And what do we know of the jixed stars f A 

 great deal one would imagine : since, like the Most 

 High, we too tell their number , yea, and call them 

 all by their names / Those, at least, which appear 

 to the naked eye, both in tiie northern and southern 

 hemisphere. But what are these, in comparison of 

 those which our glasses discover, even in an incon- 

 siderable part of the firmament 1 What are one or 

 two and twenty hundred, to those which we discover 

 in the milky way alone ? How many are there then 

 in the whole expanse, in the boundless field of -ether] 

 But to what end do they serve? To illuminate 

 worlds ? To impart light and heat to their several 

 choirs of planets? Or (as the ingenious Mr. Hut- 

 chiuson supposes) to gild the extremities of the solar 

 sphere, which, according to him, is the only inhabited 

 part of the universe; and to minister, in some unknown 

 way, to the perpetual circulation of light and spirit? 



For our sakes only, that great man apprehends 

 the comets also to run their amazing circuits 1 But 

 what are comets ? Planets not fully formed ? Or 

 planets destroyed by a conflagration? Or bodies 

 of an wholly different nature, of which, therefore, 

 we can form no idea ? How easy is it to form a 

 thousand conjectures : how hard to determine any 

 thing concerning them? Can their huge revolutions 

 be even tolerably accounted for, by the principles of 

 gravitation and projection? Has not Dr. Rogers 



