Of all those beasts, and fish, and fowl,
With which, like Indian plantations,
The learned stock the constellations,

till he asked her how many stars she thought were visible to them at
that moment.

She looked around over the magnificent stretch of sky that their
high position unfolded. 'Oh, thousands, hundreds of thousands,' she
said absently.

'No. There are only about three thousand. Now, how many do you
think are brought within sight by the help of a powerful telescope?'

'I won't guess.'

'Twenty millions. So that, whatever the stars were made for, they
were not made to please our eyes. It is just the same in
everything; nothing is made for man.'

'Is it that notion which makes you so sad for your age?' she asked,
with almost maternal solicitude. 'I think astronomy is a bad study
for you. It makes you feel human insignificance too plainly.'

'Perhaps it does. However,' he added more cheerfully, 'though I
feel the study to be one almost tragic in its quality, I hope to be
the new Copernicus. What he was to the solar system I aim to be to
the systems beyond.'

Then, by means of the instrument at hand, they travelled together