CHAFTEK IY. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SIDEREAL UNIVERSE 

 ANALOGICALLY RETRACED. 



FROM contemplations of our own solar system, let us now 

 extend our observations and reflections into the immeasurable 

 realms of the stellar universe beyond, and see what gleams of 

 light we can obtain in reference to the natural history of that 

 grand System of systems, of which our own congeries of 

 worlds forms, as it were, but an atom. Facts and analogies 

 which need not here be particularized, have established the 

 universal belief among astronomers that the so-called " fixed" 

 stars are but so many remote suns shining to other systems. 

 These are not distributed equally through the celestial spaces, 

 as though they had been scattered at random from an Omnip- 

 otent hand ; but they are arranged in distinct clusters^ or firma- 

 ments, so called, which have little or no apparent connection 

 with each other. Telescopic observations have proved that 

 the bright girdle called the " Milky Way," which surrounds 

 our heavens, is only a grand congeries of stars, so remote, and 

 owing to their remoteness from us, apparently so near to each 

 other, that their intermingling rays reach us only in the ap- 

 pearance of a confused whitish light. Of this vast zone of 

 shining orbs, all the less remote stars, including our own sun, 

 are members, their varying directions being, in a measure, the 

 result of differences in their distances from the point of observa- 

 tion, and hence, of the different angles at which they are viewed. 



