OF INFINITE SPACE. 59 



.4 



mense magnitude of the solar body appears from the fact 

 that he occupies so much space in the heavens, and presents 

 such a stately aspect, with so vast an interval between us. If 

 a locomotive had been started five centuries and a half ago, 

 and had been travelling incessantly at the rate of twenty 

 miles an hour, it would only now have accomplished a space 

 equal to that which lies between the terrestrial and the solar 

 surface. Though light comes from the former to the latter in 

 about eight minutes, a cannon ball would not perform the 

 same feat, retaining its full force, under twenty-two years. 

 That an object therefore should be so splendidly visible as 

 the sun, so far removed, and should so powerfully influence 

 us with light and heat, argues the stupendous dimensions of 

 his volume. His direct light is supposed to be equal to 

 that of 5570 wax candles placed at the distance of one 

 foot from an object and so great is the power of his rays, 

 that some of the men employed in constructing the Ply- 

 mouth Breakwater, had their caps burnt in a diving bell, 

 thirty feet under water, owing to their sitting under the 

 focal point of the convex glasses in the upper part of the 

 machine. His real diameter of 882,000 miles is equal to 

 111-J- times that of our earth; "and his circumference of 

 3,764,600 miles describes a bulk nearly a million and 

 a quarter times larger than our globe, and above five 

 hundred times greater than the united volume of all the 

 planetary bodies of our system that revolve around him. If 

 his mass occupied the place of the earth, it would fill up the 

 entire orbit of our moon, and extend into space as far again 

 as the path of that satellite. The density of the solar sub- 

 stance is, however, far less than that of the matter of our 

 globe. If the two bodies could be weighed in a balance, the 

 weight of the sun would not preponderate in the same pro- 

 portion as his bulk, but be only 354,936 times heavier. This 

 proportion is about a fourth less than that of his magni- 

 tude ; so that the same extent of solar substance would be 



