ds, more numerous than the sands of the sea,
and prodigally scattered through space.

Never, perhaps, was a more important truth discovered. All the visible
evidence was in direct opposition to it. The earth, which had hitherto
seemed to be the very emblem of immobility, was demonstrated to be
carried with a double motion, with prodigious velocity, through the
heavens; the rising and setting of the stars were proved to be an
illusion; and as respects the size of the globe, it was shown to be
altogether insignificant when compared with multitudes of other
neighboring ones--insignificant doubly by reason of its actual
dimensions, and by the countless numbers of others like it in form,
and doubtless like it the abodes of many orders of life.

And so it turns out that our earth is a globe of about twenty-five
thousand miles in circumference. The voyager who circumnavigates it
spends no inconsiderable portion of his life in accomplishing his
task. It moves round the sun in a year, but at so great a distance
from that luminary that if seen from him, it would look like a little
spark traversing the sky. It is thus recognized as one of the members
of the solar system. Other similar bodies, some of which are of
larger, some of smaller dimensions, perform similar revolutions round
the sun in appropriate periods of time.

If the magnitude of the earth be too great for us to attach to it any
definite conception, what shall we say of the compass of the solar
system? There is a defect in the human intellect, which incapacitates
us for comprehending distances and periods that are either too
colossal or too minute. We gain no clearer insight into the matter,
when we are told that a comet which does not pass beyond the bounds of
the system may perhaps be absent on its journey for more than a
thousand years. Distances and periods such as these are beyond our
grasp. They prove to us how far human reason excels imagination; the
one measuring and comparing things of which the other can form no
conception, but in the attempt is utterly bewildered and lost.

But as there are other globes like our earth, so too there are other
worlds like our solar system. There are self-luminous suns, exceeding
in number all computation. The dimensions of this earth pass into
nothingness in comparison with the dimensions of the solar system, and
that system in its turn is only an invisible point if placed in
relation with the countless hosts of other syst