Having fixed the location and general appearance of all these constellations in the mind, you are prepared to study them, and their stars, in more detail. Let us begin in the east. For some occult reason the rising stars always seem more attractive than those that are near setting. In the east, then, the eye is at once drawn to the beautiful Spica, which the impassive, immemorial Virgo wears as her only ornament. It is a fascinating star with its pure white rays, dashed with swift gleams of exquisite color as the atmospheric waves roll over it. There is not another equal to it in the impression of purity which it gives. We may imagine that some dim sense of this immaculate quality in the light of Spica led to the naming of the constellation the “Virgin,” thus called by nearly all peoples, each in its own language: Παρθέυος, Kóρη, Puella, Kauni, She-Sang-Neu, Pucella, Vièrge, Mæden, Jungfrau, Virgine—all, ancient and modern, Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese, Norman, French, Anglo-Saxon, German, Italian, and English worshipping together at this shrine of ideal purity. If the Assyrians made her the wife of Bel that was hardly a disparagement, for Bel was the sun. So, too, the identification of Virgo with the Greek Persephone, the Roman Ceres, and the Jewish Bethula, all goddesses concerned with the harvest and the fertility of the land, in no way detracted from her virginal character, nor did her association with Astræa, the goddess of justice.

Beside Spica, Virgo has no very bright stars, and it is hardly doubtful that the imaginary purity ascribed to the constellation was derived entirely from the unsullied whiteness of Spica. While gazing at that beautiful star all of these associations, coming from times so remote and peoples so distant, crowd into the mind, increasing the interest with which one regards it. The nations who named it the vernal star, before all others, have gone the way of terrestrial things, but the star remains, as pearly fair as when Aratus sang to it:

“Lo, the Virgin!...
Her favor be upon us!”

Then science comes to carry the thoughts to grander, if less romantic, heights. Spica, it tells us, is a sun which might well claim to be included in Newcomb’s wonderful “XM” class—i. e., stars excelling our sun at least ten thousand times in splendor, for, notwithstanding the brilliance with which it delights us, it is so remote that no certain estimate of its distance can be made, its parallax escaping measurement—what, then, must be the intolerable blaze with which it illumines its immediate neighborhood! But when Science begins her revelations no man can foretell the wonders that she will discover. The spectroscope avers that Spica is speeding hitherward at a pace of more than 32,000 miles per hour! Each night that star is almost 700,000 miles nearer than it was the night before, and yet it is not perceptibly brighter than it was in the days of Homer. Such are the star depths! Such is the measureless playground of the spinning suns! Then Science, inspired by its spectroscopic sibyl, whispers another startling word in our ears: That core of white fire glowing so softly in the vernal midnight has an invisible companion star, with which it circles in an orbit 6,000,000 miles in diameter, and every four days they complete a swing in their mighty waltz!

The star Epsilon (ε) in Virgo (see [Chart VII], at the end of the book) is Vindemiatrix, the “Grape-gatherer,” thus named from some imagined association with the vintage. Mukdim-al-Kitaf, “The Forerunner of the Vintage,” the Arabs called it, taking their hint from the Greeks before them. Admiral Smyth, in his Cycle of Celestial Objects, has these curious lines on this star:

“Would you the Star of Bacchus find on noble Virgo’s wing,
A lengthy ray from Hydra’s heart unto Arcturus bring;
Two-thirds along that fancied line direct th’ inquiring eye,
And there the jewel will be seen, south of Cor Caroli.”

The reader may be interested in trying the star-loving admiral’s plan for finding Vindemiatrix.

Gamma (γ) is Porrima, a prophetic goddess of ancient Latium, consulted especially by the women. But for us this star is most interesting as being one of the first binaries discovered in the heavens. It is a charming object for a small telescope. The two components revolve round their common centre of gravity in a period of about one hundred and eighty years.

As the reader progresses in his studies he will find Virgo full of interesting objects, including the celebrated “Field of the Nebulæ,” marked out by the stars Beta (β), Gamma (γ), Delta (δ), Epsilon (ε), and Eta (η); but to see the nebulæ, which are thickly scattered there, he must have a powerful telescope.

Southwest of Virgo, but near the southeastern horizon, the quadrilateral figure of the constellation Corvus, the “Crow,” catches the eye. Its brightest star is of less than the second magnitude, yet by their apparent association the four stars immediately attract attention. One sees no special reason why the figures marked out by these stars should be likened to the form of a bird; but it was a raven to both the Greeks and the Romans, and similarly symbolical to other early peoples. The Arabs, however, at first called it the “Tent,” a designation which at least had a real resemblance for its basis. But these stars possess a charm independent of any fancied likeness to terrestrial things. In looking at them we do not think of the billions of miles which actually separate them from each other, but only of their seeming companionship. If, on the other hand, we force ourselves to consider the immense distances between them the mind is overwhelmed with the reflection that here, plainly staked out before us, is a field of space of absolutely unthinkable magnitude with its angles as clearly marked as if a celestial surveyor had placed corner-stones there. Note that the star Alpha (α), once the leader of the constellation in brightness as well as in alphabetical rank, is now so faint that you have to look for it where it shrinks, in half concealment, below one of its now brighter neighbors. These abasements are not very uncommon among the stars. Their glory, too, is mutable; they also have their ups and downs. The Arabic name for Alpha (α) was Al Chiba, or Al Hiba, meaning the “Tent.” Gamma (γ), now the brightest star of the constellation, was called Gienah, the “Wing,” and Delta (δ), Algorab, or Al Ghurab, the Arabic name for “Raven,” but Beta (β), which is perhaps as bright as Gamma (γ), has no special designation.