NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 15 



besides our own is much more decided than might be ex- 

 pected, when we consider that the nearest of them must 

 needs be jilaced at a mighty interval beyond our own. 

 The ekier Herschel, (Urecting his wonderful tube towards 

 the sides of our system, where stars are planted most 

 rarely, and raising the powers of the instrument to the 

 required pitch, was enabled with awe-struck mind to see 

 suspended in the vast empyrean astral systems, or, as he 

 called them, firmaments, resembling our own. Like light 

 cloudlets to a certain power of the telescope, they I'esolved 

 themselves, under a greater power, into stars, though 

 these generally seemed no larger than the finest particles 

 of diamond dust. The general forms of these systems are 

 various ; but one at least has been detected as bearing a 

 striking resemblance to the supposed form of our own. 

 The distances are also various, as proved by the difierent 

 degrees of telescopic power necessary to bring them into 

 view. The farthest observed by the asti'onomer were 

 estimated by him as thirty-five thousand times more 

 remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to be about 

 twenty millions of millions of miles. It would thus 

 appear, that not only does gravitation keep our earth in 

 its place in the solar system, and the solar system in its 

 jDlace in our astral system, but it also may be presumed 

 to have the mightier duty of preserving a local arrange- 

 ment between that astral system and an immensity of 

 others, through which the imagination is left to wander 

 on and on without limit or stay, save that which is given 

 by its inability to grasp the unbounded. 



The two Hei'schels have in succession made some other 

 remarkable observations on the legion.s of space. They 

 have found within the limits of our astral system, and 

 generally in its outer fields, a great number of objects 

 which, from their foggy appearance, are called nehdce ; 



