50 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



be said to tend to enlarge our views of the world of 

 stars. On the contrary, it might he urged, the views 

 which had prevailed before, presented us with nobler 

 conceptions of the universe. For we were able to 

 recognise in the thousands of nebulae which fleck the 

 dark background of the sky, sidereal systems as noble 

 as that of which our sun is a member ; and in the 

 existence of countless star-systems we had a spectacle 

 to contemplate before which the human intellect was 

 compelled to bow in its utter powerlessness and insig 

 nificance : whereas it seems as though the new views 

 would reduce the scope of our vision to a single 

 galaxy of stars, unless some few members of the nebular 

 system may still be looked on as outer star-schemes. 



But on a closer inspection of the views I have been 

 maintaining, it will appear that they largely enhance 

 our conceptions of the scale on which the world of 

 stars is constructed. Until now it has been held that 

 the telescopes which man has been able to construct 

 enabled us to scan the limits of our sidereal system, 

 and to pass so readily beyond those limits as to become 

 sensible of the existence of thousands of other schemes 

 as noble as our own or nobler. But if the new views 

 should be established, we should be compelled to recog 

 nise in the world of stars a system which our most 

 powerful instruments are not fully able to gauge. The 

 clusters of stars, whose splendour has so worthily ex 

 cited the admiration of the Herschels, the Eosses, the 

 Struves, and the Bonds, must be looked upon as among 

 the glories of our own system, and indicative of the 



