THE STELLAR UNIVERSE. 



unsatisfied, is as urgent as before in its questions regarding the 

 remainder of immensity. However vast the dimensions of this 

 mass of suns be, they are nevertheless finite. How stupendous 

 soever be the space included within them, it is still nothing 

 compared to the immensity which lies outside ! Is that immensity 

 a vast solitude ? Are its unexplored realms dark and silent ? 

 Has Omnipotence circumscribed its agency, and has Infinite 

 Beneficence left those unfathomed regions destitute of evidence of 

 His power ? 



That the infinitude of space should exist without a purpose t 

 unoccupied by any works of creation, is plainly incompatible with 

 all our notions of the character and attributes of the Author of the 

 universe, whether derived from the voice of revelation or from the 

 light of nature. "We should therefore infer, even in the absence 

 of direct evidence, that some works of creation are dispersed 

 through those spaces which lie beyond the limits of that vast 

 stellar cluster of which our system is a part. Nay, we should be 

 led, by the most obvious analogies, to conjecture that other stellar 

 clusters, like our own, are dispersed through immensity, separated 

 probably by distances as much greater than those which inter- 

 vene between star and star, as the latter are greater than those 

 which separate the bodies of the solar system. But if such dis- 

 tant clusters existed, it may be objected, that they must be visible 

 to us ; that although diminished, perhaps, to mere spots on the 

 firmament, they would still be rendered apparent, were it only as 

 confused whitish patches, by the telescope ; that as the stars of" 

 the milky way assume to the naked eye the appearance of mere 

 whitish nebulosity, so the far more distant stars of other clusters, 

 which cannot be perceived at all by the naked eye, would, to tele- 

 scopes of adequate power, present the same whitish nebulous 

 appearance ; and that we might look forward without despair to 

 such augmentation of the powers of the telescope as may even 

 enable us to perceive them to be actual clusters of stars. 



77. Such anticipations have accordingly been realised. In 

 various parts of the firmament objects are seen which, to the 

 naked eye, appear like stars seen through a mist, and sometimes 

 as nebulous specks, which might be, and not infrequently have been, 

 mistaken for comets. With ordinary telescopes these objects arc- 

 visible in very considerable numbers, and were observed nearly a 

 century ago. In the Connaissance des Temps, for 1784, Messier, 

 then so celebrated for his observations on comets, published a 

 catalogue of 103 objects of this class, of many of which he gave 

 drawings, with which all observers who search for comets ought 

 to be familiar, to avoid being misled by their resemblance to them. 

 The improved powers of the telescope speedily disclosed to astro- 

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