168 RAMBLES AND REVERIES. 



nation, are miserably inadequate to express the 

 grandeur and massiveness of the heavenly host, 

 or the amplitude of those remote firmaments which 

 are only dimly seen with the highest telescopic 

 powers. 



The great globe on which we live has not been 

 folly explored, and yet it is only a speck of dust 

 amid the crowds of worlds that coruscate in the 

 lustrous concave of the sky. The bulk of Saturn 

 is a thousand times that of the earth, while the 

 mighty Jupiter is fifteen hundred times as large 

 as our planet. But the sun himself is five hundred 

 times as great as all his satellites put together, and 

 is equal in cubic measurement to a million and a 

 quarter of such globes as ours. 



When we turn our attention from the magnitude 

 of the planets to the dimensions of their orbits, we 

 are utterly incapable of grasping the stupendous 

 distances that confront us. A locomotive which 

 would travel round the earth in a month would 

 require over two thousand years to traverse its 

 orbit, and the incredible space of sixty thousand 

 years would be necessary in order to accomplish 

 the journey round the orbit of Neptune. 



But these measurements even, although far 

 beyond the scope of our faculties, dwindle into 

 nothing when compared with the extent of the 

 innumerable worlds that shine like glittering specks 

 upon 



' ' That broad and ample road 

 Whose dust is gold and pavement stars." 



Our sun is in reality one of the fixed stars, and 



