lawn, sweeping down from the moat towards the lake, stand two noble
masonry walls. They are turreted and clad with ivy, and considerably
loftier than any ordinary house. As the visitor approaches, he will
see between those walls what may at first sight appear to him to be
the funnel of a steamer lying down horizontally. On closer approach
he will find that it is an immense wooden tube, sixty feet long, and
upwards of six feet in diameter. It is in fact large enough to admit
of a tall man entering into it and walking erect right through from
one end to the other. This is indeed the most gigantic instrument
which has ever been constructed for the purpose of exploring the
heavens. Closely adjoining the walls between which the great tube
swings, is a little building called "The Observatory." In this the
smaller instruments are contained, and there are kept the books which
are necessary for reference. The observatory also offers shelter to
the observers, and provides the bright fire and the cup of warm tea,
which are so acceptable in the occasional intervals of a night's
observation passed on the top of the walls with no canopy but the
winter sky.

Almost the first point which would strike the visitor to Lord Rosse's
telescope is that the instrument at which he is looking is not only
enormously greater than anything of the kind that he has ever seen
before, but also that it is something of a totally different nature.
In an ordinary telescope he is accustomed to find a tube with lenses
of glass at either end, while the large telescopes that we see in our
observatories are also in general constructed on the same principle.
At one end there is the object-glass, and at the other end the
eye-piece, and of course it is obvious that with an instrument of
this construction it is to the lower end of the tube that the eye of
the observer must be placed when the telescope is pointed to the