Mona, or Anglesea, was the seat of the Druid or priestly class. EXERCISES.-I. Define,-Preceded, gradually, intentions, mus. tered, retreated, sacrifices, and ignorant. 2. Give a short account of Julius Cæsar's two invasions. 3. Compare the Ancient Britons with the modern English. I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays, I have been laughing, I have been carousing, I loved a love once, fairest among women; I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man : Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood. Seeking to find the old familiar faces. Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. CHARLES LAMB, one of the most open-hearted, genial, loving, and lovable of humorous writers, was born, lived, and died, in his favourite London. 1775-1834. To paraphrase an author is to accept his thoughts or ideas and put them into one's own language. The exercises will now occasionally call upon you to paraphrase some of the more simple pieces. You must first study very carefully what the author says,— sentence by sentence. Then treat those thoughts as if they were your very own, and put them into language so as to make another see them just as you do. If you think you can improve the order. of his thoughts you are at liberty to do so, but, as a rule, you will find it better not to do so. Merely to substitute a word here and there is not to paraphrase. EXAMPLE PARAPHRASE of three stanzas of last lesson. 1. During my childhood and afterwards in my happy school-days I had playmates and companions; but now I miss their well-remembered faces. They have all passed away. 2. Later in life I had old tried friends, with whom I used to sit and chat and drink; but these my chums are alike all gone. 3. No one ever had a better friend than I had, but suddenly without cause I gave him up, and he thought no doubt very sadly of his once familiar but now ungrateful friend. EXERCISES.-I. Define,-Familiar, abruptly, ghost-like, and de■ parted. 2. Paraphrase the fifth, sixth, and seventh stanzas. Parse the first stanza. THE HERSCHELS. Convex, rounded outwardly. Magnifying, making to appear larger. Diagram, an explanatory drawing. Diameter, the measure through Nebula, little clouds of stars. 3. Refracting, breaking out of a direct course. Speculum, a polished metal mir ror. Pecuniary, relating to money. Hemisphere, half a globe. Honorary, without pay. Unwieldy, too large for use. If the invention of the telescope may be said to have supplied a new and wide reaching sense, the establish ment of the principle of gravitation showed the way in which that sense could best employ its power. Hence, we find the century following that in which these great discoveries were made, was fruitful in astronomical revelations, by which the marvels of the heavens were gradually opened up to the gaze of all willing to learn. Of those who thus added to our knowledge, few, if any, rank higher than Sir William Herschel and his son Sir John Herschel. William Herschel was born at Hanover in 1738, that is, twelve years after the death of Sir Isaac Newton. His father was a musician, and young Herschel was educated for and followed the same pursuit, first at Hanover, and afterwards at Bath, in Somersetshire. It was not until 1770, when he was thirty-two years of age, that his attention was especially directed to Astronomy; but from that date the subject gradually won upon him, so that it became the main business of his long life. Recognising the telescope as the most effective instrument for gaining the wished-for knowledge, Herschel first set to work, with a perseverance that made success certain, to render this tool as efficient as he possibly could. We have already told you that the telescope as used by Galileo was a very simple instrument, consisting either of two convex lenses or one concave and one convex lens, fixed into a tube; and thus, the angle being increased under which distant objects were seen, the objects themselves appear larger. All instruments constructed upon this principle, whether consisting of one pair of lenses only, or of any larger number of the same kind, are known as refracting telescopes. Whatever magnifying power such instruments possessed, it was found that they had some serious defects, especially for astronomical purposes. Sir Isaac Newton had, with his usual industry and ingenuity, constructed an instrument known as the Newtonian telescope, by which a more perfect image of the object was obtained. The new principle was, that the rays of light from the object, instead of falling upon a transparent lens by which they were broken or refracted and sent forward, fell first upon a highly polished opaque mirror, or speculum, from which they were reflected, or sent back, upon a second speculum, whence they passed through the eye-glass to the observer. It was this latter instrument that our astronomer resolved to bring to the highest possible state of perfection. The following diagrams will, we trust, after the verbal explanations already given, enable the reader to understand the two sorts of telescopes just described. THE REFRACTING TELESCOPE. In this diagram, a b is any given object, the rays of light from which fall upon the object lens LL; passing through this lens, the rays are refracted and form a magnified image A B. But the effect of the eye-glass E E, through which this image is seen, is to make the object appear larger, as A'B'. B THE REFLECTING TELESCOPE. Here the rays from the object fall upon a concave reflector or mirror B B, an image is formed at its focus F, that image is again reflected by the concave mirror C C, and, passing through an opening in the large reflector, forms an image at I; this viewed through the lens E, gives a magnified image according to the reflectors and lenses used. SS shows an adjusting screw by means of which the small mirror is brought to the right distance from the large reflector. It is stated that Herschel made for one telescope two hundred specula, before he obtained what he thought to be the best mixture of metals, the best size and form, and the highest degree of polish of which they were capable. Having attained considerable skill in the manufacture of these specula, he then tried how far his instrument could be enlarged so as to increase its revealing power. With this view and with pecuniary assistance from King George III., Herschel constructed, at Slough, near Windsor, a telescope about forty feet in length, and four feet four inches in diameter. This noble instrument was completed and first used in 1787, but it was too unwieldy for constant use. It was with a seven |