for the thoughts which it continually awakens, and to exhibit, however imperfectly, the endless procession of marvels which stream before him who knows and loves the stars like a dazzling _rivière_ of brilliants. This book in no way duplicates another work of the same hand, _Astronomy with the Naked Eye_. In _that_ the effort was to revive the romance of the constellations by retelling their fascinating history, their mythology, their immemorial legends and traditions, and indicating their poetic background in the presence of the imaginary figures which, “from times of which the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” have been associated with them; in _this_ the writer tries to draw the reader into more intimate relations with the stars by dwelling upon their individual peculiarities and beauties, and the impressions which either singly or in constellated groups they make upon the mind of the beholder. Surely there is not another field of human contemplation so wondrously rich as astronomy! It is so easy to reach, so responsive to every mood, so stimulating, uplifting, abstracting, and infinitely consoling. Everybody may not be a chemist, a geologist, a mathematician, but everybody may be and ought to be, in a modest, personal way, an astronomer, for star-gazing is a great medicine of the soul. There is the writer’s text. INTRODUCTION The charts illustrating this book have been drawn by the writer especially to meet the needs of beginners--of those who, feeling what a void in their intellectual life ignorance of the stars has created, would now fill that void, and thus round out their spiritual being with some knowledge of Nature on her most majestic and yet most beautiful and winning side.