THE BODIES OF SPACE. 



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 re- 

 solved 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 different degrees of telescopic power necessary to 

 bring them into view. The farthest observed by the as- 

 tronomer were estimated by him as thirty-five thousand 

 times more remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to 

 be about twenty thousand 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 

 place 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 Herschels have in succession made some other 

 most remarkable observations on the regions of space. 

 They have found within the limits of our astral system, 

 and generally in its outer fields, a great number of ob- 

 jects which, from their foggy appearance, are called 

 nebulae ; some of vast extent and irregular figure, as that 

 in the sword of Orion, which is visible to the naked eye, 

 others of shape more defined ; others, again, in which 

 small bright nuclei appear here and there over the surface 

 Between this last form and another class of objects, which 

 appear as clusters of nuclei with nebulous matter around 

 each nucleus, there is but a step in what appears a chain 

 of related things. Then, again, our astral space shows 

 what are called nebulous stars — namely, luminous spheri- 

 cal objects, bright in the centre and dull towards the ex- 

 tremities. These appear to be only an advanced condi- 

 tion of the class of objects above described. Finally, ne- 

 bulous stars exist in every stage of concentration, down 

 to that state in which we see only a common star with a 

 slight bur around it. It may be presumed that all these 

 are but stages in a progress, just as if, seeing a child, a 



