This dark, transparent ring, described sometimes as dusky, sometimes as richly purple, rises upwards to a height or breadth of nine thousand miles. Closely following it is a ring more brilliant than Saturn himself, over eighteen thousand miles in breadth. When astronomers talk of the “breadth” of these rings, it must be understood that they mean the width of the band measured _upwards_, in a direction away from the planet. Beyond the broad, bright ring is a gap of about one thousand seven hundred miles. Then follows the third ring, ten thousand miles in breadth; its outermost edge being at a height of more than forty-eight thousand miles from Saturn. The color of the third ring is grayish, much like the gray markings often seen on Saturn. What would not be our admiration, our astonishment, our stupor perhaps, if it were granted us to be transported there alive, and, among all these extra-terrestrial spectacles, to contemplate the strange aspect of the rings, which stretch across the sky like a bridge suspended in the heights of the firmament! Suppose we lived on the Saturnian equator itself, these rings would appear to us as a thin line drawn across the sky above our heads, and passing exactly through the zenith, rising from the east and increasing in width, then descending to the west and diminishing according to perspective. Only there have we the rings precisely in the zenith. The traveler who journeys from the equator towards either pole leaves the plane of the rings, and these sink imperceptibly, at the same time that the two extremities cease to appear diametrically opposite, and by degrees approach each other. What an amazing effect would be produced by this gigantic arch, which springs from the horizon and spans the sky! The celestial arch diminishes in height as we approach the pole. When we reach the sixty-third degree of latitude the summit of the arch has descended to the level of our horizon and the marvelous system disappears from the sky; so that the inhabitants of those regions know nothing of it, and find themselves in a less favorable position to study their own world than we, who are nearly 800,000,000 miles distant. During one-half of the Saturnian year the rings afford an admirable moonlight on one hemisphere of the planet, and during the other half they illuminate the other hemisphere; but there is always a half-year without “ringlight,” since the sun illuminates but one face at a time. Notwithstanding their volume and number, the satellites do not give as much nocturnal light as might be supposed; for they receive, on an equal surface, only the ninetieth part of the solar light which our moon receives. All the Saturnian satellites which can be at the same time above the horizon and as near as possible to the full phase do not afford more than the hundredth part of our lunar light. But the result may be nearly the same, for the optic nerve of the Saturnians may be ninety times more sensitive than ours.