suns that it discovers. This eye is the lens of
the optical instruments. Even opera-glasses disclose stars of the
seventh magnitude. A small astronomical objective penetrates to the
eighth and ninth orders. More powerful instruments attain the tenth.
The Heavens are progressively transformed to the eye of the astronomer,
and soon he is able to reckon hundreds of thousands of orbs in the
night. The evolution continues, the power of the instrument is
developed; and the stars of the eleventh and twelfth magnitudes are
discovered successively, and together number four millions. Then follow
the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth magnitudes. This is the
sequence:

7th magnitude 13,000.
8th " 40,000.
9th " 120,000.
10th " 380,000.
11th " 1,000,000.
12th " 3,000,000.
13th " 9,000,000.
14th " 27,000,000.
15th " 80,000,000.

Accordingly, the most powerful telescopes of the day, reenforced by
celestial photography, can bring a stream of more than 120 millions of
stars into the scope of our vision.

The photographic map of the Heavens now being executed comprises the
first fourteen magnitudes, and will give the precise position of some
40,000,000 stars, distributed over 22,054 sheets, forming a sphere 3
meters 44 centimeters in diameter.

The boldest imagination is overwhelmed by these figures, and fails to
picture such millions of suns--formidable and burning globes that roll
through space, sweeping their systems along with them. What furnaces are
there! what unknown lives! what vast immensities!

And again, what enormous distances must separate the stars, to admit of
their free revolution in the ether! In what abysses, at what a distance
from our terrestrial atom, must these magnificent and dazzling Suns
pursue the paths traced for them by Destiny!

* * * * *

If all the stars radiated an equal light, their distances might be
calculated on the principle that an object appears smaller in proportion
to its distance. But this equality does not exist. The suns were not all
cast in the same mold.

Indeed, the stars differ widely in size and brightness, and the
distances that have been measured show that the most brilliant are not
the nearest. They are scattered through Spac