Show Z the plurality eli of BY DIXON ESQ aras rR AS from the literary scientific ac Le lecturer durer no one who has viewed the vault of the stars stare in the stillness of night can be insensible to the impression which the survey imparts it se separates ar man in thought from the spot upon which ach his bis foot is is slanted planted and by its vastness and asplen dour aff affords a the highest example of the sublime it reminds him of his ephemeral character and that the globe he tenants instead of being greatest in the kingdom of heaven Is ia in reality one of the sinal smallest lest in the empire of nature not only is such a view calculated to reveal the littleness of man but also to give high and exalted ideas of the power of him at whose fiat th they were launched into space whose breath areat hen en kind kindled aled their perpetual fires and whose hand ever upholds aud and directs them in ia their vario various 9 courses through his universe the spacious firmament in which a million of million of miles is as a grain of sand to the sun itself is filled with a courtless coun fless number of stars on directing the eye to the celestial concave the impression upon the mind is that of an incalculable number of stars being visible this is however an all optical delusion the deception arising from their twinkling aud and disorderly position in the sky oz Os the most favorable night an ordinary eye wilt will not perceive per cerre more than a thousand thou vand iu it our firmament and including both hemispheres three thousand will be the outside number which a keen and experienced gaze can reach but with the aid of a telescope e herschel saw fifty thousand within an hour of f the milky way ovid wrote as a the path leading to olympus whose ground work is off of stars milton mflton speaks of that broad and ample road whose dust is gold and pavement stars these poetical conceptions become verities verifies veri ties through the aid of the telescope the th zone lies has been found to be composed of an innumerable host of stars some faint conception of which may be formed from the fact that henchel was led to the conclusion that in some parts of it no less than were included with the zone of two degrees in breadth which passed under his review in a single hours observation with a telescope of 15 aperture yet this is but a specimen of countless combinations which are visible in other parts of the heavens and as rich in stars as the 1 zone itself A second of a degree fifty billions of miles from the earth may be proved to be equal to miles consequently at one hundred billions of miles distance it becomes equal to miles or upwards of miles pe per r minute I 1 so that what appears as a minute in I 1 of a degree deathe I 1 is in fact sixty thousand millions of miles in diameter hence at the distance of four thousand billions of miles all objects les k than twenty four millions of millions of miles in diameter are invisible thus while millions of stra st M ma may y be seen with assisted vision there are in the same extent of space millions more which the eye can never roach reach owing to their great distances distance and comparative smallness on this point dr halley alley advances vance phil H trans no his metaphysical ta paradox viz that the number of fixed at stars must be more than any finite number and some of them at more mare than finite nite distances from each other A thought says addison far from being extravagant when it is remembered that the universe is the work of infinite power prompted by infinite goodness and having an infinite space to exert itself in P to measure the dl tence of these thesa numerous nume rou orbo orb to 1 a task which has baffled the ablest then mea iel and until our oar own day the conclusion arrived at ww role only a negative one namely that the amest st fixed star must at least be removed from as a certain spew apace which requires the billions of our oar arithmetic to express it has been shown that the enormous cormons interval between us and uranus is in but a k narrow chum chasm compared with the interval be tween this planet and the most moat contiguous of the teller stellar orbs arbs the usual method to ascertain the distance of a star Is to determine its annual parallax but no such parallax even eve to a single singie second has been detected supposing however a parallax of one second to be perceptible that by the rules of trigonometry would give a distance from us more than nineteen billions of miles hut but as there is no such quantity detectable there them lan is ostar lying within that range they all lie beyond I 1 ia professor bessel after repeated attempts by means of his fraunhofer Proun hofer Helio omelet in 1834 succeeded in determining an annual parallax of the stir star 61 to be bea 01 31 36 or somewhat loss less tl an one third of a second which places it from the earth at a distance of times the radius of the earths orbit or nearly 92 billions ot of miles to alj the imagination lu in forming some idea of this int interval intervale ervall it may be stated that a cannon ball discharged from this star would not reach tile tiie earth in III less time than fourteen millions of years nor would the flash bash then be visible till after a I 1 period of ten years though traveling at a rate of twelve millions of per one thread of a spiders web placed before the eye of a spectator at that star would tilde from his view the whole orbit of the earth and a single hair of the head would conceal the entire solar system yet what are these distances to those of the nebulae Ne bulas from which light according to sir W herschel He rechel is years in trav traveling to the earth since light travels at the ra rate te of 6 ga billions of nilles miles per anjum ii ia years it will have traversed through a space of three hundred and four billions of miles the actual distance of some of the nebulae from this globe hence the remark of huygens is a sober speculation that there may bo be worlds in the immensity of space which have boen long created yet whose light owing to their distance has not reached our globe though still destined to come within the range of the eye aw how distant some of the nocturnal was suns so distant says the sage not absurd to doubt if beams set ilat out at natures birth are yet arrived at this so foreign world though nothing half so rapid as their flight however marvellous marcellous marv ellous the statement stu it is strictly true that when we gazo gaza upon the stars and note down their positions weare witnessing and chron ibling their appearance in bygone times mid nd not the present aspect of the phenomena the that meets the eye from the neatest object brings intelligence of the past and that past ill includes yeats in relation to tile the front ranks of the stellar array und and ages with et to the general body when we ft reflect elect upon these facts and remember that the faint nebulous clusters are far more remote from the distant stars than the latter are re from us that the light which manifests their presence cresence now may have left its ilg source when the tudor tudor norman or saxon race occupied the throne of england then do we catch a glimpse of elie immensity Immen immensity sit y of space and of the infinity of the being who originated the great government of which it is the scene and who conducts conduct 0 it with such nicety that a sparrow falleth not to the ground w m i hout his notice respecting the magnitude of the stars we have bothin nothing to ito guide us beyond their visibility when so vastly remote the simple fact of their being visible across the mighty expanse which exists between them and us gives us high ideas of their dimensions calculations have been made from a comparison of their wilt light with that of the sun still this orb has been shown to be five hundred times greater than all the planets iu in its own system put together or equal to globes trie tile size of our own vast as this appears the dimensions are insignificant when compared with those of I 1 I 1 which possesses a brilliancy equal to that of 14 suns a diameter 38 times larg larger r and a solidity of trillions of miles or times that of the ann nor can we suppose the magnificent orb of sirius to dwell alone in this respect for it has been proved that there are few of the axed fixed stars which do not surpass both in magit magnitude tude and lustre our own bright briglia orb of day who with a knowledge of these astounding particulars can refrain from exclaiming illow how wonderful are thy works 0 lord in wisdom hast thou made them all 11 what then it may be inquired was the purpose for which these mighty orbs arbs were created 1 in general terms it may be answered it is doubtless an end proportionate to their size and grandeur the skilful artist in the construction of does not employ wheels of one th thois and yards in circumference to turn small balls round a circle of only two feet in diameter nor in the manufacture of a ti time me place piece use div five lt hundred springs pinions and wheels when less than a dozen will suffice and when it is remembered that atthe the almighty stretched out the heavens by bv his that he has hae made nothing in vain there appears to be strong presumptive evidence that higher ends and more extensive designs were contemplated in their creation abs tbs than a merely to ito give light upon the earth or as the koran expresses it to be guides in the dark both by land and by sea As our smaller sun has planets with their satel lites circulating round him it is only redon reasonable to infer that a much larger globe serves a similar purpose and lq is the common centre of a numerous family refreshed and beautiful by the glorious beams that emanate from it it the inference holds good with every star for that all are suns admits not of a moments doubt and we are justified in attributing to each its dependent Ju and sa turns thus we gain some insight into the economy of the universe and gather rational ideas of its immeasurable amplitude its multitude of worlds its myriads of sentient beings sir J john 0 hu herschel soberly answers the inquiry tor for what purpose are ara we to suppose such magni scent orbs arbs scattered through the abyss of space surely not to illuminate our nights which an additional moon of the thousandth part of the size of our own would do better nor to sparkle as a pageant void of meaning and reality and bewilder us among vain conjectures useful it is true they are to me maa as points of exact arid and permanent reference but he m roast ast have studied astronomy to little purpose who can suppose man to be the only object of his creators care or who does not see in the vast and wonderful apparatus around us its provision for other races of animated being the planets derive their light from the sun but that cannot be the case with the stars less are themselves suns and may perhaps each in its sphere be the presiding centre round which other planets may maj be circulating though none of these planets owing to their distance is visible to the earth yet certain phenomena have been observed which indicate their existence to a certainty certainly one of the variable stars A algol 01 is found regularly to pass through a change of indre from the second to the fourth magnitude in 2 days 21 hours and afterwards resumes its original brightness another beta lyra undergoes a change from the third to the fifis magnitude in 6 days days 9 hours A star in Sobi eskis shield posses passes rora the fifth to the seventh magnitude every 62 days omicron from the second magnitude to 0 arid and then resumes its original lustre in days 61 cagni from the ath to the tenth M magnitude I 1 in days alpha hychs Hrc Hs from the ikird third to the fourth magnitude in 60 days delta from the third to the fifth magnitude in fit 5 days and others amounting altogether to upwards of fifty in number these changes can only be satisfactorily ascribed to the intervention of opaque bodies of a large size passing directly between our vision and the star when revolving g through that half of the orbit lying next to the earth in regarding the planetary worlds as the abodes of sentient life and forms of existence kindred to those who occupy the earth we are in advance of what is written but not beyond what the sobrieties of reason will justify it may be hard to imagine how bow life can be sustained under the apparent heat beat of mercury or amid the seeming cold storms and rapid atmospheric changes of jupiter but ignorant of facts a parallel difficulty would be a stumbling block to us in relation to our own planet when we consider the high temperature pera ture of its equatorial regions and the intense cold of its polar circlet circles we meet with human Itai gilar life upon the sultry plains of delhi and on the I 1 lee voudy daod shores of greenland a mod ad where the citron the myrte myrle and the palm will not flourish the mosses ines and lichens grow we cau not n naturalize tit 1 4 elk in i england or rear the giraffe ia in u iceland yet vet each animal in localities to which tt it is adap adapted tail is stately and vigorous the analogy between the planets of the solar system wl with ith res respect et to their pays leal constitutions reasonably rel leads us to suspect other analogies the fact that mars mare mercury venus venue jupiter and so sa turn are surrounded rounded with atmospheres strongly indicates their oem occupancy pancy with some varieties of organized being the important uses of the ati mo sphere in maintaining animal life transmuting sound and light fight and in advancing the arts which i tend to civilize society em are universally admitted without such a gaseous envelope bound inseparably I 1 around the earth its partner in all its motions yet a separate element the ear would have no office to perform the tongue lougue would be speechless I 1 and the service of the eye greatly abridged the song of birds the h hymns ake of religion the eloquence of sena senates and the utterance of relative i kindness would all perish the fiercest waves I 1 i could they exist would dish dash in sullen silence upon I 1 the strand and mankind would have no medium I 1 I 1 of intercommunication beyond that of sign or orges I 1 ture we may well believe therefore ther etore that our world has been furnished with this elastic and essential apparatus in order to adapt ad apt it for the reception of animal existence and intelligent inhabitants I 1 I 1 and tile the inference is just that a similar arrangement distinguishing other oilier planets points i I 1 to the sime s ame destination destia tion D it is a possible conception but we should smile a the credulity of him who believes it real that a fleet of ships gaviga ting fing the ocean with sails ads unfurled un luried and 1 pennons e a 1 ll 11 0 1 ls i flying did so without a cargo in le the bo bold lial a c crew r e w on board or an object in view and if our planetary pLine tary worlds be the theatre of life why deny to the planets of other systems ther them numerous 9 P populations 0 4 nia tons why conclude the eartha earth a lesser fewer ort orb of perhaps a lesser fewer system to be the only theatre of life and that the myritis myriads of worlds which twinkle in the hea heavens are wastes the abodes of unbroken stillness suppose the die blast of death to have oversweet over swept the globe leaving behind one extensive track of eternal solitude would it not lose a thousand fold of the loveliest displays of its creators wisdom and goodness the moon might traverse tr iverse the vault of heaven and shed on earth her gentle rays mys but she would show no peasant life his homeward track or brute creation whither to roam the sun might rise in all his loveliness and grandeur but not to illuminate tile the abodes of man or vivify the earths productions the seasons season in might ight roll roand iu a exact |