l6 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



that God sent His Son to save and gather into his bosom ? 

 And where are the other ninety and nine who never strayed 

 but remained within the fold ? Are all the other worlds that 

 blaze upon the brow of night true not only to those material 

 physical forces of the universe that bind our own earth in its 

 orbit, but trvie also to those spiritual forces that reach out from 

 the great v\^hite Throne and from which this earth broke loose? 

 To bring it back there came a day when a life was taken that 

 caused all nature to rock with horror and cast a veil over the 

 sun while heaven echoed with angelic hymns. Sir Robert Ball 

 finds time to discuss this question most scientifically in our 

 Fortnightly Review, and we have that brilliant Frenchman, 

 Caixiille Flammarin, writing a clever conceit under the heading 

 " Can organic life exist in the solar system anywhere but in the 

 planet Mars?" being a letter from a citizen of Mars, found in 

 a meteorite, wherein it is most conclusively proved that only in 

 Mars can there be life ; that the most elementary common sense 

 teaches that the other planets are either too near or too far from 

 the sun, and that our ov^ai is alone at the golden mean. A 

 voice comes from Westminster Abbey from the now silent but 

 ever eloquent Laureate, of whose words death cannot rob hu- 

 manity : 



' ■ Venus near her ! smiling downward at this earthlier earth of ours, 

 Closer on the sun perhaps a world of never-fading flowers ; 

 Hesper whom the poet call'd the bringer home of all good things, 

 All good things may move in Hesper, perfect people's perfect kings. 

 Hesper — Venus — were we native to that splendor or in Mars 

 We should see the globe we groan in fairest of their evening stars. 

 Could we dream of wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust and 



spite. 

 Roaring London, raving Paris in that point of peaceful light? 

 Might we not in glancing heavenward on a star so silver fair 

 Yearn and clasp the hands and murmur 

 Would to God that we were there? " 



When the law of relative distances was first formulated 

 neither the asteroids nor Neptune had been discovered ; these 

 formed blanks in the series two strings were wanting from the 

 Ivre. Asti^onomers at once bent themselves to the task of 



