Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/221

 trajectile force, leaping the voids of the universe, and anticipating in some degree, powers not yet granted to the human spirit.

A further exercise will be, with a careful regard to the facts of the case, and which a moderate acquaintance with science supplies, to carry the young spectator out to the moon, and to aid him, by descriptions and representations, in imagining the magnificent appearance of the EARTH, as thence seenwith her visibly quick revolution, her nebulous streaks, her snowy poles, her sombre ocean expanses, and the blotches that mark her volcanos. This is an exercise essentially differing from that lately spoken of, (p. 205,) in regard to the earth.

The mind has advanced some way beyond its mere perceptions when it has clearly discerned the sun’s globosity, which is a much less apparent fact than that the moon is a sphere. But the telescope, with its stained eye-glass, affords us the aid we need for this purpose, first by shearing the dazzling orb of its superfluous beams, so that it may be steadily looked at; and next, by discovering the spots, which do this, by showing a perspective, as they approach the verge, and by their curvilinear path across the disc, parallel to the sun’s equator, as observed several successive days. By these means the sun’s real figure offers itself, if not to the eye, yet to the mind, and a surprising accession of conceptive power results from so simple an advance as this. In truth the teacher will find, in a hundred instances, that, to embolden the conceptive faculty has the effect, beyond what he might have supposed, of invigorating, not this faculty alone but every other.

The solar spots should, in like manner, be looked into, so as to carry the mind through the phosphorescent atmosphere, or strata of fiery tempests, and land it upon the terra firma, beneath. To aid this operation, let a wooden