have enormously increased the number of visible stars, though
there are still probably boundless regions that we cannot see.
These telescopes have several hundred times the power of the
largest lenses of the nineteenth century, and apparently bring
Mars and Jupiter, when in opposition, within one thousand and ten
thousand miles, respectively, so that we study their physical
geography and topography; and we have good maps of Jupiter, and
even of Saturn, notwithstanding their distance and atmospheric
envelopes, and we are able to see the disks of third-magnitude
stars.

"It seems as if, when we wish any particular discovery or
invention, in whatever field, we had but to turn our efforts in
its direction to obtain our desire. We seem, in fact, to have
awakened in the scenes of the Arabian Nights; yet the mysterious
genius which we control, and which dims Aladdin's lamp, is the
gift of no fairy godmother sustained by the haze of dreams, but
shines as the child of science with fadeless and growing
splendour, and may yet bring us and our little planet much closer
to God.

"We should indeed be happy, living as we do at this apex of
attained civilization, with the boundless possibilities of the
future unfolding before us, on the horizon of which we may fairly
be said to stand.

"We are freed from the rattling granite pavement of only a
century ago, which made the occupant of an omnibus feel like a
fly inside of a drum; from the domination of our local politics
by ignorant foreigners; and from country roads that either filled