286 METEOES AND AEROLITES. 



centre of attraction, ages may yet be required to show. The 

 grandeur which belongs to such combinations of force, space, 

 and time, cannot be expressed by mere words, and can 

 scarcely be appreciated by numbers. It needs a particular 

 faculty to follow with full comprehension these greater phe- 

 nomena of the universe; and especially those of sidereal 

 astronomy, to which belongs the translation of the solar 

 system just noticed. It is the peculiar glory of astronomical 

 science in our own time (the glory of such men as Herschel, 

 Bessel, Struve, and Argelander) to have determined proper 

 motions in those great luminaries which bear the name of 

 fixed stars-, to have assigned orbits and periods of revolu- 

 tion to numerous double stars; to have obtained the parallax 

 and measured the distance of many ; to have determined 

 not only the proper motion of our own Sun but also its direc- 

 tion and rate of translation in space. Few can fully under- 

 stand all that is required in such researches ; the time and 

 intense watchfulness ; the exquisite delicacy of instrumental 

 observation; and yet more the genius and mathematical 

 power which can elicit certainty from amidst the conflicting 

 conditions seeming to render it impossible. 



Tempted by the subject to this short digression, we 

 now recur to the argument before us, in which we may pre- 

 sume the second motion of the earth that of revolution 

 about the Sun to be chiefly concerned. When we con- 

 sider this orbit to be so vast that we are, on the 1st of 

 July, distant nearly 190 millions of miles from the place we 

 occupied on the 1st of January, returning again to the same 

 point six months afterwards, we obtain some conception, 

 though a faint one in reality, of the spaces passed through in 

 this great annual motion. If then there be other portions 

 of matter whencesoever derived, and however fragmentary 

 or attenuated in form and kind revolving round the Sun, 

 (and we cannot suppose any matter to be stationary in space) 



