48 HISTORY OF ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERY. 



of our own nature with reference also to the inferior animals, both the feeble and the 

 powerful, the tractable and the untamed in relation, too, to the vegetable productions of 

 the earth, whether flourishing in green savannahs, or rooted in the clefts of the rock we 

 have a law of gradual formation now operating, which vindicated the idea from the charge 

 of a vain conceit, that ananalogical law has operated with reference to the earth itself and the 

 various worlds that compose our system. This theory is now merely referred to as a matter 

 of history, its foundations having recently been removed by mightier telescopic power. 

 From the view which has now been taken, it is evidently no doubtful point to us, 



" Whether the sun, predominant in heaven, 

 Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun ; 

 He from the east his flaming road begin, 

 Or she from the west her silent course advance 

 With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps 

 On her soft axle." .... 



How incumbent the duty upon us, then, as we have largely benefited by our predecessors, 

 that, as faithful stewards of their gifts, we should hand them down to posterity with an 

 increase of value ! How grand, and yet how simple, those views of the universe, upon 

 the evidence of which we are now invited to gaze ! The Sun, a central orb, attended 

 by a stately cortege of planets, forming a system under the empire of law, a system 

 not unique, but a general type of others as countless as the members of the stellar 

 host, whose front ranks alone come within the range of telescopic vision ; systems, 

 probably, not physically insulated, but bound together by fine relationships, the nature of 

 which, judging from the progress of the past, it is not arrogant to presume, will yet be 

 revealed to the understanding of man ! These are not ingenious theories splendid con- 

 jectures, but established facts, and sober anticipations based upon them. To live and 

 learn is the high vocation of humanity, one of the appointed ends which the great Arti- 

 ficer of existence contemplates in its continued series ; the generations that are to come 

 improving upon the acquirements of that which now is. Nor can we fix any limit to 

 the growth of knowledge in relation to the physical universe, clear and insurmountable 

 in the present state as are its bounds with respect to the spiritual world. Who can descry 

 a resting point in the wilderness of space ? discern a barrier to the range of the 

 creation ? Vast as are the regions that have been entered, there are vaster amplitudes 

 unapproached beyond them, towards which the mind may advance in endless progression ; 

 often indeed faltering in the pilgrimage beneath the burden of those conceptions of space 

 and magnitude which immensity suggests, but still going onwards. 



