which lie at the foundation of our intellectual system; the great ideas
of time, and space, and extension, and magnitude, and number, and
motion, and power. How grand the conception of the ages on ages required
for several of the secular equations of the solar system; of distances
from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us in twenty
millions of years, of magnitudes compared with which the earth is but a
foot-ball; of starry hosts--suns like our own--numberless as the sands
on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite
spaces, with a velocity compared with which the cannon-ball is a
way-worn, heavy-paced traveler![A]

[Footnote A: Nichol's _Architecture of the Heavens_, p. 160.]


THE SPECTACLE OF THE HEAVENS.

Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our
conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present, even to the unaided
sight, scenes of glory which words are too feeble to describe. I had
occasion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to
Boston; and for this purpose rose at 2 o'clock in the morning. Every
thing around was wrapped in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only
by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train.
It was a mild, serene midsummer's night; the sky was without a
cloud--the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had
just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral luster but little
affected by her presence; Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the
day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in
the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly
discovered glories from the naked eye in the south; the steady Pointers,