6'2 PARALLAX OF THE STARS INSENSIBLE. [SECT. vn. 



rate of 190,000 miles in a second, would take more than 

 three years to travel over that space. One of the nearest 

 stars may therefore have been kindled or extinguished more 

 than three years, before we could have been aware of so 

 mighty an event. But this distance must be small, when 

 compared with that of the most remote of the bodies which 

 are visible in the heavens. The fixed stars are undoubtedly 

 luminous like the sun ; it is therefore probable that they are 

 not nearer to one another than the sun is to the nearest of 

 them. In the milky way and the other starry nebulas, some 

 of the stars that seem to us to be close to others, may be far 

 behind them in the boundless depth of space ; nay, may be 

 rationally supposed to be situate many thousand times 

 farther off. Light would therefore require thousands of 

 years to come to the earth from those myriads of suns of 

 which our own is but " the remote companion." 



