re-asserts, elucidates, and often dexterously turns the weapons of the
most formidable and orthodox of his adversaries against them, by showing
from their writings that they had, in detail at least, acquiesced in
the truths that they now, in a generalised form, seek to controvert and
repudiate. So much adroitness and pertinacity in the author can hardly
fail to provoke resistance, if not asperity, despite of the
imperturbable temper in which he maintains the combat. The learned have
been disturbed in their daily routine, by the discharge from an unknown
hand, of a massive pyrites, that has diffused as much consternation
among the herd of modish elocutionists, college tutors, and chimpanzee
professors, as Jove's ligneous projectile among the lieges of the
standing pool. For this commotion we have, on a former occasion,
conceded that there existed valid reasons, and we hasten to see the way
in which they have been met in the rejoinder before us; contenting
ourselves, as we needs must, by briefly noticing some of the salient
points of the controversy.

First of the Nebular Hypothesis. The chief objection to this theory is,
that the existence of nebulous matter in the heavens is disproved by the
discoveries made by the telescope of the Earl of ROSSE. By the reach of
this wondrous tube, masses of light, rendered apparently nebulous by
their vast distance, have been resolved into clusters of stars, and
thence the assumption seemed unwarrantable that any luminous matter,
different from the solid bodies composing planetary systems existed in
the heavenly spaces. But to this the author replies, that there are two
classes of nebulæ--one resolvable into constellations--another
comparatively near, that remains unaffected by telescopic power, and
that until this last description can be separated, the nebular
hypothesis is not disproved. It is thus brought to an issue of facts,
both as to the existence of nebulæ of this latter kind, and the optical