124 COSMOS. 



two thousand years the annals of different nations had recorded 

 falls of meteoric stones, many of which had been attested 

 beyond all doubt by the evidence of irreproachable eye-wit^ 

 nesses, notwithstanding the important part enacted by the 

 Bretylia in the meteor- worship of the ancients notwithstand- 

 ing the fact of the companions of Cortes having seen an aero- 

 lite at Cholula which had fallen on the neighbouring pyramid, 

 notwithstanding that Caliphs and Mongolian chiefs had 

 caused swords to be forged from recently fallen meteoric 

 stones, nay, notwithstanding that several persons had been 

 struck dead by stones falling from heaven, as for instance, a 

 monk at Crema on the 4th of September, 1511, another monk 

 at Milan in 1650, and two Swedish sailors on board ship in 

 1674, yet this great cosmical phenomenon remained almost 

 wholly unheeded, and its intimate connection with other plane- 

 tary systems unknown, until attention was drawn to the subject 

 by Chladni, who had alieady gained immortal renown by his 

 discovery of the sound-figures. He who is penetrated with a 

 sense of this mysterious connection, and whose mind is open 

 to deep impressions of nature, will feel himself moved by the 

 deepest and most solemn emotion at the sight of every star 

 that shoots across the vault of heaven, no less than at the 

 glorious spectacle of meteoric swarms in the November phe- 

 nomenon or on St. Lawrence's day. Here motion is suddenly 

 revealed in the midst of nocturnal rest. The still radiance of 

 the vault of heaven is for a moment animated with life and 

 movement. In the mild radiance left on the track of the 

 shooting star imagination pictures the lengthened path of the 

 meteor through the vault of heaven, whilst, everywhere around, 

 the luminous asteroids proclaim the existence of one common 

 material universe. 



If we compare the volume of the innermost of Saturn's satel- 

 lites, or that of Ceres, with the immense volume of the Sun, 

 all relations of magnitude vanish from our minds. The ex- 

 tinction of suddenly resplendent stars in Cassiopea, Cygnus, 

 and Serpentarius, have already led to the assumption of other 

 and non-luminous cosmical bodies. We now know that the 

 meteoric asteroids, spherically agglomerated into small masses, 

 revolve round the Sun, intersect like comets the orbits of the 

 luminous larger planets, and become ignited either in the 

 vicinity of our atmosphere or in its upper strata. 



