An apparently fragmentary manuscript, “cepheus and bootes now” is a 12.5 × 20 cm vertically folded sheet, written on all four sides in pencil, cursive hand, with some substitutions written in ink, cursive hand. Although unsigned, and the hand described as “unidentifed” in the finding aid of the Beinecke Library John Ruskin Collection, the hand is distinctly John Ruskinʼs early cursive.

The manuscript probably was bound into into MS IA by Cook and Wedderburn. Like the other contents of this miscellaneous collection, this item was separated from its binding, whether prior to or as a result of Charles Goodspeedʼs house fire. See MS IA: Collation of the Original Manuscript and MS IA: Contents, b. Presently, at the Beinecke Library, the manuscript is catalogued as part of the John Ruskin Collection, Series II: Manuscripts, 1826–1897, subseries Unbound Manuscripts, “The Monastery—Manuscript, in an unidentified hand, of passages of verse, undated”. This identification is mistaken: the folded sheet of “Constellations” draft has been collected together with a fragment of “Monastery” draft, which resembles the former in its paper and pencil cursive hand, and the collection misidentified as consisting solely of manuscript of “The Monastery”. The two projects were closely aligned, however; see Composition and Publication.

A facsimile of a manuscript—the whereabouts of the original being unknown—this item consists of two photographs, which document a vertically folded sheet containing a fair copy of the poem in pen‐and‐ink print lettering in Ruskinʼs hand, along with revisions of the text in his cursive hand, both ink and pencil. The first‐stage fair copy was annotated in pencil by Margaret Ruskin. Possibly, the photographs were taken in the course of preparing the Library Edition; if so, the facsimile was not cited or reproduced in the edition. The photographs are held by The Ruskin at Lancaster University, catalogued as RF T70.

The folded sheet was photographed spread open and laid flat, with one photograph showing pages 4 and 1 (from left to right), and the other photograph showing the reverse side, pages 2 and 3 (from left to right). The manuscript reveals at least two major stages of composition, a first stage of fair copying, and a second stage of heavy revision. The fair copy occupies pages 1–2 (i.e., both sides of the first leaf), while the remaining pages 3–4 (the second leaf) would originally have been left blank, prior to Ruskinʼs revisions. Subsequently, Ruskin used this blank space, as well as the margins of pages 1–2, for revisions. Thus, the facsimiles preserve a rare instance of a manuscript containing a fair copy of an early work by Ruskin that he subsequently revised using the same sheet.

A second fair copy appears as the first poem in the MS III Second Poetry Anthology, which is contained in MS III. This Red Book begins with “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol 2”, a work that likewise reflects an interest in astronomy (see Discussion).

This fair copy incorporates Ruskinʼs revisions to the first fair copy shown in RF T70. The MS III fair copy was therefore chronologically subsequent to the RF T70 fair copy.

This pencil‐on‐paper manuscript in a cursive hand, “cepheus and bootes now” (see Manuscripts: MS IA), begins at line 27 of the poem as fair‐copied in RF T70, and from that point the text extends for 49 lines on all four sides of a vertically folded sheet. The surviving text starts at the top of 1r of the manuscript, lacking title or context, evidently in mid‐career of the poem. While nothing definitive can be determined about whether this manuscript is missing a witness to the original beginning of its text—nor can anything be determined about what that opening text would have consisted of—it is likely that the missing draft closely matched the text as fair‐copied in RF T70, given the consistency of the proofreading marks from start to finish on that later manuscript (see First Fair Copy [RF T70]).

It is possible that an opening piece of the manuscript, now missing, was originally bound in MS IA, but that this piece was lost and its survival or whereabouts untraceable, given the current damaged and unbound state of the collection (see MS IA: Contents, b).

The fair copy preserved in the photograph RF T70 (see Manuscripts: RF T70) incorporates the deletions and substitutions in the draft, “cepheus and bootes now”; and the fair copy comprises the entirety of the surviving draft—including the concluding lines that, as suggested by the material evidence, may have been an afterthought (see Two Successive Endings). Lines 1–26 cannot be verified as exactly following copytext based on the surviving draft, which is evidently missing its original opening. As fair‐copied, however, these lines probably do adhere to the original context, since RF T70 contains markings from the start of the text to the end that can be interpreted as proofreading checkmarks.

At some point after New Yearʼs 1828, Ruskin fair‐copied “The Constellations” into the Red Book, MS III, incorporating the revisions to the poem drafted in the margins of the RF T70 fair copy. Placed following “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol 2”, “The Constellations” is now presented as the first poem in an anthology, “POETRY”, the MS III Second Poetry Anthology, where it precedes copies of two bygone New Yearʼs poems, “Time: Blank Verse”, the New Yearʼs ode for January 1827, and “The Sun”, the New Yearʼs ode for January 1828.

Between the end of “The Sun” and the next poem in the anthology, “Glenfarg”, Ruskin prominently printed the date “January 1 1828”, floating between two parallel decorative rules. This label does not necessarily signify that this poetry anthology (along with the preceding “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol 2”) constituted a New Yearʼs gift for January 1828. That purpose presumably was served by a separate presentation copy of “The Sun” and “Glenfarg”, preserved in MS XI, in which the two poems are fair‐copied in the same order as presented here, in MS III. It is unknown how much time lapsed between the January 1828 New Yearʼs presentation of “The Sun” and “Glenfarg” and their placement following “The Constellations” as contributions to a new anthology. It seems likely that Ruskin would not have waited long to fair‐copy “The Constellations” following his revision of the RF T70 fair copy, and that he finalized the poem in this MS III version—assuming that no other fair copy intervened—as part of the anthology sometime prior to the familyʼs departure in May for the Tour of 1828.

Presented together with “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol 2” on one side and “Time: Blank Verse” and “The Sun” on the other, “The Constellations” anchors these works in a cosmos. The second volume of “Harry and Lucy” continues the familyʼs travels across Britain that started with the tour to Hastings described in “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol I”, while the New Yearʼs poems commemorate the cycles of time over days and months, culminating in the sunset and emergence of the circumpolar constellations at the end of “The Sun”. Amidst it all walks Ruskin “with dear mamma beside me” admiring the garden flowers, which he will catalog in his “poem on the universe”, “Eudosia”.

See Astronomical Education for the range of print texts that was available to Ruskin as sources of basic instruction in astronomy. Chronologically, the composition of “The Constellations” was positioned following a period in 1826–27 when he had begun to read John Aikin and Letitia Barbauldʼs Evenings at Home, which contains dialogues covering some basic topics in astronomy, such as the forces that drive the rotations of the solar system (see Astronomical Education: Scientific and Practical Astronomical Dialogues; and Books Used by Ruskin in His Youth: Physical Descriptions—Evenings at Home).

Following this introductory reading, Ruskinʼs period of composition, revision, and fair‐copying of “The Constellations” in 1827–28 would have accompanied or shortly followed his reading of additional educational dialogues on astronomy, which pick up where the conversations in Evenings at Home leave off—namely, the astronomy of the constellations both as a discipline of practical and scientific reasoning and as an appreciation of beauty. This stage of reading consisted at least of volume 2, “Of Astronomy”, of Jeremiah Joyceʼs Scientific Dialogues; and of passages in Thomas Dayʼs The History of Sandford and Merton, in which the Tutor, Mr. Barlow, draws on Harry Sandfordʼs practical experience in reading the night sky to spark Tommy Mertonʼs admiration for the beauty and wonder of the fixed stars (see Astronomical Education: Scientific and Practical Astronomical Dialogues). Ruskin himself identifies his use of these latter sources for astronomical education in “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol 2”, whereas his reading of the rudimentary dialogues Evenings at Home is presumptive, based on evidence of his familiarity with this work in “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol I”.

It is possible that this first stage of astronomical education, preceding and contemporaneous with the composition of “The Constellations”, also relied on one of the primers in astronomical science written for children in the first third of the century (see Astronomical Education: Astronomical Primers for Children). This kind of text was more likely to emphasize memorization rather than dialogic exchange; and primers of the 1820s for young readers perhaps more emphatically staked the purpose of astronomical study in religious admiration rather than practical and scientific reasoning. In its form, Ruskinʼs poem embodies the memorization exercises typical of these primers, while its rhetoric reflects no particular agenda of piety—at least not initially so. Arguably, that agenda is layered over the initial version, at the urging of Margaret Ruskinʼs flags for revision (see Margaret Ruskinʼs Role in the Fair‐Copying Process and The Genre of “The Constellations”).

By 1828–29, one year beyond the composition, revision, and fair‐copying of “The Constellations”, Ruskin recorded statistical astronomical information in his “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol III”, which was typically found in sophisticated print sources known as star atlases, although such information was also plagiarized from star atlases in the more advanced astronomical primers for young readers, such as Aspinʼs A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy. The identity of this type of source or sources used by Ruskin remains elusive (see Astromical Education: Star Atlases). Whatever the source, while Ruskinʼs presentation of astronomical information in “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol III” appears more informed and sophisticated than the simple naming in “The Constellations”, “Harryʼs” approach seems flat and pedantic compared to the energy and invention of the earlier poem.

As indicated by Ruskinʼs sources, “The Constellations” is a bookish poem. Even in Ruskinʼs books, however, Dayʼs and Joyceʼs tutors begin study of astronomy by directing their pupilsʼ attention to the evening sky. To what extent, if any, might Ruskinʼs composition of his poem have involved actual astronomical observation?

Ruskin opens his poem by hailing Venus and Mars. In the instructional dialogues, planets—the wandering stars—are not an obvious starting point for astronomy lessons in the open air (see Astronomical Education: Instructional Dialogues on Astronomy). Fictional tutors typically begin by asking pupils to find the most commonly recognizable constellation or fixed stars, Charlesʼs Wain. As suggested by an earlier poem, “Glen of Glenfarg” (“Glen of Glenfarg thy beauteous rill”), Ruskin had long been able to orient himself to that formation in the night sky. Nonetheless, equally striking objects for young stargazers are Venus, the Morning Star and Evening Star, and Mars, the red planet. Ruskin may have chosen those planets to begin his poem because they are famously beautiful and striking celestial bodies with familiar mythological associations. In his books, Venus was singled out for the planetʼs beauty (see “The Constellations” as a Project in Spatial and Poetic Conception). It is also possible that the particular alignment described in the poem—Venus and Mars visible on the ecliptic, with the constellation Orion setting on the horizon—indicates an actual and datable observation.

In the poem, Ruskin positions Venus specifically as the Evening Star near the constellation Orion. According to a digital‐age star chart, the Sky & Telescope Interactive Sky Chart, Venus would have been visible from London as the Evening Star, setting in the west along with Orion during April–June 1828. (During that period, another bright object that was visible low in the evening sky, which an observer might have confused with a planet, was Sirius or the “Dog Star”, in the constellation Canis Major. It is positioned directly below Orion.) During those same months, Mars would have risen from the east, traveling “high . . . [in] the sky”, as Ruskinʼs poem says, a few hours after Venus had set (Sky & Telescope, Interactive Star Chart and Celestial Almanac, accessed 12 April 2023).

This calculation accords with tables of constellations in the “Calendarium Stellaris”, subtitled an “Easy Method of Finding the Stars for Every Month of the Year”, in the 1825 edition of Aspinʼs Familiar Treatise on Astronomy. Describing the sky viewed from London each month “in about the middle of . . . the month, at half‐past nine oʼclock in the evening”, the Calendarium lists Orion as appearing “nearly on the meridian” in January and moving toward the “space between “W. by S. and S.W. by W.” by March. The constellation is omitted from the listings for April, presumably because it would have set by 9:00 P.M. (Aspin, A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy, 161, 167, 168–69). The digital star chart shows that Orion set in the late‐afternoon dusk of April 1828, preceded by Venus; and as the weeks advanced, Venus set later in the evening than Orion, which had vanished by sunset. A comparison of findings using the Sky & Telescope Interactive Sky Chart with the Calendarium identifies April 1828, therefore, as the period when the tracks of Venus and Mars overlapped with a sighting of Orion. According to the digital star chart, this configuration was never visible at dusk or nighttime in 1827.

Tending to confirm these observations in the first quarter of the year, Ruskin includes the southern constellation, Crater, in the poem, which is visible from the latitude of London in the evening sky, annually from December through May. The poem also names southern constellations that cannot be viewed from the latitude of London at all, but Ruskinʼs choice of these appears related to a sentiment for their legends. The choice of Crater seems arbitrary other than its regular rising and setting in the southern sky, culminating in April (see ).

It is possible, then, that actual observations of the evening sky lay behind the composition of the poemʼs introductory lines, a possibility that aligns with the evidence in Composition and Publication supporting the year 1828 as a probable period of composition or at least revision of the poem. (Since the partially surviving manuscript of the MS IA draft lacks the opening lines, the possibility of an earlier date in 1827 for the inception of the poem remains open.) April–May was typically the period when Ruskin prepared poems for his fatherʼs birthday in May, thus suggesting an occasion as well as a terminus a quo for the start of either composition or revision of “The Constellations”.

Whether or not Ruskin looked up from his books to the sky for an inspiration to open his poem, he was also prompted to admiration of Orion by Dayʼs fictional character, Tommy Merton, who, “looking up to the sky . . . observed so remarkable a constellation, that he . . . begged to know the name”. On learning it was called Orion, he “was so delighted with the grandeur and beauty of this glorious constellation, that he could not help observing it, by intervals, all the evening; and he was surprised to see that it seemed to pass on, in a right line drawn from east to west; and that all the stars he had become acquainted with moved every night in the same direction”. In the opening four lines of the poem, Ruskin echoes the alliterative modifiers with which Mr. Barlow describes the experience of gazing at the constellations: “‘I should think there would be a very great pleasure in observing such a number of glorious, glittering bodies as are now above us’” (Day, The History of Sandford and Merton, 187–88, 165 [emphasis added]; see also “The Constellations” as a Project in Spatial and Poetic Conception).

Following Orion, Ruskin goes on to name circumpolar constellations—all “northern” constellations, as announced in the first part of the poemʼs subtitle (lines 7–14; see Title). As possible real sightings, it is striking that he begins with Ursa Major (the Great Bear), which likewise tops the list for April in the “Calendarium Stellaris”, that constellation being positioned “in the zenith”. Moreover, the “lower star in the tail” of the bear “at about 65 degrees high” is “one of those called Charlesʼs Wain”—the next to be identified by Ruskin, albeit not surprisingly. All six of the following constellations named in the poem were also visible in April, according to the Calendarium: Draco (the Dragon), Coma Berenices (Bereniceʼs Hair), Corona Borealis (the Northern Crown), Cygnus (the Swan). Cor Caroli (Charlesʼs Heart), and Medusaʼs Head (Aspin, A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy, 168–69). Only with Telescopium Herschelii (Herschelʼs Telescope) does Ruskin depart from naming what he could actually have viewed overhead in April 1828, and that choice was a substitution evidently to placate alarm over Medusaʼs Head (see Margaret Ruskinʼs Role in the Fair‐Copying Process).

Hereafter in Ruskinʼs poem, the sequence of constellations appears more erratic, with the repeated “next comes” ceasing necessarily to refer to star formations that are adjacent in the dome of the sky. In the second fair copy, in MS III, Ruskin forestalled objections by adding a note with a caveat: “These constellations though they are next in this poetry are not next in the sky”. The note is not attached by an asterisk to a particular line in the poem, seeming to refer to the whole, so it is unclear whether he would have exempted the first fourteen lines from observable phenomena.

The genre of “The Constellations”, at its most basic level, is a catalogue poem, simply naming the constellations. As a list, the poem shares some characteristics with an astronomical primer, An Introduction to Astronomy Intended for Little Children (1817) by Mrs. Sherwood (1775–1851). While no record of this book or a work like it is recorded in the Ruskin family library, Mrs. Sherwood introduces the topic of the constellations with a heading identical to Ruskinʼs main title, “The Constellations”, and follows that heading with subdivisions, each with its own heading, that sorts the constellations into “Constellations in the Zodiac or Ecliptic”, “Constellations to the North of the Ecliptic”, and “Constellations to the South of the Ecliptic”—subdivisions that resemble Ruskinʼs subtitle to his poem, “Northern, Some of the Zodiac, and Some of the Southern”.

As a catalogue poem, “The Constellations” perhaps reflects Mrs. Sherwoodʼs pedagogical assumption that a childʼs act of naming and identifying heavenly bodies precedes understanding of the physical laws that govern their motion, and the development of a spatial imagination required to grasp the relation of the earthʼs revolutions to the apparent motion of the constellations across the sky. In each of her hemispheric categories, Mrs. Sherwood merely lists the names of constellations—the Latin name followed by its English translation—which matches Ruskinʼs procedure in his catalogue poem, except for his added embellishment of a poetic epithet to describe some of the constellations. Mrs. Sherwood provides no information about each of the constellations; rather, she annotates the respective lists with a Bible verse that mentions the stars and praises the Creator.

As a reflection of a stage of astronomical education, “The Constellations” obviously represents an elementary exercise in naming and memorization. Unlike Mrs. Sherwoodʼs lists of names, however, Ruskinʼs catalogue is not encased within Scripture quotations that monitor the aim of memorization with expressions of piety. Rather, the compositional history suggests that moral and Christian (but not specifically Scriptural) admonition was layered onto the poem to contain the paganism presented by its list of names. See Knowledge versus Christian Faith: The Problem of Mythology.

“These constellations though they are next in this poetry are not next in the sky”. This note, which Ruskin added to the second fair copy, can be read as an admission of failure to recognize the astronomerʼs mapping of the visible galaxy. Turn the sentence around—“These constellations, though not next in the sky, are next in this poetry”—and the statement stakes a claim for poetic form.

As an aesthetic project, “The Constellations” derives from an exercise in spatial perception and translating that perception into a graphic representation. In The History of Sandford and Merton, Tommy Merton proposes to Mr. Barlow to memorize the positions of the stars forming the constellations by “‘mak[ing] a mark upon . . . paper for every star in Charlesʼ Wain; and I would place the marks just as I see the stars placed in the sky; and I would entreat you to write the names for me, and this I would do till I was acquainted with all the stars in the heavens’”. Mr. Barlow applauds the project but points out that paper is flat, whereas the sky, as Tommy says, “‘seems to rise from the earth on every side like the dome of a great church’”. “‘Then if you were to have some round body’”, Mr. Barlow suggests, “‘I should think it would correspond to the different parts of the sky, and you might place your stars with more exactness’”. The tutor accordingly supplies Tommy with a paper‐covered ball, enabling him to devise his own celestial globe based on his own observations of the constellations, remarking both the constellationsʼ relative positions and their nightly movements in the sky. Starting by drawing his “favourite constellation of Charlesʼs Wain”, Tommy next marks the constellation situated on the opposite side of the Pole‐star, which Mr. Barlow identifies as Cassiopeia; and then he is captured by the “grandeur and beauty” of the “glorious constellation” Orion, which “he could not help observing . . . by intervals, all the evening” as “it seemed to pass on, in a right line drawn from east to west” (Day, The History of Sandford and Merton, 164–65, 187–88). Is Ruskinʼs poem, “The Constellations”, his version of putting the constellations on paper, albeit on flat paper?

Ruskin begins his poem with Tommyʼs admiration of the “grandeur and beauty” of Orion rather than with the practical lesson initiated by Dayʼs and Joyceʼs tutors, who advise first finding Charlesʼs Wain, then tracing its pointer stars to the Pole Star, thereby enabling one to locate the other northern circumpolar constellations in relation to the Wain (i.e., Ursa Major, the Great Bear). As Dayʼs Mr. Barlow explains, “by remembering these stars” that form Charlesʼs Wain, one can “very easily observe those which are next to them, and learn their names too, till you are acquainted with the whole face of the heavens” (Day, History of Sandford and Merton, 163; see also Joyce, Scientific Dialogues, 2:16–19). This is the practical recommendation by Harry Sandford, the farmerʼs boy, for how to find oneʼs way when lost on a dark night. Ruskin, in lines 7–11, does name a cluster of circumpolar constellations, starting with Ursa Major and Charlesʼs Wain. First, however, he predicates his sequence on beauty rather than pragmatism, by beginning the poem with “stars” traditionally regarded as the most beautiful—Venus, the so‐called Morning Star and Evening Star, “Glittering in the evening air”, a wandering rather than a fixed star; and “beside it”, Orionʼs Belt, “a glorious sight for all sky loving men”. Even for Joyceʼs drier Tutor, Venus is “by far the most beautiful of . . . all” planets, prompting a quotation from Milton praising the Evening and Morning Star; and for Tommy Merton, “Orion, which rose every night and glittered in the south”, entices his continuing star‐gazing, perhaps also supplying Ruskin with his rhapsodic modifier (Scientific Dialogues, 2:198; Day, History of Sandford and Merton, 199). From this glittering horizon, Ruskinʼs poem leads the eye aloft along the ecliptic to Mars, “high / On his throne” and thence to the circumpolar “greater bear” with “charlesʼs wain”.

Beyond initially declaring the constellations “a glorious sight” as opposed to a utilitarian compass, does the poem go on to form a coherent graphic translation of the sky? If, as Ruskinʼs belated note in MS III admits, the poemʼs sequence of constellation names are “not next in the sky”—that is, if the poem does not in a systematic manner, as Mr. Barlow “‘entreat[s]’”, perform the functionally pedagogical purpose of “‘plac[ing] the marks just as I see the stars placed in the sky; and . . . writ[ing] the names for me, . . . till I was acquainted with all the stars in the heavens’”—then what pattern, if any, is formed by situating the constellations “next in this poetry”? Does the ordering of the constellations in the poem reveal an aesthetic, if not a practical aim?

While the poemʼs repeated “next” seems to line up the constellation names without a plan, the sequence of naming can be interpreted as the equivalent of Mr. Barlowʼs paper globe—that is, the constellation names inscribe a formal pattern on a star map that reads as a spherical shape plotted on a flat plane. As mentioned at the start of this Discussion, Ruskin did own a celestial globe. Print sources were also available to him that contained examples of planispheres, such as Jamiesonʼs “Stereographic Projection of the Northern Celestial Hemisphere on the Plane of the Equinoctial” (Celestial Atlas, pl. 1). Ruskinʼs poem can be read as reversing Mr. Barlowʼs suggestion, by flattening a celestial globe or dome of the sky on paper in the manner of a “stereographic projection”. The eye of Ruskinʼs speaker inscribes a series of arcs, first by anchoring a “glorious sight”: “there” is Venus “in the evening air”, with Orion “beside it”. Then, having anchored Venus and Orion on a horizontal plane, the speaker raises the eye “high” to Mars, thus forming an arc. Ruskin anchors an on the horizon and inscribes a spatial arc upward in the sky. As the poem goes on to name the constellations, a spatial pattern emerges of repeated anchoring and arcing, tracing a verbal planisphere.

The sequence begins with the northern circumpolar constellations (lines 7–11), as do the printed scientific dialogues. In Ruskinʼs sources, the dialogues typically identify only a few of these constellations—Charlesʼs Wain inside of Ursa Major, its pointer stars leading the eye to the Pole Star, which forms the tip of Ursa Minorʼs tail. In Ruskinʼs poem, the circumpolar constellations serve repeatedly as an anchor to which the sequence returns at fairly regular intervals: Cor Caroli (Charlesʼs Heart, line 13), Ursa Minor (Little Bear, line 18), Cepheus and Bootes (line 27), Lynx (line 30), and Cameleopardalis (line 33). In between these returns to the center, the poem arcs outward by naming constellations on the periphery of the planisphere. This oscillating pattern begins by naming Cygnus (the Swan, line 12), which, viewed from London, skirts the north‐northeast horizon (i.e., at 9:00 P.M. in the evening, to adopt Aspinʼs standard, and choosing the first quarter of 1828 for observation). From Cygnus, the poemʼs next‐named constellation (Cor Caroli) returns the viewer to the center, only to be directed back to the periphery with Caput Medusae (Medusaʼs Head, line 14, as originally drafted and fair‐copied), which lies on the north‐northwest horizon. This time, before returning to the center, the next named constellation circles the viewer back to the northeast horizon near Cygnus, by calling out Equuleus (Little Horse), Anser (Goose), and Lyra (Lyre) (lines 15–17). Then back to the center (Ursa Minor), only to rebound to the Cygnus group in the northeast by naming Vulpecula (the Fox, line 19; see plates 14–15 of Uraniaʼs Mirror, which picture all these constellations). The pattern is comparable to placing oneʼs thumb on the polar north of a celestial globe, or on the center‐point of a planisphere map of the northern hemisphere, and extending oneʼs fingers first toward the quadrant containing Cygnus, and then rotating toward the quadrant containing Perseus et Caput Medusae, and then back again.

Having established this sideways rotation, at line 20 the poem plunges into the southern hemisphere, casting a meridian arc from North Pole to South Pole. Thus, a circle becomes a sphere. Naming the “blessed cross”, Ruskin forms a latitudinal vector that can point simultaneously north and south, since the name cross can refer either to Cygnus, which is also known as the Northern Cross, or to Crux, the Southern Cross. To confirm the southern direction, Ruskin next names Robur Carolinum (Charlesʼs Oak, line 21), which is nearly adjacent to Crux. Then, sending a latitudinal line back up the sphere, the sequence passes through Crater (the Cup, line 22)—a southern constellation that, unlike Crux and Robur Carolinum, lies far enough north to be visible from London on the southwest horizon. Continuing north, the poem lands on Hercules and Cerberus (lines 23–24), near the northern pole. Having inscribed this latitudinal circle, the poem returns to the longitudinal circle by again naming constellations in the Cygnus group—Lacerta (the Lizard, line 25), and Aquila (the Eagle, line 26). Finally, the poem regains the northern pole by naming Cepheus, the King, and Bootes, the Huntsman, (line 27), constellations that are balanced on nearly opposite sides of the pole. And then the poem loops to the South Pole again, naming Apus (Bird of Paradise, line 28, Anglicized as the English “Hirundo” or Swallow, in Ruskinʼs translation).

In “Harry and Lucy . . . Vol 2”, Ruskinʼs Harry presents Lucy with a flat diagram of Charlesʼs Wain as an “introduction to astronomy”. Ruskin reproduces the diagram as a “plate” in his tale, copied from Joyceʼs Scientific Dialogues, where the Tutor similarly presents his pupils, Charles and James, with the diagram. (Joyce, Scientific Dialogues, 2:16; fig. 1)

Ruskin makes a point of naming constellations with British associations, including Telescopium Herschelii (Herschelʼs Telescope) and the Carolingian constellations, Cor Caroli (Charlesʼs Heart) and Rober Carolinum (Charlesʼs Oak)—the latter requiring a plunge into southern constellations invisible to British viewers. Ruskin also lends an English inflection to constellation names where possible: for example, Apus is not the tropical Bird of Paradise but the northern Swallow; Leo is not the fierce Nemean Lion but the “generous” and therefore, one supposes, British kingly beast (see the contextual glosses for these constellations; see also Astronomical Education: Astronomical Primers for Children).

British pride in the nationʼs standing in astronomy was aroused by competition with the French. The French astronomer, Nicolas‐Louis de Lacaille (1713–62), who mapped the stars in the southern hemisphere from the vantage of the Cape of Good Hope in south Africa, took aim at Robur Carolinum, which honored Charles II of England. As Lacaille created numerous new constellations of his own in the southern hemisphere, he eliminated the British honorific constellation, criticizing its inventor, the English astronomer Edmond Halley (1656–1742), for an illogical redistribution of stars originally belonging to the ancient southern constellation, Argo Navis (the Ship of the Argonauts). Restoring Roburʼs stars to the shipʼs prow, Lacaille justified uprooting Robur on ostensibly scientific grounds, given that new constellations typically were formed from “unformed” stars—that is, stars ignored by Ptolemy in plotting the ancient constellations—rather than by robbing old constellations of their stars for new configurations. In designing his own new constellations, Lacaille was inspired by an Enlightenment principle of honoring the modern arts and sciences rather than paying tribute to individual monarchs. Historians suspect Lacaille, however, of a prejudicial view when targeting specifically a British honorific constellation, while inconsistently retaining constellations that paid tribute to other nationsʼ rulers (Barentine, Lost Constellations, 352–54). The rivalry persisted in Ruskinʼs time, when an 1820s British astronomy manual bitterly mocked an attempt to rename a portion of the constellation Orion after Napoleon (Aspin, A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy (2d ed., 1825), 147; see ).

Another rivalry between British and French popular science, while not directly related to astronomy, was in the news when Ruskin was composing “The Constellations“ and may have animated his choice to name the constellation Camelopardalis (the Giraffe), although he assigns it no contextualizing epithet. In 1827–28, the first living specimen of a giraffe was imported to Britain, an event that spurred competition with France, which also received a specimen (see ). What appears a preference for constellations representing animals, birds, and fabulous beasts among Ruskinʼs choices may have been prompted by the opening of the London Zoo in March 1828.

The evidence of two successive endings in the MS IA draft of “The Constellations𠇍 points to how astronomy led young writers to conflicts over the kinds of knowledge they absorbed. Originally ending with Capricornus (the Sea‐Goat), which Ruskin set apart from the other constellation names merely by adding a rhetorical flourish (see Two Successive Endings), the subsequently drafted ending introduced an awareness that knowledge--even knowledge as seemingly neutral as a catalogue of names--called for a hierarchy of values:

As shown by the revision of the fair copy in RF T70, even this caveat did not suffice. In this peroration, Ruskin struck out "history" and substituted "knowledge", thus extending the sway of "virtue" over a potentially broader scope of ways of knowing. Objectionable knowledge in this poem took two forms, as suggested by the lines that his mother flagged for revision and Ruskin's consequent revisions: evocations of horror or violence, and examples of paganism that approached blasphemy from a Christian perspective (see Margaret Ruskinʼs Role in the Fair‐Copying Process).

In the print sources on astronomy available to Ruskin in the 1820s, the problem of reconciling astronomical knowledge--scientific or "historical" (i.e., mytholological and pre-Christian)--adopted a range of approaches. In Introduction to Astronomy Intended for Little Children, Mrs. Sherwood cannot avoid the pagan, mythical names of the constellations, but she avoids alluding to the myths themselves, defining the constellations neutrally as “remarkable groups or clusters of stars, to which names of various figures have been given”. She does not pursue the identity of the figures or their stories, presumably fearing that a fascination with the myths approaches idolatry, as suggested by a quotation she delivers from Chronicles: “For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised: he also is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the people are idols: the Lord made the heavens” (1 Chron 16: 25–26). Instead, Mrs. Sherwood directs admiration of the stars toward Christian praise: “We find in Scripture the glory of the righteous in the resurrection compared to that of the stars; by which comparison we find, that their splendour will partake of that of the Son of God himselfȁ (Sherwood, Introduction to Astronomy, 14, 12).

The correlative of Mrs. Sherwood's approach, likewise avoiding the myths but from an opposite source of aversion, Jeremiah Joyce in the Scientific Dialogues expresses a rationalist contempt for the fanciful patterns in the sky and their stories:

In between these extremes, in A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy, Jehoshaphat Aspin takes a moderate path, treating the mythic origins of the constellations as useful knowledge: “The names and figures are of very ancient date, and are still retained for the sake of distinction, as well as to avoid confusion in comparing ancient with modern observations” (A Familiar Treatise on Astronomy, 102). This functional justification does not prevent Aspin from summarizing the “fables” associated with each of the constellations—summaries keyed to the cards depicting the mythical figures, which are collected in Uraniaʼs Mirror. Aspin reconciles the pagan tales with Christian revelaton by occasionally interpreting the mythical figures as biblical types (in the contextual glosses on the poem, see Aspin's commentary, e.g., on , , and ).

Jacob Green, Aspin's American competitor for the market in illustrated guides to the mythology of the constellations, and Alexander Jamieson, whose illustrations in the Celestial Atlas were plagiarized by the artists for both Green's Astronomical Recreations and for Urania's Mirror, were given to jousting with more specific theological controversies surrounding astronomical lore. Green fumed, for example, over the controversy surrounding the Zodiac of Dendera--an Egyptian stone antiquity representating the zodiac, which was purloined by French agents during the Napoleonic era and believed by some savants to predate the generations of Noah by thousands of years. Contradicting the biblical narrative, the Zodiac of Dendera appeared to present an alignment of equinoxes with constellations that the artifact's creators could have witnessed only in an ancient sky from long before the Flood, as proven by calculations based on the precession of the earth's poles. This controversy, which provoked a surprising investment of scientific, philologial, theological, and political attention (see Buchwald and Josefowicz, The Zodiac of Paris), was countered dismissively by Green with an appeal to the popular theological lectures of Thomas Chalmers (see the contextual gloss on ). While Green's appeal is complacent and reactionary, Chalmers's blending of natural theology and Scottish evangelicalism probably reflected the standing of Ruskin's parents on questions of conflict between science and biblical authority. The family library included a copy of Chalmers's Discourses on the Christian Revelation Viewed in Connection with the Modern Astronomy (1817), which sought to refute skeptical arguments that the evidence of astronomy undermines the truth of Christian revelation (Dearden, Library of John Ruskin, 67 [no. 473]; for John James Ruskin's attendance at a lecture by Chalmers in 1838, see Ruskin Family Letters, ed. Burd, 516, 518 n. 1).

Within this range of solutions to reconciling secular astronomical learning with the sacred, Ruskin is unequal to the third approach--an engagement with the varieties of natural theology, which attempt a dialogue between science and faith--but he combines the other two approaches in the conclusion to "The Constellations". First, in his declaration that "history" or "knowledge" is less "bright" than "virtue", he effectively adopts Mrs. Sherwood's strategy of bluntly subordinating astronomical facts to Bible quotations. Comparing their treatments of the planet Mercury, which Ruskin likens to virtue, one finds Mrs. Sherwood's information about that planet dominated by a quotation from Acts. Paul and Barnabas, while preaching in the Roman colony of Lycaonia, are horrified to be confused by their audience with pagan gods, Mercury (Hermes) and Jupiter (Zeus). Amazed that Paul successfully commanded a cripple to walk, the Lycaonians "lifted up their voices, saying . . . 'The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!'". The point of the episode is to condemn as idolatrous any knowledge other than the apostles' witness. In Mrs. Sherwood's transcription:

In the exercise that Mrs. Sherwood recommends for the use of her book, the child reader is expected to memorize and recite this passage of scripture along with a few facts about the planet (see Astronomical Education: Astronomical Primers for Children). No application of the scripture is invited or necessary, since the message is flattened to the solitary implication that any learning is idolatrous that fails to lead to praise of the Creator.

Ruskin's comparison of "beauteous" Mercury with virtue entails an additional level of interpretation, however, since his choice of Mercury implies a typological reading based on knowledge that Mrs. Sherwood prohibits--the myths of Hermes. Even the story from Acts requires such knowledge to explain why the Lycaonians believed Paul to be Hermes, given that "he was the chief speaker". Ruskin may have found an explanation in a reference work on Greek and Roman mythology known to have existed in the family library, and probably acquired in the 1820s when he composed "The Constellations": The Pantheon: Or, Ancient History of the Gods of Greece and Rome, by Edward Baldwin, a pseudonym of William Godwin (Dearden, Library of John Ruskin, 21 [no. 136]; and for dating, see Books Used by Ruskin in His Youth: Untraced Books—Baldwin [pseud. William Godwin], Fables Ancient and Modern). Here, Ruskin would have found pleasure in the attributes of the god of eloquence:

While this extended gloss identifies Mercury with oratory, Ruskin's more surprising association of the deity with virtue requires examining the effects of eloquence. To make this case, The Pantheon is a compelling source, since Godwin disassociates Mercury from the evil uses of rhetoric, just as he exonerates the god from dishonest uses of buying and selling, in his role as "inventor of traffic, . . . said to have introduced the use of weights, measures, and contracts". In an exception that John James Ruskin would perhaps have appreciated, Godwin argues that "licentiousness" in the "Greek imagination" led them to have "indecorously represented Mercury as the God of thieves", since a failing lies in human nature and in the system of traffic itself, which is "too apt to degenerate into a system of fraud": "[W]hen men engage in buying and selling and barter as a profession, the more keen and grasping among them will endeavour to buy cheap and sell dear, and cozen and overreach those with whom they have any dealings" (Baldwin [pseud. Godwin], The Pantheon, 58).

Thus, whereas Mrs. Sherwood's exercise sets up a hierarchy of whole categories of knowledge, Godwin's approach undertakes to educate the child reader's own imagination, which he engages by humanizing the sacred: "There are many things related of this God, which forcibly suggest to us the idea of a man, who for his great and essential services to his fellow-beings, was worshipped as a divinity after his death". Mercury wields magical powers by virtue of his caduceus--the winged wand coiled by two serpents, which he carries--but the magic resides less in this instrument itself than in its uses, its "sovereign power in appeasing quarrels and controversies":

This direction of the imagination toward fellow-feeling characterizes Margaret Ruskin's uses of Godwin's texts. In place of the lines of "The Constellations" that she marked for revision, Ruskin substituted epithets, which reference stories of mutual help and generosity taken from Godwin's Aesopian collection, Fables Ancient and Modern, Adapted for the Use of Children (see the contextual glosses on and on ).

In the 1820s, astronomy education for children was popularized as a form of theatrical entertainment. Known as Lenten astronomy lectures, since the entertainments could be held in London theaters during the holy season, when plays were forbidden, the timing of these spectacles fits with the April–June 1828 terminus a quem for composition of “The Constellations”, and particularly with the period when parts of the poem might have been based on actual astronomical observations (see Date; and “The Constellations” as a Record of Actual Astronomical Observations). In 1828, Easter Day fell on 6 April. (John James Ruskinʼs accounts for April 1828 record “Abernethys Lect^rs” for 12s, but this entry probably refers to published lectures by the surgeon, John Abernethy [1764–1831]; Account Book, 6r).

The astronomy lecture circuit—originating in the late eighteenth century, becoming a craze in the 1820s, and remaining a staple of popular science instruction at least until mid—century—has been researched by Hsiang—Fu Huang, who finds that its performative and entrepreneurial aspects overlapped with the insitutional framework of lecturing that was supposedly displacing these popular forms of instruction in the 1820s (Huang, “A Shared Arena”). A target audience for the lectures included children, as Huang notes (“When Urania Meets Terpsichore”, 60–61), astronomy being regarded as an uplifting area of knowledge religiously as well as scientifically. As a guidebook of London amusements solemnly assured parents about the content of Lenten astronomy lectures—even as performed by George Bartley (1784–1858), who was not a scientist but a comic actor, famed for his portrayals of Shakespeareʼs Falstaff—the spectacle would convey “to the minds of their children the lofty and magnificent ideas that Astronomy supplies”—namely,

Even as educational entertainments for children, however, the Lenten astronomy lectures were viewed with some criticism by educators, as Ruskin would have known from Maria Edgeworthʼs Frank (see Books Used by Ruskin in His Youth: Physical Descriptions—Beinecke, Frank: A Sequel). In the tale, after the protagonist, Frank, has attempted and failed on his own to construct an orrery, a model of the solar system, his parents take him and his cousin Mary to an astronomy lecture at a theater. The fictional performance describes something like the large‐scale, illuminated or “transparent” stage orreries with Greek‐inspired names like Eidouranion, which were featured in the Lenten lectures. These combined the older mechanical, three—dimensional orrery that reproduced the revolutions of the sun and planets with transparancies projected by a magic lantern (see Huang, “When Urania Meets Terpsichore”, 49–51, 66 n. 23). For Edgeworth, criticism of these spectacles pertains not just to quack lecturers and creaky, dysfunctional orreries, which Huang finds in satires of the day (“When Urania Meets Terpsichore”, 62–63); as a more fundamental criticism, Edgeworth points to conflicts with reformersʼ principles of effective pedagogy.

From Edgeworthʼs viewpoint, the theatrical spectacle is a grand but passive presentation, discouraging learning through experience and self—discovery. Even though Frank had failed to complete his own orrery because he over—reached his abilities, the stage orrery is “particularly interesting to Frank” thanks only to “the pains he had taken, and the various attempts he had made, to understand and to represent” the revolving bodies. The other “little children” in the audience went “dead asleep” and “even he”, Frank, “after all his reading in [Jeremiah Joyceʼs] Scientific Dialogues, had much difficulty sometimes in understanding both the machine and the lecturer”. Edgeworthʼs most severe criticism is aimed at the failure to scale knowledge to the age—appropriate accessibility of young listeners. The lecturer overwhelms the audience “with a vast number of words, which” Frank “strained his attention” to understand, trusting that the lengthy explanations “were all necessary”, yet “of which nearly half were nothing to the purpose” and put Mary to sleep altogether. It is the sight of the real moon on the ride home that prompts a spontaneous appreciation of sublimity from Mary: “‘How beautiful!’ said she: ‘and how—’ sublime! she would have said, but she did not know the word well enough: she knew the feeling”. Feelings are represented as accessible, regardless of age and learning; and despite Edgeworthʼs promotion of the Industrial Sublime in Harry and Lucy Concluded, here Frank responds to Maryʼs admiration: “How wonderful! What is the orrery compared to this, Mary! . . . How grand! how different from any thing that the most ingenious man in this world can make!” (Edgeworth, Frank: A Sequel, 2:251, 253, 255, 249, 256, 257).

The opposite effect on children was promised by promoters of astronomy as a theatrical spectacle: astronomical science in particular, it was argued, benefits by the intervention of art. According to an 1826 guidebook, astronomy lectures were the epitome of science enhanced of metropolitan “improvements and amusements”:

Wellbeloved devotes two pages describing in detail how a new “hydraulic” orrery has improved on older “instruments . . . hitherto . . . constructed by a complication of wheel‐work, which, although extremely ingenious, are nevertheless almost unequal to the imitation of those equable, silent, and undeviating movements, which characterize the grandest works of the Creator”. Yet, despite the interest the reader is assumed to take in two close pages of technical description of how hydraulic improvements have brought the orrery closer to the operations of the Creator, the accompanying engraving sets the machine in a “design of our own”—a moonlit natural landscape like the scene that impresses Mary and Frank as tending to the disadvantage of technology (London Lions for Country Cousins and Friends about Town, 6–7).

Despite these contradictions with the Edgeworthian basis of Ruskinʼs education, some elements of the Lenten lectures correspond to aspects of Ruskinʼs poem. The lectures appear to have presented a somewhat uniform set of topics. In Edgeworthʼs fictional treatment, the topics resemble those listed in An Epitome of Astronomy . . . as Illustrated by the Eidouranion, a pamphlet published to accompany lectures by the entrepreneurs, the Walker family, first published in 1782 and here quoted from the edition of 1812:

• Scene 1. “The Sun and Earth: with the Zodiacal Constellations” (p. 6).
  • “This scene is surrounded by transparent paintings of the twelve signs of the Zodiac, shewing how the Sun, or rather the Earth, enters and passes through Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, &c.” (p. 8).
• Scene 2. “Sun, Earth, and Moon: Phases and Eclipses” (p. 9).
• Scene 3. “Theory of Tides” (p. 13)
  • In Frank: A Sequel, “By this time the lecturer had come to an explanation of the cause of the tides, which neither Mary nor Frank could comprehend. His father judiciously and kindly took them out to rest their attention, and refresh themselves while this lasted. They went into a cool room, where they eat oranges and biscuits, and drank lemonade, till the tides were over” (2:252).
• Scene 4. “The Solar System” (p. 16), including “Four New Planets” (p. 23) and “Comets” (p. 29).
• Last Scene. This final scene is not announced in the pamphlet by a separate heading, as is the case with the four preceding scenes, but embedded in a peroration on the infinitude of the universe: “. . . how inadequate must the utmost stretch of finite faculties be to represent infinity! The stars, disposed in constellations, and surrounded by concentric circles, may perhaps assist the imagination a little: The attempt in the LAST SCENE, if not admired, we hope will be forgiven. But was it possible we could actually take our flight into infinite space, or be borne on the wings of lightning, to the most distant fixed Star we can now see, even there, perhaps we should find ourselves on the confines of creation, and see as many stars before us as we left behind! For space has neither top nor bottom in it; it is a circle whose centre is every where, but whose circumference is no where!” (pp. 36–37).

According to this description, the “Last Scene”, at least as delivered by the Walker family, which by 1828 had passed into the management of Deane Franklin Walker (1778–1865 [Huang, “When Urania Meets Terpsichore”, 50]), the most comprehensive view of the constellations was presented as the finale. Could Ruskin have conceived of his poem as an ekphrastic version of this final, totalizing scene? Apparently, in this show, a transparency exhibited a circle of the starry night, surrounded by concentric rings to suggest infinitude. In an engraving by I. Stow (ca. 1770–1823), after E. F. Burney (1760–1848), The proscenium of the English Opera House in the Strand, (Late Lyceum.) as it appeared on the Evening of the 21st March 1817, with Walkerʼs Exhibition of the Eidouranion, published by Robert Wilkinson, Scene 1 represented the earth and sun by turning the orbit vertically to the audience, enclosing this revolution of the Eidouranion within a projection of an outer ring, which showed the Zodiac constellations. The Zodiac constellations were represented by their respective mythological figures. Perhaps the transparency for the Last Scene exhibited a similar ring of constellations in their mythological guise, which Ruskin in his way has reproduced.

The beginning of the poem, however, starts with a version of Scene 1 in the Walkersʼ exhibition—or more precisely, a portion of their Scene 4—with the rising and setting of Venus and Mars. As noted earlier, the poem is atypical of Dayʼs and Joyceʼs introductions to the constellations, which begin with finding the circumpolar constellations in the sky. Ruskin incorporates that observation as the second stage of his poem. The Zodiac constellations form a distinct piece within the poem. The most significant point to draw from the context of the Lenten astronomy lectures is that Ruskinʼs catalogue may have attempted a sublime totality, an expression of religious awe.