58 SCENERY IN A PATCH 



which are tinged with the glare of the descending luminary, 

 and which seem to be impatiently waiting for his departure 

 in order to discharge their pent-up wrath on the bosom of 

 the night. In the South Atlantic the sunset has a milder 

 and more sober aspect. In the Eastern tropics it has gene- 

 rally an overpowering fierceness, as though the last expres- 

 sion of the solar heat should be the greatest. But during 

 the summer, in temperate latitudes there is often a serenely 

 beautiful horizon, a mellowness of light, together with a rich 

 and taried coloring on the sky, which combine to render the 

 European sunsets far more attractive than those which are 

 intertropical. The milder radiance of the " great light " 

 in parting from us presents a picture to the eye of the sen- 

 timent of the All-Merciful, "Again, a little while and ye 

 shall see me." And how open to observation are wise Con- 

 trivance and bountiful Design in the unvarying position of 

 the sun in the centre of our system, and the axical rotation 

 of his tributaries, which not only guarantee the regular 

 return of their surfaces to his presence, but the undimin- 

 ished power and splendor of his beams ! If, adopting the 

 nebular hypothesis, we suppose the masses of the sun and of 

 the planets to have been gradually formed, under control of 

 the law of attraction, the question still arises, how it came 

 to pass, that the self-luminous matter was collected into one 

 mass at the centre, and not gathered into many masses like 

 the matter of the planets. So striking did this circum- 

 stance appear to Newton, that he remarked in his first let- 

 ter to Bentley : " I do not think it explicable by mere nat- 

 ural causes, but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and 

 contrivance of a Voluntary Agent." 



The mean distance of the sun from our earth, as deter- 

 mined by observation of the transit of Venus, is ninety-Jive 

 millions of miles ; and according to Laplace, this must be 

 within iV f the true distance, so that no error is involved 

 either way greater than about a million of miles. The im- 



