Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/527

Rh 

 In Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice we read:

Sir John Suckling says:

In Milton's Paradise Lost there is this beautiful reference to the Galaxy:

Longfellow thus alludes to the Milky Way in Hiawatha:

When Galileo directed his newly invented telescope at the Galaxy the mystery of its composition was solved. Myriads of stars strewed the fields as he swept over the misty belt, their blended light causing the white effect the unaided eye reveals.

Allen thus sums up our present knowledge of this remarkable object

"It covers more than one tenth of the visible heavens, containing more than nine tenths of the visible stars, and 