ons; the Pole-star, 282 millions of millions; and Capella, 340
millions of millions of miles, a figure represented by no less than
fifteen digits.

The hard numerical statement of these enormous figures, however,
fails altogether in any adequate way to convey a due impression of the
magnitude of these distances. Astronomers, in their ingenuity, have
endeavored to use some other basis, and have found "the velocity
of light" to be convenient for their purpose. They have made their
representations something in this way:

"Suppose," they say, "an observer endowed with an infinite length of
vision: suppose him stationed on the surface of Capella; looking thence
towards the earth, he would be a spectator of events that had happened
seventy years previously; transport him to a star ten times distant, and
he will be reviewing the terrestrial sphere of 720 years back; carry him
away further still, to a star so remote that it requires something less
than nineteen centuries for light to reach it, and he would be a witness
of the birth and death of Christ; convey him further again, and he
shall be looking upon the dread desolation of the Deluge; take him away
further yet (for space is infinite), and he shall be a spectator of the
Creation of the spheres. History is thus stereotyped in space; nothing
once accomplished can ever be effaced."

Who can altogether be astonished that Palmyrin Rosette, with his burning
thirst for astronomical research, should have been conscious of a
longing for yet wider travel through the sidereal universe? With his
comet now under the influence of one star, now of another, what various
systems might he not have explored! what undreamed-of marvels might not
have revealed themselves before his gaze! The stars, fixed and immovable
in name, are all of them in motion, and Gallia might have followed them
in their un-tracked way.

But Gallia had a narrow destiny. She was not to be allowed to wander
away into the range of attraction of another center; nor to mingle with
the star clusters, some of which have been entirely, others partially
resolved; nor was she to lose herself amongst the 5,000 nebulae which
have resisted hitherto the grasp of the most powerful reflectors. No;
Gallia was neither to pass beyond the limits of the solar system, nor
to travel out of sight of the terrestrial sphere. Her orbit was
circumscribed to little over 1,500 millions of miles; and, in comparison
with the infinite space beyo