We have been thinking a good deal about single stars and double stars, as seen from earth. Now we have to turn our attention to groups, clusters, _masses_ of stars, in the far regions of space. Have you ever noticed on a winter night, when the sky was clear and dotted with twinkling stars, a band of faintly-glimmering light stretching across the heavens from one horizon to the other? The band is irregular in shape, sometimes broader, sometimes narrower; here more bright, there more dim. If you were in the Southern Hemisphere you would see the same soft belt of light passing all across the southern heavens. This band or belt is called the Milky Way. But what is the Milky Way? It is made up of stars. So much we know. As the astronomer turns his telescope to the zone of faintly-gleaming light, he finds stars appearing behind stars in countless multitudes; and the stronger his telescope, the more the white light changes into distant stars. Our sun we believe to be one of the stars of the Milky Way; merely one star among millions of stars; merely one golden grain among the millions of sparkling gold-dust grains scattered lavishly through creation. Scattered, not recklessly, not by chance, but placed, arranged, and guided each by its Maker’s upholding hand. The Milky Way, or the Galaxy, as it has been called, has great interest for astronomers. Many have been the attempts made to discover its actual size, its real shape, how many stars it contains, how far it extends; but to all such questions the only safe answers to be returned are fenced around with “perhaps” and “may be.” There are many very remarkable clusters of stars to be seen in the heavens--some few visible as faint spots of light to the naked eye, though the greater number are only to be seen through a telescope. Either with the naked eye, or in telescopes of varying power, they show first as mere glimmers of light, which, viewed with a more powerful telescope, separate into clusters of distant stars. [Illustration: A CLUSTER OF STARS IN CENTAURUS.] The most common shape of these clusters is globular--to the eye appearing simply round. Stars gather densely near the center, and gradually open out to a thin scattering about the edge. Thousands of suns are often thus collected into one cluster. The clusters are to be seen in all parts of the sky; but the greater number seem to be gathered into the space covered by the Milky Way and by the famous south Magellanic Clouds. Some of them are beautifully colored; as, for instance, a cluster in Toucan, not visible from England, the center of which is rose-colored, bordered with white. No doubt it contains a large number of bright red suns, surrounded by a scattering of white suns.