ion renews itself in an infinite variety.

According to all the probabilities, universal life is distributed there
as well as here, and has sown the germ of intelligence upon those
distant worlds that we divine in the vicinity of the innumerable suns
that plow the ether, for everything upon the Earth tends to show that
Life is the goal of Nature. Burning foci, inextinguishable sources of
warmth and light, these various, multi-colored suns shed their rays upon
the worlds that belong to them and which they fertilize.

Our globe is no exception in the Universe. As we have seen, it is one of
the celestial orbs, nourished, warmed, lighted, quickened by the Sun,
which in its turn again is but a star.

Innumerable Worlds! We dream of them. Who can say that their unknown
inhabitants do not think of us in their turn, and that Space may not be
traversed by waves of thought, as it is by the vibrations of light and
universal gravitation? May not an immense solidarity, hardly guessed at
by our imperfect senses, exist between the Celestial Humanities, our
Earth being only a modest planet.

Let us meditate on this Infinity! Let us lose no opportunity of
employing the best of our hours, those of the silence and peace of the
bewitching nights, in contemplating, admiring, spelling out the words of
the Great Book of the Heavens. Let our freed souls fly swift and rapt
toward those marvelous countries where indescribable joys are prepared
for us, and let us do homage to the first and most splendid of the
sciences, to Astronomy, which diffuses the light of Truth within us.

To poetical souls, the contemplation of the Heavens carries thought away
to higher regions than it attains in any other meditation. Who does not
remember the beautiful lines of Victor Hugo in the Orientales? Who has
not heard or read them? The poem is called "Ecstasy," and it is a
fitting title. The words are sometimes set to music, and the melody
seems to complete their pure beauty:

J'etais seul pres des flots par une nuit d'etoiles.
Pas un nuage aux cieux, sur les mers pas de voiles;
Mes yeux plongeaient plus loin que le monde reel,
Et les bois et les monts et toute la nature
Semblaient interroger, dans un confus murmure,
Les flots des mers, les feux du ciel.

Et les etoiles d'or, legions infinies,
A voix haute, a voix basse, avec mille harmonies
Disaient, en inclinant