Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/223

 you!Where? how?Look at the moon: the measurement from tip to tip of her horns, is 2160 miles. But we may see, at once, much greater distances than this. Just as the sun is setting, look from the point of the horizon where he disappears, to Venus, who is now at her greatest elongation: there then is a distance of sixty-eight millions of miles spread before you! just as the three miles, between the farm-house and the mill, is also extended.

This sort of exercise is easily diversified by reference to the other celestial bodies: and so, by the aid of vivid verbal descriptions, well-constructed drawings, and the telescope, the minds of young persons may be used to the pathways of the heavens, and be made familiar with the scenes of wonder which strict science (fancy apart,) leads us to attribute to the surfaces of Jupiter and of Saturn; and thence, onward, to the stellar systems. We thus, at once, occupy the mind with the stupendous facts of astronomy, before its technical elements are meddled with; we engage the purest tastes, and impart, by use, a vigour to the Conceptive Faculty, such as promotes general mental superiority and intellectual power.

If a good telescope be at command, and if, by frequent and progressive conversations, the minds of children have been prepared to look at what is shown them with a grasp of thought, a sudden view of the Pleiades, or, if the instrument allows it, of some of the stellar nebulæ, will be found to produce a powerful impression on their imaginations. And in conducting this sort of exercise, two purposes are to be kept in view, and to be blended; the first is that of familiarizing a little the stupendous magnitudes and distances of the visible universe; and the other is that of founding, upon such familiarized conceptions, those elevated emotions which favour the religious sentiments. Not only are these two purposes separately important, but