468 Notices respecting New Books. 



portant feature is lost sight of : every recent discovery is noticed, 

 and its bearing on the general welfare of the system pointed out. 

 In the chapter on the Sun the views of the most distinguished stu- 

 dents of its physical constitution are given in full ; and in connexion 

 with the Solar System we would remark that the author clearly 

 distinguishes between views that are destitute of support, those that 

 are highly probable, and those which may be considered estab- 

 lished by sufficient evidence. It is this feature which distinguishes 

 every part of the work, and stamps it as the production of a mind 

 of no ordinary calibre. 



The portion of Professor Newcomb's work we have yet to notice 

 is that in which he deals with the " Stellar Universe;" and it is here 

 especially he brings out the paucity of our knowledge. In intro- 

 ducing it he says : — " The widest question which the study of the 

 stars presents to us may be approached in this way : We have seen 

 in our system of sun, planets, and satellites, a very orderly and 

 beautiful structure, every body being kept in its own orbit through 

 endless revolutions by a constant balancing of gravitating and 

 centrifugal forces. Do the millions of suns and clusters scattered 

 through space, and brought into view by the telescope, constitute a 

 greater system of equally orderly structure ? and if so, what is that 

 structure ? If we measure the importance of a question, not by its 

 relations to our interest and our welfare, but by the intrinsic 

 greatness of the subject to which it relates, then we must regard 

 this question as one of the noblest with which the human mind has 

 ever been occupied. In piercing the mystery of the Solar System, 

 and showing that the earth on which we dwell was only one of the 

 smaller oi eight planets which move round the sun, we made a great 

 step in the way of enlarging our ideas of the immensity of Creation 

 and of the comparative insignificance of our sublunary interests. 

 But when on extending our. views we find our sun to be but one 

 out of unnumbered millions, we see that our whole system is but 

 an insignificant part of Creation, and that we have an immensely 

 greater fabric to study. When we have bound all the stars, 

 nebula?, and clusters which our telescopes reveal into a single system, 

 and shown in what manner each stands related to all the others, we 

 shall have solved the problem of the material Universe, considered 

 not in its details but in its widest scope." 



******** 



"Notwithstanding the amount of careful research which Herschel 

 and his successors have devoted to it, we are still very far from 

 having reached even an approximate solution of the problem of 

 which we speak. In whatever direction we pursue it, we soon find 

 ourselves brought face to face with the infinite in space and time. 

 Especially is this the case when we seek to know, not simply what 

 the Universe is to-day, but what causes are modifying it from age 

 to age. All the knowledge that man has yet gathered is then found 

 to amount to nothing but some faint glimmers of light shining here 

 and there through the seemingly boundless darkness. The glimmer 



