angles
which have for one side the whole sweep of the earth, over 180 millions
of miles; we measure the distance of other worlds by this side of a
triangle, and the nearest star is thus found to be 103,000 of our
measures away from us--103,000 times 180,000,000 miles! Young has well
said that

THE UNDEVOUT ASTRONOMER IS MAD.

So did Napoleon die. Was he not the mightiest man of his time? Did not
the whole world sigh with relief when the final end came? Yet he was on
a tiny rock in the great ocean? On a map of the world that rock has no
title even to a dot. Yet it would be foolish to say he belonged simply
to that rock. No. He had come from other human worlds. He was as broad
as the earth. We, too, have come from other worlds. We are as broad as
the universe. Even our minds, clad in clay, betray the high character of
our souls.

DOES THE BEAST PEER INTO THE STARS?

Do the birds that pass so easily into the air go on voyages of discovery
past Sirius? And yet the air refuses to bear us, and wafts them gently
on its lightest zephyrs! We have sublime faculties--the fit companions
of a soul. It is not our self-conceit. The Milky Way is not our conceit.
The eclipses are not our conceit. The awful sweep of our whole family of
planets, moons, and sun, onward in celestial space, is not a conceit.
Therefore we possess our souls, flashing within caskets which have not
been altogether unworthy of their priceless treasures.

AS THE CASKET DULLS

and grows to its decay, we cannot weep greatly over its loss, for will
it not reveal the splendors all within?

"It is worthy the observing," says Lord Bacon, "wisest of men," "that
there is no passion in the mind of men so weak, but it mates and masters
the fear of death; and, therefore, death is no such terrible enemy when
a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat from
him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it;
grief flieth to it; fear pre-occupateth it; nay, we read, after Otho the
Emperor had slain himself,

PITY (WHICH IS THE TENDEREST OF AFFECTIONS)

provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as
the truest sort of followers. A man would die, though he were neither
valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft
over and over again." We all must die, sooner or later. It is easier to
die than to live again our stormy and tempestuous lives. Few would
re-embark at the cr