ty of gravitation), and yet be no nearer then than at the moment in which its flight began.* Secondary motions may be understood, because they are communicated. Primary motion cannot be defined, because it cannot be imagined. Operating invisibly to human scrutiny, and the mind being itself a mechanism, it cannot, by any principle of possibility, contemplate that which is probably not only not a mechanism, but the instrument employed to produce all mechanism. Primary motion, in fact, involves all the mysteries of the creation. Changes and modifications we witness every day, in all that move, in all that are in rest. We can, therefore, imagine ten millions of secondary motions, but we cannot imagine ONE ORIGINAL. There is, doubtless, some central point in the uni 13. Sirius and other stars of the first magnitude. 14. a, Cygni; ß, Tauri, &c. 15. y, Cygni ; &, Bootis, &c. 16. Stars of the 4th magnitude. 17. 18. 19. 5th do. 6th do. 7th do. 20. The white cluster in the sword-handle of Perseus. 21. The small nebula north, following H Geminorum. 22. Nebula between n and Herculis. 23. Nebula in the girdle of Andromeda. 24. Stars of the 1.342d magnitude. 25. The clusters of stars, only seen through a reflector of 40 feet. These are calculated to be above 114 millions of millions of millions of miles from us; viz., a distance exceeding that of the nearest fixed star at least 300,000 times. verse round which all bodies roll, as there is also a thin, subtle, elastic fluid, invisible to us, filling all parts of space, which serves as a medium of communication from one to all. Whether this fluid has a retarding influence at one time, and an accelerating one at another, we are yet ignorant; and whether successions of particles are emitted from each body, or motions communicated by them to particles in their vicinity, and transmitted by successive impulses to other particles, are equally unknown to us. The orbits of planets may be changed in the succession of ages; nay, the whole solar system, as it exists at present, utterly annihilated: but this involves no destruction of matter; and whether they exist separately or form one vast union, what does it import? The system may be changed; Uranus might fall into Saturn; both into Jupiter; and these, successively, might carry the Asteroids, Mars, the Earth, Venus, and Mercury, into the Sun; and what would it avail? nothing is annihilated. : As to changes, they are seen every moment. The destructive and the preservative principles are ever working destructive as to form, preservative as to essence. In the wildernesses of space the mind finds no resting-place; for creation on creation still multiplies, attesting at every step not only unity of design, but identity of operation; not only life for to-day, but life for the morrow. VIEWS FROM THE PLANETS. ONE thing is exceedingly agreeable to my imagination we all see the same stars that were beheld by Moses, Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Hipparchus ; Kepler, Copernicus, and Newton. Some astronomers have had a still more exalted privilege. Thus Galileo was the first to see the satellites of Jupiter; Horrocks and Crabtree to behold a transit of Venus ; Herschel to see the satellites of Uranus,* as well as those of Saturn; and Piazza, Olbers, and Harding, to discover Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta. Herschel was the first also to gaze on myriads of suns! 66 Range where we will, in water, earth, and air, I pity the man who, from whatever cause, thinks otherwise. We gazed last night on several splendid objects. Arcturus, for instance, and another star in the constellation of Boötes, eminently attractive to the imagination, since, though it seems to be one, it is actually two, of different colours; one sun rolling about another sun, as if the smaller were a planet. Then we gazed on No. 24, in Berenice's hair (double), the larger one of a ruddy complexion, the smaller green. The former sometimes appears white, the latter blue. Then we turned our telescope on & Hercules, another double star; one ash-coloured, the larger of a bluish white. One of these stars sometimes eclipses the other. Turn now to No. 48 in Cancer, and we find that also to be a double star; the larger one of a fine yellow, the smaller of an indigo blue. Sometimes the latter is of a deep garnet, and sometimes bluish or blue. With these alternations, the question arises whether they are to be attributed to the stars themselves being liable to change in colour and intensity of light, or to variations in our own atmosphere. If the first, there is sometimes a yellow day, sometimes a blue one and sometimes a day of deep garnet. In the Crown there is a star forming an equilateral triangle, placed precisely in the centre of a small nebula, which extends a little beyond the stars, sur * Uranus had been noticed before, though not recognised as a planet. rounding them on all sides like an atmosphere. How beautiful! "Thou great FIRST CAUSE, least understood, To know but this-that thou art good, Engaged thus, we at length withdrew our attention from the more distant regions of space to the more limited circle of our own system, imagining to ourselves the various appearances presented in the firmament above to the inhabitants of the various planets beneath. For ourselves, we behold a thousand worlds, and are yet indifferent to most of them. We are on the wrong side of the mirror in many respects; and, being incapable of estimating the harmony of arrangement which governs the sphere above us, this, of itself, is sufficient to convince me (whatever may be its effect upon others) that we are on the road to another and an improved state, where we shall behold objects with a clearer vision and a more perfect understanding. Were we in the planet MERCURY, the solar spots would appear seven times larger to us than they do here; the sun would be seen to rise and set with unimaginable splendour; while by night, Venus, the Earth, and its "fair attendant" satellite, would exhibit themselves, each many times larger than Mercury appears to us. The moon, too, would be often seen to transit the earth, and every now and then to glide into and emerge from its shadow. Were we transplanted to VENUS, Mercury would present to our eyes phenomena similar to those which Venus presents here: sometimes full, sometimes gibbous; at other times a crescent; now a morning star, and now an evening one; while the earth and moon would shed a light more brilliant than that communicated or received by night by any other planet of the solar system. Towards the extreme south of our horizon, some stars are visible only for a short period of the night, others for a longer period, till the eye rests on those which rise exactly east. Then directing our contemplation to the polar circle, our vision rests on stars which never set; presenting, therefore, no aspect of change but that arising from an apparent alteration of position. The Moon. When the sky is clear in the south and west, and she rises in "clouded majesty" in the east, exhibiting her "freckled face" at a distance of not more than 240,000 miles, what a magnificent body does she appear! What a splendid spectacle, too, does the earth present to her! It seems the largest body of the universe, with a surface thirteen times larger than the moon appears to us, immovably settled in the sky, while the fixed stars are seen to pass slowly both beside and behind it. We have four seasons; but the moon's axis being nearly perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic, she experiences scarcely any change has perhaps no clouds, no snow, no rain, no air-having no atmosphere. Those who live on her surface, therefore, can neither have the face, figure, nor faculties of man. There are no phenomena more calculated to excite wonder in respect to order and precision than eclipses and the returns of comets; nothing more indicative of design; and nothing more expressive of a universal predominating intelligence. We gaze upon the zodiac, the starry firmament on either side, and the galaxy, forming "a broad and ample road," as it were, "ad Regalem domum," and reflect on the "Densa stellarum corona" which they present, till we feel as much lost "As the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind." When we look at the moon in her second quarter through a good reflector, the shadows of her mountains are not only to be seen, but they are observed |