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TALES.

AUNT ANNE,

81, 144, 199, 267, 330, 399, Mathematical Master's Love-Story, The
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Five Voices from an Old Music-Book,

Great Water-Cress Tragedy, The .

Like Father, Like Son, .

Little Napoleon of Caribou, The .

Old Roses,

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TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.

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Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

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Pretty robin, there's a maiden tall, and fair,
and rather stately,

With a voice as soft as yours is, dwelling
in that very cot,

And her tresses catch the sunbeams, though
she speaks and moves sedately,

And her eyes are just the color of a blue
forget-me-not.

Whisper, robin-can you tell me is she wan-
d'ring by the river,

Where the catkins clothe the willows and
the water-cresses grow?

Tell me robin, pretty robin, and I'll be your
debtor ever,

For her father does not love me, and so,
mind you, whisper low.
Chambers' Journal.

M. ROCK.

PAN IN THE ORCHARD.

HE carved a flute of elder green,
And notched it well and true,
Then pursed his lips and puffed his cheeks,
And merrily he blew.

For it was springtime holiday,

A sun-tanned boy was he,

"I will come," he said. Ah! Love, come With russet freckles on his face

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Oн, you pretty robin, keeping watch beside a lowly dwelling,

Where the happy sunshine rushes o'er the gorse bloom bright and gay, Where the blackbirds and the thrushes are their loud love-stories telling Do you know, I fancy, robin, you as sweetly sing as they.

Do you see that verdant meadow where the buttercups are growing,

Where the golden-hearted daisies twinkle 'mid the tender grass?

Do you mark the lights and shadows that the fleecy clouds are throwing,

As across the sky of azure they fantastically' pass?

Just above it there's a cottage, sheltered by the budding beeches,

Where the cherry bloom is scattered on the serried crocus lines

By the playful south wind's antics, where the glistening ivy reaches

To the red-tiled roof and chimneys where the green wisteria twines.

And a patch upon his knee.

The apple boughs above him flung
Their tangled sprays on high,
With one dark, bristly blue-jay nest
Rough-sketched against the sky.

He knew the secrets of the grass,
The burden of the hour,
He saw the fierce, bluff bumblebee
Touse many a clover flower.

Orphaned and poor as poor could be,
The years before him lay
Dark billows of an unknown sea,
No lighthouse on the way.
And yet, and yet his elder flute

Could bring him comfort true;
He pursed his lips and puffed his cheeks
And blew, and blew, and blew!
Maurice Thompson's "Poems.”

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From The Nineteenth Century.
RECENT SCIENCE.

I.

A BREATH of youthful energy and youthful hopes inspires modern astronomical work. 66 Astronomy, the oldest of the sciences, has more than renewed her youth," as William Huggins said at the end of the inaugural address he delivered before the last meeting of the British Association. Since the spectroscope, formerly used but to study and reveal the chemical composition of the celestial bodies, has become an instrument for measuring their unseen movements and for penetrating into the secrets of their history, and since photography has been taken as a necessary auxiliary by astron omers, a new chapter of astro-physics has been opened. The proper movements of the stars have acquired a new meaning;

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Still more interesting results have been obtained by H. C. Russell with his photographs of nebulæ in the constellation of Argus. His earlier photographs, obtained by a three-hours' exposure, have already been referred to with admiration by William Huggins in his address. But when the photographic film was exposed for eight hours to the faint light of the nebula, not only shows that the nebulous matter new facts were revealed. The photograph the faint masses of nebulous matter, scattered round and amidst the stars, have extends far beyond the limits assigned to become animated indications of the gene-servations at the Cape, while confirming it by Herschel during his memorable obsis of solar systems; and the great prob- at the same time the great accuracy of the lems relative to the life of the stellar description of what he did see; it also worlds their origin, their growth, their proves that the nebula has lived since decay, and their rejuvenescence have 1837, and has altered considerably its come again to the front, supported by renewed hopes as to the proximity of their aspect during the last fifty years. At the very same place where Herschel saw one of its brightest and most conspicuous parts, we have now a dark oval space, upon

ultimate solution.

It is not possible, indeed, to examine the splendid photographs, made by Mr. Roberts, of the nebula in Andromeda, and to see this whirlpool of luminous matter, divided into dark and bright rings surrounding a large, undefined central mass, without perceiving in it a gigantic solar system in the way of formation, and without concluding in favor of a similar origin,

on a much smaller scale, of our own solar
system. The best drawings of the same
nebula, which were made by Bond and
John Herschel with the aid of the best
telescopes, told nothing of the kind; the
complicated structure of the nebula, its
life, were missing in what was reproduced
by the pen of a cautious observer.
Again, in another part of the sky- the
the photographs of the Broth-
ers Henry show at once that this cluster
of suns is not an occasional gathering.
Streaks of nebulous matter, revealed by
photography, connect together the stars

Pleiades

which no trace of luminous matter can be detected. The matter either has been

drawn elsewhere, or is luminous no more; may be, it is passing through some stage preparatory to the appearance of a new star. We are thus convinced that these tic their dimensions, are living at a much accumulations of matter, however giganmore rapid speed than we were prepared to admit. Changes occur in them, even within the short limits of one man's life; and as the new star in Auriga, rapidly passing through a series of transforma

birth of new suns, so also we may hope that the study of the modifications of the nebula will initiate us into the secrets of the earlier stages of development of the

tions, reveals to us the secrets of the

stellar worlds. In the movements of those

• See an article by Mr. Norman Lockyer in LIVING AGE, No. 2497, p. 323.

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