512 THE SUN A SMALL STAR. 
The number of stars exhibited in the whole heavens by the more powerful tele- 
scopes is not so great, when compared with the smaller instruments and with the 
naked eye, as theoretically it should be; a fact explained by astronomeys, on the 
supposition that a portion of the light is absorbed or extinguished during its 
passage through such immense ranges. 
Now perhaps a different explanation might be found by assuming such vast differ-. 
ences in the intrinsic brightness of stars, scattered and intermingled through all 
space, as for aught we know may exist. Near us the small as well as large ones 
would be seen; but a few billions of miles in depth, at the outer limits of telescopic 
penetrability, carried over the whole sphere, would furnish room for concealment to 
hosts of bodies like our Sun, while a few only of very unusual bulk and bright- 
ness, interspaced with them, would appear as the faintest discernible points of light, 
when viewed through the most potent telescope to which the eye of man has ever 
been applied. 
