114 ASTRONOMY AS A SCIENCE. THE SUN. 



amazement ; though even ancient poetry described it 

 as the ' Via in coelo sublimis,' the 6 Iter ad alta tecta 

 Tonantis.' One who passes from the hazy skies of our 

 island to the splendid midnights of the Mediterranean 

 or of tropical lands, may for a time be moved by the 

 wonderful spectacle above him. But familiarity here 

 also speedily deadens the impression, save to such a 

 poet's eye as that of Lucretius, who in some of his 

 finest lines (ii. 1025 et seq.) attributes the difference 

 with which these wonders are regarded to the cause 

 just stated. 



Paley says, and rightly, that astronomy does not 

 furnish the best argument to natural theology. The 

 objects are too vast, and their final purpose too obscure, 

 for a just appreciation in this sense. A single fitness 

 to some manifest purpose in a single organ of the body 

 affords more instant and entire conviction. Stellar 

 astronomy in particular, as developed by the labours 

 of the last hundred years, deals with numbers and dis- 

 tances so far beyond all comprehension, that common 

 belief recoils at the very ingress to this great vision of 

 the universe ; and higher intellects can hardly pursue 

 the facts admitted to the conclusions they involve. I 

 have known men of strong reasoning powers, but 

 otherwise directed, sceptical as to their reality, and 

 needing to be told of the return of Halley's comet or 

 Encke's at the predicted time, and of eclipses and tran- 

 sits exact to the minute foretold long before, or to be 

 shown a nebulous spot in the sky resolved by the tele- 

 scope into innumerable stars, before their belief could 

 be got for the yet more profound attainments of the 



