6 COSMOS. - 



vol. i., p. 56-359), and, as the uranological or sidereal sphere 

 of the Cosmos was exclusively treated of in the two last 

 volumes, the present volume will be devoted to the consid- 

 eration of the telluric sphere. In this manner the ancient, 

 simple, and natural separation of celestial and terrestrial ob- 

 jects has been preserved, which we find by the earliest evi- 

 dences of human knowledge to have prevailed among all na- 

 tions. 



As in the realms of space, a transition to our own planet- 

 ary system from the region of the fixed stars, illumined by 

 innumerable suns, whether they be isolated or circling round 

 one another, or whether they be mere masses of remote neb- 

 ulae, is indeed to descend from the great and the universal to 

 the relatively small and special — so does the field of our con- 

 templation become infinitely more contracted when we pass 

 from the collective solar system, which is so rich in varied 

 fornxs, to our own terrestrial spheroid, circling round the 

 sun. The distance of even the nearest fixed star, a Centauri, 

 is 263 times greater than the diameter of our solar system, 

 reckoned to the aphelion distance of the comet of 1680 ; and 

 yet this aphelion is 853 times further from the sun than our 

 earth {Cosmos, vol. iv., p. 190). These numbers, reckoning 

 the parallax of a Centauri at 0^^-9187, determine approxi- 

 mately both the distance of a near region of the starry heav- 

 ens from the supposed extreme solar system and the distance 

 of those limits from the earth's place. 



Uranology, which embraces the consideration of all that 

 fills the remote realms of space, still maintains the character 

 it anciently bore, of impressing the imagination most deeply 

 and powerfully by the incomprehensibility of the relations 

 of space and numbers which it embraces ; by the known or- 

 der and regularity of the motions of the heavenly bodies ; 

 and by the admiration which is naturally yielded to the 

 results of observation and intellectual investigation. This 

 consciousness of regularity and periodicity was so early im- 

 pressed upon the human mind, that it was often reflected in 

 those forms of speech which refer to the ordained course of 

 the celestial bodies. The known laws which rule the celes- 

 tial sphere excite, perhaps, the greatest admiration by their 

 simplicity, based, as they solely are, upon the mass and distri- 

 bution of accumulated ponderable matter and upon its forces 

 of attraction. The impression of the sublime, when it arises 

 from that which is immeasurable and physically great, pass- 

 es almost unconsciously to ourselves beyond the mysterious 



