THE SUN. 63 



(21.) But how shall I attempt to convey to you any 

 conception of the scale on which the great work of 

 warming and lighting is carried on in the sun ? It is 

 not by large words that it can be done. All "word- 

 painting" must break down, and it is only by bringing 

 before you the consideration of great facts in the sim- 

 plest language, that there is any chance of doing it. In 

 the very outset here is the greatest fact of all the enor- 

 mous waste, or what appears to us to be waste the ex- 

 cessive, exorbitant prodigality of diffusion of the sun's 

 light and heat. No doubt it is a great thing to light 

 and warm the whole surface of our globe. Then look at 

 such globes as Jupiter and Saturn and the others. This, 

 as you will soon see, is something astounding ; but then 

 look what a trifling space they occupy in the whole 

 sphere of diffusion around the sun. Conceive that little 

 globe of the earth, such as we have described it in com- 

 parison with our six feet sphere, removed 12,000 of its 

 own diameters, that is to say, 210 yards from the centre 

 of such a sphere (for that would be the relative size of 

 its orbit) ! why, it would be an invisible point, and would 

 require a strong telescope to be seen at all as a thing 

 having size and shape. It occupies only the 75,oooth 

 part of the circumference of the circle which it describes 

 about the sun. So that 75,000 of such earths at that 

 distance, and in that circle placed side by side, would 



netism) ; or than his plan for writing books by the concourse of acci- 

 dental letters, and selection of such combinations as form syllables, 

 words, sentences, &c., which has a close parallel in the learned 

 theories of the production of the existing races of animals by natural 

 selection. 



