THE HAMBURG ACCOUNT OF WRIGHT'S THEORY. 189 



G 



H 



A 



O 



K 



1) 



a kind of regular irregularity of objects. And next, let 

 us consider what the consequence would be to an eye 

 situated near the centre point or anywhere about the middle 

 plane, as at the point A. Is it not, think 

 you, very evident that the stars would 

 there appear promiscuously dispersed 

 on each side and more and more 

 inclining to disorder as the observer 

 would advance his station towards 

 either surface and nearer to B or c; 

 but in the direction of the general 

 plane towards H or D by the continual 

 approximation of the visual rays crowd- 

 ing together, as at H betwixt the limits 

 D and G, they must infallibly terminate 

 in the utmost confusion. If your optics 

 fail you before you arrive at these exter- 

 nal regions, only imagine how infinitely 

 greater the number of stars would be in 

 those remote parts, arising thus from 

 their continual crowding behind one 

 another, as all other objects do towards 

 the horizon point of their perspective, 

 which ends but with infinity. Thus all their rays at last so 

 near uniting must, meeting in the eye, appear as almost in 

 contact, and form a perfect zone of light. This I take to 

 be the real case and the true nature of our Milky Way ; 

 and all the irregularity we observe in it at the "earth, I 

 judge to be entirely owing to our sun's position in this great 

 firmament, and may easily be solved by his excentricity and 

 the diversity- of motion that may naturally be conceived 

 amongst the stars themselves, which may here and there, 

 in different parts of the heavens, occasion a cloudy knot 

 of stars, as perhaps at E. 



"But now to apply this hypothesis to our present 

 purpose and reconcile it to our ideas of a circular crea- 

 tion and the known laws of orbicular motion, so as to 

 make the beauty and harmony of the whole consistent 

 with the visible order of its parts, our reason must 

 now have recourse to the analogy of things. It being 

 once agreed that the stars are in motion, which, as I 

 have endeavoured in my last letter to show, is not far 



