d, with its planets around it?
Sirius would be too near on the same scale if it were at the further
corner. The board would have to go out through the wall of the
theatre, out through London. Indeed, big as London is, it would not be
large enough to contain the drawing-board that I should require. It
would have to stretch about twenty miles from where we are now
assembled. We may therefore dismiss any hope of making a practical map
of our system on this scale if Sirius is to have its proper place. Let
us, then, take some other star. We shall naturally try with the
nearest of all. It is one that we do not know in this part of the
world, but those that live in the southern hemisphere are well
acquainted with it. The name of this star is Alpha Centauri. Even for
this star we should require a drawing three or four miles long if the
distance from the earth to the sun is to be taken as one inch. You see
what an isolated position our sun and his planets occupy. The members
of the family are all close together, and the nearest neighbors are
situated at enormous distances. There is a good reason for this
separation. The stars are very pretty and perfectly harmless to us
where they are at present situated. They might be very troublesome
neighbors if they were very much closer to our system. It is therefore
well they are so far off; they would be constantly making disturbances
in the sun's family if they were near at hand. Sometimes they would be
dragging us into unpleasantly great heat by bringing us too close to
the sun, or producing a coolness by pulling us away from the sun,
which would be quite as disagreeable.

The Stars are Suns.

We are about to discuss one of the grandest truths in the whole of
nature. We have had occasion to see that this sun of ours is a
magnificent globe immensely larger than the greatest of his planets,
while the greatest of these planets is immensely larger than this
earth; but now we are to learn that our sun is, indeed, only a star
not nearly so bright as many of those which shine over our heads every
night. We are comparatively close to the sun, so that we are able to
enjoy his beautiful light and cheering heat. Each of those other
myriads of stars is a sun, and the splendor of those distant suns is
often far greater than that of our own. We are, however, so enormously
far from them that they appear dwindled down to insignificance. To
judge impartially between our sun or star and such a sun or