BOOK III. THE SKY. CHAPTER I. THE MARVELS OF THE HEAVENS. The Sun Twelve Hundred Thousand Times as Large as Our Earth-Sublime Scenery of the Midnight Sky-Starry Splendors over Head-Innumerable Worlds in the Firmament-The Boundlessness of Space-Imperial Suns Burning on High-Heavens Piled on Heavens-A Wonderful Journey Through Space-Flying on a Beam of Light-Rich Clusters of Starry Systems-Millions of WorldsImmeasurable Distances-Swift Motion Everywhere-Astounding Revelations of the Telescope-Lord Rosse's Ten Thousand Eyes-Far-Distant Suns Colored Like the Rainbow-Thomas Moore's Poetical Tribute to the Bright Heavens-Sublimity of Astronomical Science. ROM the discoveries of astronomy it appears that our earth is but as a point in the immensity of the universe-that there are worlds a thousand times larger, enlightened by the same sun which "rules our day"-that the sun himself is an immense luminous world, whose circumference would enclose more than twelve hundred thousand globes as large as ours-that the earth and its inhabitants are carried forward through the regions of space at the rate of a thousand miles every minute-that motions exist in the great bodies of the universe, the force and rapidity of which astonish and overpower the imagination—and that beyond the sphere of the sun and planets, creation is replenished with millions of luminous globes, scattered over immense regions to which the human mind can assign no boundaries. Where are the souls to whom the spectacle of starry night is not an eloquent discourse? Where are those who have not been sometimes arrested in the presence of the bright worlds which hover over our heads, and who have not sought for the key of the great enigma of creation? The solitary hours of night are in truth the most beautiful of all our hours, those in which we have the faculty of placing ourselves in intimate communication with great and holy Nature. The orb of day conceals from us the splendors of the firmament; it is during the night that the panoramas of the sky are open to us. At the hour of midnight, the heavenly vault is strewn with stars, like isles of light in the midst of an ocean extending over our heads. Orbs of Amazing Brilliancy. In the midst of darkness our eyes gaze freely on the sky, piercing the deep azure of the apparent vault, above which the stars shine. They' traverse the white constellated regions, visiting distant realms of space, where the most brilliant stars lose their brightness by distance; they go beyond this unexplored expanse, and mount still higher, as far as those faint nebula whose diffused brightness seems to mark the limits of the visible. In this immense passage of sight thought is carried away by its flight and wonders at these distant splendors. It is then that thousands of questions spring up in our minds, and that a thousand points of interrogation rise to our sight. The problem of creation is a great problem! The science of the stars is a sublime science; its mission is to embrace all created things! At the remembrance of these impressions, does it not appear that the man who does not feel any sentiment of admiration. before the picture of the starry splendor, is not yet worthy of receiving on his brow the crown of intelligence? Of all the sciences astronomy is the one which can enlighten us best on our relative value, and make us understand the relation which connects the earth with the rest of creation. Without it, as the history of past centuries testifies, it is impossible for us to know where we are or who we are, or to establish an instructive comparison between the place which we occupy in space and the whole of the universe; without it we should be both ignorant of the actual extent of our country, its nature, and the order to which it belongs. Enclosed in the dark meshes of ignorance, we cannot form the slightest idea of the general arrangement of the world; a thick fog covers the narrow horizon which contains us, and our mind remains incapable of soaring above the daily theatre of life, and of going beyond the narrow sphere traced by the limits of the action of our senses. On the other hand, when the torch of the Science of the Worlds enlightens us, the scene changes, the vapors which darkened the horizon fade away, our mistaken eyes contemplate in the serenity of a pure sky the immense work of the Creator. The earth appears like a globe poised under our steps; thousands of similar globes are rocked in ether; the world enlarges in proportion as the power of our examination increases, and from that time universal creation develops itself before us in reality, establishing both our rank and our relation with the numerous similar worlds which constitute the universe. If we imagine the terrestial globe suspended in space, we shall understand that the side turned towards the sun is alone illuminated, whilst the opposite hemisphere remains in shadow, and that this shadow presents the aspect of a cone. Moreover, as the earth turns on itself, all its portions are presented successively to the sun and pass successively into this shadow, and it is this which constitutes the succession of day and night in every country of the world. This simple statement suffices to show that the phenomenon to which we give the name of night belongs really to the earth, and that the heavens and the rest of the universe are independent of it. This is the reason why, if at any hour of the night we let our minds soar above the terrestial surface, it will follow that, far from remaining always in the night, we shall again find the sun pouring forth his floods of light through space. If we carry ourselves away as far as one of the planets which like the earth, revolves in the region of space where we are, we shall understand that the night of the earth does not extend to those other worlds, and that the period which with us is consecrated to repose does not exert its influence there. When all beings are buried in the stillness of silent night here-above, the forces of nature continue the exercise of their brillant functions-the sun shines, life radiates, movement is not suspended, and the reign of light pursues its dominant action in the heavens (as on the opposite hemisphere to ours), at the same hour when sleep overcomes all beings on the hemisphere we inhabit. Space Has Neither Beginning Nor End. It is important that we should know, first of all, how to habituate ourselves to this idea of the isolation of the earth in space, and to believe that all the phenomena which we observe upon this globe are peculiar to it and foreign to the rest of the universe. Thousands and thousands of similar globes revolve like it in space. One of the most fatal delusions which it is important we should get rid of at once, is that which presents the earth as the lower half of the universe, and the heavens as its upper half. There is nothing in the world more false than this. The heavens and the earth are not two separate creations, as we have had repeated to us thousands and thousands of times. They are only one. The earth is in the heavens. The heavens are infinite space, indefinite expanse, a void without limits; no frontier circumscribes them, they have neither beginning nor end, neither top nor bottom, right or left; there is an infinity of spaces which succeed each other in every direction. The earth is a little material globe, placed in this space without support of any kind, ike a bullet which sustains itself alone in the air, like the little captive balloons which rise and float in the atmosphere when the thin cord which retains them is cut. Our World a Star. The earth is a star in the heavens; it forms part of them; it, in company with a great many other globes similar to it, peoples them; it is isolated in them; and all these other globes also float in space. This conception of the universe is not only very important, but is also a truth which it is absolutely necessary should be well fixed in the mind, otherwise three-quarters of the astronomical discoveries would remain incomprehensible. Here, then, is this first point well understood and thoroughly established in our thoughts. The heavens surround us on every side. In this space the earth is a globe suspended; but the earth is not alone in space. All those stars which sparkle in the heavens are isolated globes, suns shining by their own light; they are very distant from us; but there are stars nearer which resemble much more the one we inhabit, in the sense that they are not suns, but dark earths receiving, like ours, light from our sun. These worlds called planets are grouped in a family; ours is one member of this family. At the centre of this group shines our sun, a source of light which illuminates it, and of heat which warms it. Floating in the bosom of the space which surrounds it on every side, this group is like a fleet of many boats rocked in the ocean of the heavens. A multitude of suns, surrounded like ours with a family of which they are the foci and the light-givers, float likewise in all parts of the expanse. These suns are the stars with which the fields of heaven are scattered. In spite of the appearance caused by perspective, immense spaces separate all these systems from ours, spaces so great that the highest figures of our great numeration can scarcely number the smallest amongst them. A distance that our figures can scarcely express also separates these stars from each other, extending from depths unto depths. Heavens Piled on Heavens. Notwithstanding these prodigious intervals, these suns are in number so considerable that their numeration as yet exceeds all our means; millions joined to millions are inadequate to enumerate the multitude! Let the mind try if it is possible to represent to itself at one time this considerable number of systems and the distances which separate them one from the other! Confused and soon humbled at the aspect of this infinite richness, it will only learn to admire in silence this indescribable wonder. Continually rising on the other side of the heavens, going beyond the distant shores of this ocean without limits, it will endlessly discover fresh new space, and new worlds will reveal themselves to our eager gaze, |