A great many charming descriptions have been worked up, with Saturn as with Jupiter, respecting the magnificent appearance of the eight radiant moons, joined to the glorious shining of the rings, as quite making up for the diminished light and heat of the sun. But here again comes in the doubt, whether really it is the moons who make up to Saturn for lack of light, or whether it is Saturn who makes up to the moons for lack of light. Certainly, Saturn’s cloudy covering would a little interfere with observations of the moons by any inhabitants of the solid body within--supposing there be any solid body at all. And though it sounds very wonderful to have eight moons instead of one moon, yet all the eight together give Saturn only a very small part of the light which we receive from our one full moon--so much more dimly does the sun light them up at that enormous distance. The same thing has been noticed with Saturn as with Jupiter--that he seems to shine more brightly than is to be expected in his position, from mere reflection of the sun’s rays. A glowing body within, sending a certain amount of added light through or between the masses of clouds, would explain away this difficulty. One more possible proof of Saturn’s half-liquid state is to be found in his occasional very odd changes of shape. Astronomers have been startled by a peculiar bulging out on one side, taking off from his roundness, and giving a square-shouldered aspect. We may not say it is quite impossible that a solid globe should undergo such tremendous upheavals and outbursts as to raise a great portion of its surface five or six hundred miles above the usual level--the change being visible at a distance of eight hundred millions of miles. But it would be easier to understand the possibility of such an event, in the case of a liquid, seething mass, than in the case of a solid ball. On the other hand this alteration of outline may be caused simply by a great upheaval not of the planet’s surface, but of the overhanging layers of clouds. Some such changes, only much slighter, have been remarked in Jupiter. And now as to the rings. Nothing like them is to be seen elsewhere in the Solar System. They are believed to be three in number; though some would divide them into more than three. Passing completely round the whole body of Saturn, they rise, one beyond another, to a height of many thousands of miles. The inner edge of the inner ring--an edge perhaps one hundred miles in thickness--is more than ten thousand miles from the surface of Saturn or more strictly speaking, from the outer surface of Saturn’s cloudy envelope. A man standing exactly on the equator and looking up, even if no clouds came between, would scarcely be able to see such a slender dark line at such a height.