ness and gentleness gracefully bend to the ignorance of children, and assimilate most easily and happily with their soft and confiding natures. The child, in its early years especially, has no guardian like woman, and can therefore have no instructor like woman.

And, when we come to answer the next question, who have really devoted their best talents and most anxious care to the education of children, who have written the best books for and about children? We are thankful we again can answer-women. Thirty years ago, if we had been in existence then, we could not have answered thus. We should have been compelled to say, There are no books for children; these important members of the human family are destitute; this immense, valuable, and indefinitely fertile field, lies neglected and runs to waste. No seed has been sown there for the propitious skies to mature; the grain has yet to be deposited; the weeds are yet to be eradicated; both man and woman pass it by, and take their labour to other places, and think not of redeeming it, nor know that by care and culture it may be made to blossom like the rose, and fill the earth with its fruits. This we should at that time have been obliged to say. But now we can say, that those whose part and province it was to do this work, have done it, and done it well. We can point to the names of Barbauld and Edgeworth, Taylor and Hofland, and confidently ask where there are worthier. Men talk of eras in literature. The era of the two first named of those ladies, the era of the hymns for children and the Parent's Assistant, was a golden era, pure and bright, and full of riches, and deserving a rank among the most glorious dates of improvement. Since that time, labourers have been fast coming into the same field, and have worked it well; though we must still say that those who came first worked best. own country-women have been neither tardy in advancing to this delightful task, nor inefficient in their services. We believe that the best children's books which we have, and we have many which are excellent, are the composition of females; and if we felt ourselves at

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liberty to do so, we could repeat an honorable, and by no means scanty list of the names of those who have earned something better than mere reputation, by contributing to form the minds and hearts of our children. Those who are conscious that they belong to the catalogue, have little to ask of fame, and certainly nothing to receive from it half so valuable as that which they already possess the gratulations of their own hearts.

The department of juvenile literature, then, is almost entirely in female hands. Long may it remain there. Long, for the interests of virtue and the improvement of our kind, may it be in the heart of woman to nurture the growth, and watch over and direct the early puttingsforth of youthful intellect and feeling. While she retains the office, so delightful in itself, and so grave and momentous in its ends, and even adds to its beautiful dignity by the graceful and effectual manner in which she has hitherto performed its duties, she inspires us with an admiration of a deeper and more lasting, and we must also believe, more flattering character, than was the most glowing and romantic love of the days of chivalry. Talk not to us of chivalry, unless it be in poetry, and with the usual latitude and license of poetry. In truth and in prose, the most refined devotion of knighthood and chivalry is no more to be compared, in purity and elevation, to the sentiments which female excellence now commands, than are those fair ones who then presided at the great duels which we read of under the poetical name of tournaments, and who by their presence and plaudits animated the legalized and courtly slaughter, which was raging and struggling beneath them, to be compared to the females of our own time, who as beautiful, no doubt, and as accomplished as they, find it their more appropriate privilege and pleasure to stimulate the fresh powers of childhood to the competitions of knowledge and virtue, and to hold out the meed of approbation to the exertions of innocent and ingenuous minds.

CIRCLE OF THE SCIENCES, WITH SUITABLE REFLECTIONS.

ASTRONOMICAL SKETCHES.—NO. I.

ASTRONOMY is the most ancient, sublime, perfect, and useful science, that ever engaged the attention of the thinking part of mankind. It is a science that has occupied the understandings of the most wise and learned, in all ages of the world; and which is calculated to impress the mind with the most awful and lofty views of the wisdom, power, goodness, and majesty of the Almighty.

Whether we contemplate the magnitude, number, and situation of the heavenly bodies, or the mysterious laws by which they are governed and upheld, we are equally lost in astonishment. The Royal Psalmist has elegantly expressed his sentiments on this noble and majestic subject in the eighth and nineteenth Psalms: "O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who has set thy glory above the heavens !-When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and stars which thou hast ordained, what is man, that thou visitest him?—The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard: their line is gone through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world." Or, their voice is heard without speech or language;-they speak a universal and powerful language to the minds of intelligent beings, relative to the existence and perfections of Him who created all things, and who sustains all things by the word of his power.

These beautiful sentiments of the Psalmist are agreeable to the conclusion which the wise and good of all nations have made from God's works, particularly from those of the heavens. "Men," says Plutarch, began to acknowledge a God, when they saw the stars maintain so great harmony, and the days and nights

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through all the year, both in summer and winter, to observe their stated risings and settings. "What," says Tully, "can be so plain and clear, as when we behold the heavens and view the heavenly bodies, that we should conclude there is some Deity of a most excellent mind, by which these things are governed? a present and Almighty God, which he that doubts of, I do not understand why he should not as well doubt whether or not there be a sun that shines." Thus, it is clear that his invisible perfections are manifested by his visible works, and may be apprehended by what he has made. The immensity of God's works shows his omnipotence; their vast variety and contrivance, his omniscience; and their adaptation to the most beneficent purposes, his infinite goodness.

The glorious works of God display his infinite perfections. For what power less than infinite could produce those wonderful bodies which the heavens present to our view? What architect could build such vast masses, and in such innumerable multitudes, as the heavens contain? What mathematician could so exactly adjust their distances? What mechanic so nicely adapt their motions, and so well contrive their figures, as in the very best manner to secure their own conservation, and the benefit and convenience of each other? What philosopher could communicate to every globe, and to every particle of matter in every globe, a power of such absolute necessity to its preservation as that of gravity? What chymist could ever have contrived such noble apparatus for light and heat as are the sun, the moon, and the stars? None could have done these things but God!

The most beautiful object which the heavens present to our view, is the Sun; the medium of light and animation to this lower world. This glorious luminary is placed nearly in the centre of the orbits of all the planets, which revolve around him in different periods and different distances.

It was for ages the opinion of astronomers, that the Sun was a mass of fire: and this opinion appears very plausible; as he diffuses light and heat throughout the

whole planetary system. But since the invention of the telescope, dark spots have been frequently observed upon his disc. These spots are of various magnitudes; some, it is computed, being large enough, to cover the continents of Asia and Africa; others, the whole surface of the earth; and others, even five times its surface. Their number also, is, to appearance, perpetually changing: sometimes many are visible; sometimes very few; and sometimes none at all: for as the Sun revolves on his axis, the spots are carried round from east to west, and the same phase is presented only once in twenty-five days, fourteen hours, and eight minutes, the time in which he performs a complete revolution.

Dr. Herschel imagined that these dark spots on the Sun, are mountains upon its surface. He says, that in August, 1792, he examined the Sun with telescopes of several powers, from ninety to five hundred, and it evidently appeared that the dark spots are the opaque ground, or body of the Sun; and that the luminous part is an atmosphere, which, being interrupted or broken, gives us a view of the Sun itself. Hence he concludes, that the Sun has a very extensive atmosphere, which consists of elastic fluids that are more or less lucid and transparent; and of which the lucid ones furnish us with light and heat. It appears, from these observations, that the body of the Sun is opaque, like our earth and the planets. And this opinion seems much more rational than the former, which supposed this luminary to be pure fire. For, on the supposition that the Sun is a body of fire, it must, of course, have been wasting its light and heat ever since its creation; and would, in process of time, become extinct; or, at least, useless, as to the purposes for which it was created. But, if we suppose the body of the Sun to be opaque, and consequently solid, we discover in it the principles of duration.

The dimensions of this globe of light, are truly astonishing. Its diameter is 883,243 miles; which is nearly twice the diameter of the Moon's orbit. And as spheres are to each other as the cubes of their dia