OF INFINITE SPACE. 63 



wise when the day has closed with the mariner at sea ; the 

 peasant homeward tracking his way through the drifted 

 snow, the traveler in a strange country ; and the barbarous 

 migratory hordes of men. To such, when the day has de- 

 parted, the moon pursues her nightly circuit through the 

 heavens in beauty and brightness, as a friend in need, chas- 

 ing away the gloom, revealing the features of the scenery? 

 and disclosing the right path.* 



THE STARS OF OUR SYSTEM, AND OF OTHER SYSTEMS, 



THEIR NUMBER, DISTANCES, AND MAGNITUDE. " From the 



earliest ages," says Professor Mitchell, "these bright and 

 beautiful orbs, which fill the heavens, have fixed the atten- 

 tion fastened the gaze excited the curiosity of every con- 

 templative mind. From the Chaldean shepherd, who, while 

 he watched his flocks by night, was wrapped in the contem- . 

 plation of these bright clusters that rose and silently pur- 

 sued their solemn course through Heaven, and quietly sank 

 beneath the horizon, from that early day, through all ages, 

 down to the modern Astronomer, who, with his mighty in- 

 struments, penetrates to the utmost bounds of creation, these 

 objects have ever been regarded with peculiar interest and 

 delight." New York Tribune. 



The prevailing ideas of men concerning the multitude of 

 the stars, though founded upon wrong premises, are yet in 

 harmony with the literal fact, for the conclusion drawn from 

 the hasty observation of the eye, which a persevering sur- 

 vey would at once disprove, is itself established by telescopic 

 examination. So enormous is the number of the stars, yet 

 so completely incalculable are they, as to admit of their 



* The comparative proportion which the light of the moon leaves to 

 that of the sun is a problem to the solution of which the attention of seve- 

 ral philosophers has been directed. The whole heavens covered with 

 full moons would scarcely make daylight. From various experiment* 

 that have been made, it is supposed that the lunar light is only equal to 

 the 300,000th part that of the sun. 



