KING ARTHUR'S ROUND TABLE. "And so great Arthur's seat ould Winchester prefers, Conspicuously upon the interior eastern wall of the County Hall at Winchester hangs the celebrated painted Table of King Arthur, the true history of which has long been a disputed question with antiquaries; but in 1845, when the Archæological Institute met at Winchester, a paper by Mr. E. Smirke was read upon this inquiry. Tradition attributes the foundation of Winchester Castle to the renowned Prince Arthur; and the legendary bards affirm, that the large oaken table now shown as the chief curiosity of the place is the identical board around which that monarch and his celebrated knights assembled in the fortress he had founded: but the Exchequer Domesday shows that William I. erected the castle of Winchester in the situation in which exist its remains, including the County Hall, in which the Table hangs. Mr. Smirke is not aware of any distinct reference to the Round Table before the reign of Henry VI. or Edward IV., when Hardyng, the poetic historian, alludes to the table of Arthur as "hanging yet" at Winchester; but this mention is not to be found in the earliest manuscript copy of Hardyng. Paulus Jovius informs us that the table was shown to the Emperor Charles V. on his visit to Winchester in 1522; and in the foreign accounts of Henry VIII. we find an entry of 66l. 16s. 11d. for the repair of the "aula regis infra castrum de Wynchestre et le round tabyll ibidem." Again, the table is referred to by a Spanish writer who was present at the marriage of Philip and Mary, as the Round Table constructed by Merlin. The Table, as we now see it, consists of a circle, divided into twentyfive green and white compartments radiating from the centre, which is a large double (Norman ?) rose. In the middle of the upper half of the circle, resting upon the rose, and extending to the double edge, is a canopied niche, in which is painted a regal figure, bearing the orb and sword, and wearing the royal crown. Around the centre rose is a circle inscribed with black-letter, except where it is broken by the base of the niche and the sitting king. There are also names inscribed in six of the white compartments, as well as in the circle around the compartments, of which however this circle is rather a continuation, in colour and form corresponding to the several divisions, each bearing a name. To what period these names are to be referred, Mr. Smirke leaves those to decide whose critical acquaintance with the cycle of the Round-Table romances will enable them to state the source from which the names are borrowed. But there is no doubt that, whatever retouching the table may have undergone (especially in the royal figure, which Mr. Smirke believes to have been repainted within the time of living memory), the form of the letters and general decorations of the table, even if we had no extrinsic evidence, would indicate a date not later nor much earlier than the reign of Henry VIII. The table is made of very stout oak plank, and is larger than the roof and the floors of the rooms in the Eddystone Lighthouse, and considerably larger than the ground-plot of the parish church of St. Lawrence in the Isle of Wight. THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN. Marvels of the Heavens. THE GREAT TRUTHS OF ASTRONOMY. How difficult must these be for the uneducated to understand! "Tell a plain countryman," says Bishop Hall, "that the sun, or some higher or lesser star, is much bigger than his cart-wheel, or, at least, so many scores bigger than the whole earth, he laughs thee to scorn, as affecting admiration with a learned untruth; yet the scholar, by the eye of reason, doth as plainly see and acknowledge this truth as that his hand is bigger than his pen." ANCIENT IDEAS OF THE UNIVERSE. Far lower down than the times of astrology and alchemy was the age when this earth was thought the fixed centre of the universe and an extended plain,* and the heavenly bodies glittering specks revolving round it; and when the great Aristotle taught that the heavenly bodies were bound fast in spheres which revolved with them round our earth-the bodies themselves being motionless-the first sphere being that in which the fixed stars are placed; then the five planets; the sun; and, next to the earth, the moon: the earth itself being at rest, and the centre of the universe!-S. Warren, D.C.L. MECHANICS OF ASTRONOMY. Our acquaintance with the sublime truths of Astronomy would have been as deep had Eastern philosophers never turned This notion is not yet apparently banished from among ourselves even. "I remember," says the present Astronomer Royal, "a man in my youth-my friend was in his inquiries an ingenious man, a sort of philosopher-who used to say he should like to go to the edge of the earth and look over." Airy's Lectures on Astronomy, p. 46, 2d edition, 1848. B their eyes to the realms of illimitable space, gazed enraptured on the canopy above, and watched the harmonious movements of the countless worlds which adorn the firmament they people. "The moment," says Sir John Herschel, "astronomy became a branch of mechanics, a science essentially experimental (that is to say, one in which any principle laid down can be subjected to immediate and decisive trial, and where the experience does not require to be waited for), its progress suddenly acquired a tenfold acceleration; nay, to such a degree, that it has been asserted, and we believe with truth, that were the results of all the observations from the earliest ages annihilated, leaving only those made in Greenwich Observatory during the single lifetime of Maskelyne, the whole of this most perfect of sciences might, from those data, and as to the objects included in them, be at once re-constructed, and appear precisely as it stood at their conclusion. The operation, indeed, of Arabian knowledge of astronomy in the early ages was, perhaps, principally to lend a plausibility to astrology; the observers of stars, like Columbus predicting the eclipse, had the power of astonishing when they prepared to delude." NATURE OF THE SUN. The most recent observations confirm the supposition that the Sun is a black, opaque body, with a luminous and incandescent atmosphere, through which the solar body is often seen in black spots, frequently of enormous dimensions. A single spot, seen with the naked eye, in the year 1843, was 77,000 miles in diameter. Sir John Herschel, in 1837, witnessed a cluster of spots including an area of 3,780,000 miles. The diameter of the sun is 770,800 geographical miles, or 112 times that of the earth; its volume is 1,407,124 times that of the earth, and 600 times that of all the planets; and its mass is 359,551 times greater than the earth's, and 738 times greater than all the planets. THE SOLAR SYSTEM ILLUSTRATED. In order to convey to the mind of the reader a general impression of the relative magnitudes and distances of the parts of our system, "choose," says Sir John Herschel, "any well-levelled field or bowling-green. On it place a globe two feet in diameter, which will represent the sun; Mercury will be represented by a grain of mustard-seed, on the circumference of a circle 164 feet in diameter for its orbit; Venus, a pea, on a circle 284 feet in diameter; the earth also a pea, on à circle of 430 feet; Mars, a rather large pin's head, on a circle of 654 feet; Juno, Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas, grains of sand, in orbits of from 1000 to 1200 feet; Jupiter, a moderate-sized orange, in a circle nearly half a mile across; Saturn, a small orange, on a circle of four-fifths of a mile; and Uranus, a full-sized cherry or small plum, upon the circumference of a circle more than a mile and a half in diameter. As to getting correct notions on this subject by drawing circles on paper, or, still worse, from those very childish toys called orreries, it is out of the question. To imitate the motions of the planets in the above-mentioned orbits, Mercury must describe its own diameter in 41 seconds; Venus in 4m. 4s.; the Earth in 7m.; Mars in 4m. 48s. ; Jupiter in 2h. 56m.; Saturn in 3h. 13m.; and Uranus in 2h. 16m." IS THE SUN INHABITED? If (says Arago) this question were simply proposed to me, Is the Sun inhabited? I should reply, that I know nothing about the matter. But let any one ask of me if the sun can be inhabited by beings organised in a manner analogous to those which people our globe, and I hesitate not to reply in the affirmative. The existence in the sun of a central obscure nucleus, enveloped in an opaque atmosphere far beyond which the luminous atmosphere exists, is by no means opposed, in effect, to such a conception. Herschel thought that the sun is inhabited. According to him, if the depth of the solar atmosphere in which the luminous chemical action operates should amount to a million of leagues, it is not necessary that the brightness at each point should surpass that of an ordinary aurora borealis. In any case, the arguments upon which the great astronomer relies, in order to prove that the solar nucleus may not be very hot, notwithstanding the incandescence of the atmosphere, are neither the only, nor the best, that might be adduced. The direct observation, made by Father Secchi, of the depression of temperature which the points of the solar disc experience wherein the spots appear, is in this respect more important than any reasoning whatever. Dr. Elliott maintained, as early as the year 1787, that the light of the sun arose from what he called a dense and universal twilight. He further believed, with certain ancient philosophers, that the sun might be inhabited. When the Doctor was brought before the Old Bailey for having occasioned the death of Miss Boydell, his friends, Dr. Simmons among others, maintained that he was mad, and thought that they could prove it abundantly by showing the writings wherein the opinions which we have just cited were found developed. The conceptions of a madman are in the present day generally adopted.-Arago's Popular Astronomy, vol. i. book xiv. chap. 29. Sir John Herschel concludes that the sun is a planet abundantly stored with inhabitants; his inference being drawn from the following arguments: On the tops of mountains of a sufficient height, at an altitude where clouds can very seldom reach to shelter them from the direct rays of the sun, we always find regions of ice and snow. Now, if the solar rays themselves conveyed all the heat we find on this globe, it ought to be hottest where their course is least interrupted. Again, our aeronauts all confirm the coldness of the upper regions of the atmosphere. Since, therefore, even on our earth, the heat of any situation depends upon the aptness of the medium to yield to the impression of the solar rays, we have only to admit that, on the sun itself, the elastic fluids composing its atmosphere, and the matter on its surface, are of such a nature as not to be capable of any excessive affection from its own rays. Indeed, this seems to be proved by the copious emission of them; for if the elastic fluids of the atmosphere, or the matter contained on the surface of the sun, were of such a nature as to admit of an easy chemical combination with its rays, their emission would be much impeded. Another well-known fact is, that the solar focus of the largest lens thrown into the air will occasion no sensible heat in the place where it has been kept for a considerable time, although its power of exciting combustion, when proper bodies are exposed, should be sufficient to fuse the most refractory substances. COMPARATIVE LIGHT OF THE SUN AND THE FIXED STARS. Dr. Wollaston has inferred, from observations made by him, that the direct light of the Sun is about one million times more intense than that of the full Moon; and therefore very many million times greater than that of all the fixed stars taken collectively. In order to compare the light of the sun with that of a star, he took, as an intermediate object of comparison, the light of a candle reflected from a small bulb, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, filled with quicksilver, and seen, by one eye, through a lens of two inches focus; at the same time that the star or the sun's image, placed at a proper distance, was viewed by the other eye through a telescope. The mean of various trials seemed to show that the light of Syrius is equal to that of the sun seen in a glass bulb one-tenth of an inch in diameter, at the distance of 210 feet, or that they are in the proportion of one to ten thousand millions; but, as nearly one half of the light is lost by reflection, the real proportion between the light from Syrius and the sun is not greater than that of one to twenty thousand millions. LIGHT OF THE SUN COMPARED WITH TERRESTRIAL LIGHTS. When we place the flame of a wax-candle so that it is projected upon the regions of the atmosphere nearest the Sun's disc, it totally disappears, and we see merely the wick under the form of a black spot. This effect is still more strongly marked, as it ought to be, when the flame is projected upon the disc itself of the body. Whence we may deduce the conclusion, that the brightness of this flame is less that of a corresponding portion of the sun than that of a corresponding portion of the surrounding atmosphere, and that it does not |