

OP INFINITE SPACE. 79 



distance of Sirius as the site of some clusters; a com- 

 parison with which the distance of the stars themselves 

 from us, mighty as it appears, shrinks into insignificance. 

 Such is Creation ! or at least that part of it with which we 

 have some acquaintance. These are views which render the 

 language of Coleridge not chargeable with extravagance: 

 "It is surely not impossible," said that highly gifted man, 

 " that to some infinitely superior Being the whole universe 

 may be as one plain the distance between planet and 

 planet being only as the pores in a grain of sand, and the 

 spaces between system and system no greater than the in- 

 tervals between one grain and a, grain adjacent /" 



The dimensions of one of these nebula alone is so enor- 

 mous, that it subtends an angle of nearly 10 ', and suppos- 

 ing it at the distance of a star of the eighth magnitude, its 

 size must be at least 3,208,600,000,000,000,000, or more 

 than three trillions of times that of our sun. Upon com- 

 paring the present appearance of this great nebula with for- 

 mer drawings of it, it appears to have undergone some 

 marked changes, at least if the older representations are to 

 be depended upon. The following memorandum was made 

 by Herschel when he viewed it in 1774 : " Its shape is not 

 like that which Dr. Smith has delineated in his ' Optics/ 

 though somewhat resembling it ; from this we may infer 

 that there are undoubtedly changes among the regions of 

 the fixed stars ; and perhaps, from a careful observation of 

 this lucid spot, something may be concluded concerning the 

 nature of it." What this immense looming mass portends, 

 we know not, but the surmise is not improbable, that here 

 we have the germ of systems of worlds to be evolved in 

 future ages, where Life, Beauty, and Intelligence are 

 destined to play their various phases. 



An object of the same class appears in the girdle of An- 

 dromeda, called the " transcendently beautiful Queen of the 

 nebulse," the oldest known nebula, supposed also to be one of 



