4 THE BODIES OF SPACE, 



the nearest of them must needs be placed at a mighty interval 

 beyond our own. The elder Herschel, directing his wonderful 

 tube towards the sides of our system, where stars are planted 

 most rarely, and raising the powers of the instrument to the 

 required pitch, was enabled with awe-struck mind to see sus- 

 pended in the vast empyrean astral systems, or, as he called 

 them, firmaments, resembling our own. Like light cloudlets 

 to a certain power of the telescope, they resolved themselves, 

 under a greater power, into stars, though these generally 

 seemed no larger than the finest particles of diamond dust. 

 The general forms of these systems are various. So also are 

 the distances, as proved by the different degrees of telescopic 

 power necessary to bring them into view. The furthest ob- 

 served by the astronomer were estimated by him as thirty- 

 five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its 

 distance to be about twenty millions of millions of miles. 



More recently, the Earl of Rosse has brought a superb in- 

 strument to bear upon these distant objects, and revealed them 

 in more wondrous forms than before. Many which Herschel 

 saw only as filmy matter, spread in patches over the sky, are 

 now found to be vast aggregations of stars. Many which to 

 the elder philosopher seemed round and well defined, are seen 

 by his successor to have branches starting out in different 

 directions filaments, as he calls them the language appli- 

 cable to the smallest of objects examined in our hands, being 

 thus found applicable to the promontories of those great conti- 

 nents, each atom of which may be said to be millions of miles 

 removed from another. 



Such is the universe, as developed to the perceptions of the 

 modern philosopher different indeed from that of our fore- 

 fathers, who did not know the bounds even of this little world, 

 and beheld in the sun, moon, and stars, only a set of menial 

 lights, ordained, usefully or not, to attend it. And to such 

 contemplations are we raised by modern science, if we choose 

 to leave for them the strifes and self-seekings of our social 

 scene. Thinking of such acquisitions of knowledge, one can- 

 not but go warmly along with the living Herschel when he 

 speaks of the discoveries of Struve, Bessel, and Henderson, as 

 among the fairest flowers of civilization. ' They surely justify, 

 as he says, " the vast expenditure of time and talent which 

 have led up to them," and show that " there are yet behind 

 not only secrets of nature which shall increase the wealth and 

 power of man, but TRUTHS which shall ennoble the age and 



