elongating its radius into one thousand feet.' The reader of course
understands that this expression, founded on absolute calculations of
Dr. Nichol, is simply meant to exhibit the _relative_ dimensions
of the _mundus Ante-Rosseanus_ and the _mundus Post-Rosseanus;_
for as to the _absolute_ dimensions, when stated in miles, leagues
or any units familiar to the human experience, they are too stunning
and confounding. If, again, they are stated in larger units, as for
instance diameters of the earth's orbit, the unit itself that
should facilitate the grasping of the result, and which really
_is_ more manageable numerically, becomes itself elusive of the
mental grasp: it comes in as an interpreter; and (as in some other
cases) the interpreter is hardest to be understood of the two. If,
finally, TIME be assumed as the exponent of the dreadful magnitudes,
time combining itself with motion, as in the flight of cannon-balls or
the flight of swallows, the sublimity becomes greater; but horror
seizes upon the reflecting intellect, and incredulity upon the
irreflective. Even a railroad generation, that _should_ have faith
in the miracles of velocity, lifts up its hands with an '_Incredulus
odi_!' we know that Dr. Nichol speaks the truth; but he _seems_
to speak falsehood. And the ignorant by-stander prays that the doctor
may have grace given him and time for repentance; whilst his more
liberal companion reproves his want of charity, observing that
travellers into far countries have always had a license for lying, as a
sort of tax or fine levied for remunerating their own risks; and that
great astronomers, as necessarily far travellers into space, are
entitled to a double per centage of the same Munchausen privilege.

Great is the mystery of Space, greater is the mystery of Time; either
mystery grows upon man, as man himself grows; and either seems to be a
function of the godlike which is in man. In reality the depths and the