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| Preface | iii |
| Lecture I. (February 4) | 1 |
| Lecture II. (February 11) | 31 |
The following lectures, drawn up under the pressure ofmore imperative and quite otherwise directed work, containmany passages which stand in need of support, and some, Ido not doubt, more or less of correction, which I always preferto receive openly from the better knowledge of friends,after setting down my own impressions of the matter inclearness as far as they reach, than to guard myself againstby submitting my manuscript, before publication, to annotatorswhose stricture or suggestion I might often feel pain inrefusing, yet hesitation in admitting.
But though thus hastily, and to some extent incautiously,thrown into form, the statements in the text are founded onpatient and, in all essential particulars, accurately recordedobservations of the sky, during fifty years of a life of solitudeand leisure; and in all they contain of what may seem tothe reader questionable, or astonishing, are guardedly andabsolutely true.
In many of the reports given by the daily press, my assertionof radical change, during recent years, in weather aspectwas scouted as imaginary, or insane. I am indeed, every dayof my yet spared life, more and more grateful that my mindis capable of imaginative vision, and liable to the nobledangers of delusion which separate the speculative intellectof humanity from the dreamless instinct of brutes: but Ihave been able, during all active work, to use or refuse mypower of contemplative imaginati