With what grand and majestic steps, he says, it moves forward in its eternal circle, following among the stars its regal way in a slow and silent splendour! Mighty creation, I salute thee! I love to see thee wandering in the shining paths like a giant proud of his strong girdle--severe, indefatigable, resolved--whose feet never lag in the road which lies before them. Other tribes abandon their nocturnal course and rest their weary orbs under the waves; but thou, thou never closest thy burning eyes, and never suspendest thy determined steps. Forward, ever forward! While systems change, and suns retire, and worlds fall to sleep and awake again, thou pursuest thy endless march. The near horizon attempts to check thee, but in vain. A watchful sentinel, thou never quittest thy age-long duty; but, without allowing thyself to be surprised by sleep, thou guardest the fixed light of the universe, and preventest the north from ever forgetting its place. Seven stars dwell in that shining company; the eye embraces them all at a single glance; their distances from one another, however, are not less than the distance of each from Earth. And this again is the reciprocal distance of the celestial centres or foci. From depths of heaven, unexplored by thought, the piercing rays dart across the void, revealing to our senses innumerable worlds and systems. Let us arm our vision with the telescope, and let us survey the firmament. The skies open wide; a shower of sparkling fires descends upon our head; the stars close up their ranks, are condensed in regions so remote that their swift rays (swifter than aught else in creation) must travel for centuries before they can reach our Earth. Earth, sun, and ye constellations, what are ye among this infinite immensity and the multitude of the Divine works! If we face towards the Pole-Star, which, as we have seen, preserves its place in the centre of the northern region of the sky, we have the south behind us, the east is on our right, the west upon our left. All the stars revolving round the Pole-Star, from right to left, should be recognized according to their mutual relations rather than referred to the cardinal points. On the other side of Polaris, as compared with the Great Bear, we find another constellation which is easily recognized. If from the central star δ we carry a line to the Pole, and then prolong it for an equal distance, we traverse the constellation of _Cassiopeia_, composed of five stars of the third magnitude, disposed somewhat like the outer jambs of the letter M. The small star χ, terminating the square, gives it also the form of a chair. This group occupies every possible situation in revolving round the Pole, being at one time above it, at another below, now on the left, and then on the right; but it is always readily found, because, like _Ursa Major_, to which it is invariably opposite, it never sets. The Pole-Star is the axle round which these two constellations revolve.