As for that difficulty of the first twenty miles, it is not impossible to make a flying chariot and give it motion through the air. If possible, it can be made large enough to carry men and stores, for size is nothing if the motive faculty be answerable thereto—the great ship swims as well as the small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. Indeed, we might have regular Great Eastern packets plying between London and No Gravitation Point, to which they might take up houses, cattle, and all stores found necessary to the gradual construction of a town upon the borders of the over-ether route to any of the planets. Stations could be established, if necessary, along the routes to the moon, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and the rest of the new places of resort; some London society could create and endow a new Bishop of Jupiter; and daring travellers would bring us home their journals of a Day in Saturn, or Ten Weeks in Mars, while sportsmen might make parties for the hippogriff shooting in Mercury, or bag chimeras on the mountains of the moon.
Well, in whatever way we may get there, we are off now for a stroll to Saturn, with Mr. R. A. Proctor for comrade and cicerone, but turning a deaf ear to him whenever, as often occurs, he is too learned for us, and asks us to "let N P' P" N' represent the northern half of Saturn's orbit (viewed in perspective), n E n' E' the earth's orbit, and N p p' p" N' the projection of Saturn's orbit on the plane of the earth's orbit. Let N S N' be the line of Saturn's nodes on this plane, and let S P' be at right angles to N S, N', so that when at P' Saturn is at his greatest distance from the ecliptic on the northern side." When of such things we are asked to let them be, we let them be, and are, in the denseness of our ignorance, only too glad to be allowed, not to say asked, to do so. We attend only, like most of our neighbors, to what is easy to us. Sun is gold, and moon is silver; Mars is iron. Mercury quicksilver, which we, in fact, rather like still to call Mercury, thinking nothing at all of the imprisoned god with the winged heels when we ask how is the mercury in the thermometer. Jove is tin; yes, by Jove, tin is the chief among the gods, says little Swizzles, who, by a miracle, remembers one thing that he learnt at school—Jove's chieftainship among the heathen deities. Venus is copper, for the Cyprian is Cuprian; and as for Saturn, he is lead. A miserable old fellow they made Saturn out in the days of the star-decipherers. Mine, Chaucer makes Saturn say, is the drowning in wan waters, the dark prison, the strangling and hanging, murmur of discontent, and the rebellion of churls. I am the poisoner and the house-breaker, I topple down the high halls, and make towers fall upon their builders, earth upon its miners. I sent the temple roof down upon Samson. I give you all your treasons, and your cold diseases, and your pestilences. This is the sort of estimation in which our forefathers held the respectable old gentleman we are now going out to see.
When Galileo's eyes went out toward Saturn through his largest telescope—which, great as were the discoveries it made, was clumsier and weaker than the sort of telescope now to be got for a few shillings at any optician's shop—he noticed a peculiarity in the appearance of Saturn which caused him to suppose that Saturn consisted of three stars in contact with one another. A year and a half later he looked again, and there was the planet round and single as the disc of Mars or Jupiter. He cleaned his glasses, looked to his telescope, and looked again to the perplexing planet. Triform it was not. "Is it possible," he asked, "that some mocking demon has deluded me?" Afterward the perplexity increased. The two lesser orbs reappeared, and grew and varied in form strangely: finally they lost their globular appearance altogether, and seemed each to have two mighty arms stretched toward and encompassing the planet. A drawing in one of his manuscripts would suggest that Galileo discovered the key to the mystery, for it shows Saturn as a globe resting upon a ring. But this drawing is thought to be a later addition to the manuscript. It was only after many perplexities of others, about half a century later, that Huygens, in the year sixteen fifty-nine, announced to his contemporaries that Saturn is girdled about by a thin, flat ring, inclined to the ecliptic, and not touching the body of the planet. He showed that all variations in the appearance of the ring are due to the varying inclinations of its plane toward us, and that, being very thin, it becomes invisible when its edge is turned to the spectator or the sun. He found the diameter of the ring to be as nine to four to the diameter of Saturn's body, and its breadth about equal to the breadth of vacant space between it and the surface of the planet.
The same observer, Huygens, four years earlier, discovered one of Saturn's satellites. Had he looked for more, he could have found them. But six was the number of known planets, five had been the number of known satellites, our moon and the four moons of Jupiter, which Galileo had discovered; one moon more made the number of the planets and of the satellites to be alike, six, and this arrangement was assumed to be exact and final. But in sixteen seventy-one another satellite of Saturn was discovered by Cassini, who observed that it disappears regularly during one-half of its seventy-nine days' journey round its principal. Whence it is inferred that this moon has one of its sides less capable than the other of reflecting light, and that it turns round on its own axis once during its seventy-nine days' journey; Saturn itself spinning once round on its axis in as short a time as ten hours and a half. Cassini afterward discovered three more satellites, and called his four the Sideria Lodoicea, Ludovickian Stars, in honor of his patron, Louis the Fourteenth. Huygens had discovered, also, belts on Saturn's disc. Various lesser observations on rings, belts, and moons of Saturn continued to be made until the time of the elder Herschel, who, at the close of the last century, discovered two more satellites, established the relation of the belts to the rotation of the planet, and developed, after ten years' careful watching, his faith in the double character of its ring. "There is not, perhaps," said this great and sound astronomer, "another object in the heavens that presents us with such a variety of extraordinary phenomena as the planet Saturn: a magnificent globe encompassed by a stupendous double ring; attended by seven satellites; ornamented with equatorial belts; compressed at the poles; turning on its axis; mutually eclipsing its rings and satellites, and eclipsed by them; the most distant of the rings also turning on its axis, and the same taking place with the furthest of the satellites; all the parts of the system of Saturn occasionally reflecting light to each other—the rings and moons [{270}] illuminating the nights of the Saturnian, the globe and moons enlightening the dark parts of the rings, and the planet and rings throwing back the sun's beams upon the moons when they are deprived of them at the time of their conjunctions." During the present century, other observers have detected more divisions of the ring, one separating the outer ring into two rings of equal breadth seems to be permanent. It is to be seen only by the best telescopes, under the most favorable conditions. Many other and lesser indications of division have also at different times been observed. Seventeen years ago an eighth satellite of Saturn was discovered by Mr. Bond in America, and by Mr. Lassell in England. Two years later, that is to say, in November, eighteen fifty, a third ring of singular appearance was discovered inside the two others by Mr. Bond, and, a few days later, but independently, by Mr. Dawes and by Mr. Lassell in England. It is not bright like the others, but dusky, almost purple, and it is transparent, not even distorting the outline of the body of the planet seen through it. This ring was very easily seen by good telescopes, and presently became visible through telescopes of only four-inch aperture. In Herschel's time it was so dim that it was figured as a belt upon the body of the planet. Now it is not only distinct, but it has been increasing in width since the time of its discovery.
These were not all the marvels. One of the chief of the wonders since discovered was a faint overlapping light, differing much in color from the ordinary light of the ring, which light, a year and a half ago, Mr. Wray saw distinctly stretched on either side from the dark shade on the ball overlapping the fine line of light by the edge of the ring to the extent of about one-third of its length, and so as to give the impression that it was the dusky ring, very much thicker than the bright rings, and, seen edgewise, projected on the sky. Well may we be told by our guide, Mr. Proctor, that no object in the heavens presents so beautiful an appearance as Saturn, viewed with an instrument of adequate power. The golden disc, faintly striped with silver-tinted belts; the circling rings, with their various shades of brilliancy and color; and the perfect symmetry of the system as it sweeps across the dark background of the field of view, combine to form a picture as charming as it is sublime and impressive.
But what does it all mean? What is the use of this strange furniture in the House of Saturn, which is like nothing else among the known things of the universe? Maupertuis thought that Saturn's ring was a comet's tail cut off by the attraction of the planet as it passed, and compelled to circle round it thenceforth and for ever. Buffon thought the ring was the equatorial region of the planet which had been thrown off and left revolving while the globe to which it had belonged contracted to its present size. Other theories also went upon the assumption that the rings are solid. But if they are solid, how is it that they exhibit traces of varying division and reunion, and what are we to think of certain mottled or dusky stripes concentric with the rings, which stripes, appearing, to indicate that the ring where they occur is semi-transparent, also are not permanent? Then, again, what are we to think of the growth within the last seventy years of the transparent dark ring which does not, as even air would, refract the image of that which is seen through it, and that is becoming more opaque every year? Then, again, how is it that the immense width of the rings has been steadily increasing by the approach of their inner edge to the body of the planet? The bright ring, once twenty-three thousand miles wide, was five thousand miles wider in Herschel's time, and has now a width of twenty-eight thousand three hundred on a surface of more than twelve thousand millions of [{271}] square miles, while the thickness is only a hundred miles or less. Eight years ago, Mr. J. Clerk Maxwell obtained the Adams prize of the University of Cambridge for an essay upon Saturn's rings, which showed that if they were solid there would be necessary to stability an appearance altogether different from that of the actual system. But if not solid, are they fluid, are they a great isolated ocean poised in the Saturnian mid air? If there were such an ocean, it is shown that it would be exposed to influences forming waves that would be broken up into fluid satellites.
But possibly the rings are formed of flights of disconnected satellites, so small and so closely packed that, at the immense distance to which Saturn is removed, they appear to form a continuous mass, while the dark inner mass may have been recently formed of satellites drawn by disturbing attractions or collisions out of the bright outer ring, and so thinly scattered that they give to us only a sense of darkness without obscuring, and of course without refracting, the surface before which they spin. This is, in our guide's opinion, the true solution of the problem, and to the bulging of Saturn's equator, which determines the line of superior attraction, he ascribes the thinness of the system of satellites, in which each is compelled to travel near the plane of the great planet's equator.
Whatever be the truth about these vast provisions for the wants of Saturn, surely there must be living inhabitants there to whose needs they are wisely adapted. Travel among the other planets would have its inconveniences to us of the earth. Light walking as it might be across the fields of ether, we should have half our weight given to us again in Mars or Mercury, while in Jupiter our weight would be doubled, and we should drag our limbs with pain. In Saturn, owing to the compression of the vast light globe and its rapid rotation, a man who weighs twelve stone at the equator weighs fourteen stone at the pole. Though vast in size, the density of the planet is small, for which reason we should not find ourselves very much heavier by change of ground from earth to Saturn. We should be cold, for Saturn gets only a ninetieth part of the earth's allowance of light and heat. But then there is no lack of blanket in the House of Saturn, for there is a thick atmosphere to keep the warmth in the old gentleman's body and to lengthen the Saturnian twilights. As for the abatement of light, we know how much light yet remains to us when less than a ninetieth part of the sun escapes eclipse. We see in its brightness, as a star, though a pale one, the reflection of the sunshine Saturn gets, which if but a ninetieth part of our share, yet leaves the sun of Saturn able to give five hundred and sixty times more light than our own brightest moonshine. And then what long summers! The day in Saturn is only ten and a half hours long, so that the nights are short, and there are twenty-four thousand six hundred and eighteen and a half of its own days to the Saturnian year. But the long winters! And the Saturnian winter has its gloom increased by eclipses of the sun's light by the rings. At Saturn's equator these eclipses occur near the equinoxes and last but a little while, but in the regions corresponding to our temperate zone they are of long duration. Apart from eclipse, the rings lighten for Saturn the short summer nights, and lie perhaps as a halo under the sun during the short winter days.