A brief explanation of a few terms will make the principles of world inspection easily understood. Imagine a perfect circle thirty feet in diameter—that is, create one (Fig. 19). Draw through it a diameter horizontally, another
Fig. 19. perpendicularly. The angles made by the intersecting lines are each said to be ninety degrees, marked thus °. The arc of a circle included between any two of the lines is also 90°. Every circle, great or small, is divided into these 360°. If the sun rose in the east and came to the zenith at noon, it would have passed 90°. When it set in the west it would have traversed half the circle, or 180°. In Fig. 20 the angle of the lines measured on the graduated arc is 10°. The mountain is 10° high, the world 10° in diameter, the comet moves 10° a day, the stars are 10° apart. The height of the mountain, the diameter of the world, the velocity of the comet, and the distance between the stars, depend on the distance of each from the point of sight. Every degree is divided into 60 minutes (marked '), and every minute into 60 seconds (marked ").
Fig. 20.—Illustration of Angles.
Imagine yourself inside a perfect sphere one hundred feet in diameter, with the interior surface above, around, and below studded with fixed bright points like stars. The familiar constellations of night might be blazoned there in due proportion.
If this star-sprent sphere were made to revolve once in twenty-four hours, all the stars would successively pass in review. How easily we could measure distances between stars, from a certain fixed meridian, or the equator! How easily we could tell when any particular star would culminate! It is as easy to take all these measurements when our earthly observatory is steadily revolved within the sphere of circumambient stars. Stars can be mapped as readily as the streets of a great city. Looking down on it in the night, one could trace the lines of lighted streets, and judge something of its extent and regularity. But the few lamps of evening would suggest little of the greatness of the public buildings, the magnificent enterprise and commerce of its citizens, or the intelligence of its scholars. Looking up to the lamps of the celestial city, one can judge something of its extent and regularity; but they suggest little of the magnificence of the many mansions.
Stars are reckoned as so many degrees, minutes, and seconds from each other, from the zenith, or from a given meridian, or from the equator. Thus the stars called the Pointers, in the Great Bear, are 5° apart; the nearest one is 29° from the Pole Star, which is 39° 56' 29" above the horizon at Philadelphia. In going to England you creep up toward the north end of the earth, till the Pole Star is 54° high. It stays near its place among the stars continually,
"Of whose true-fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament."