view. The farthest observed by the astronomer were estimated by him
as thirty-five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its
distance to be about twenty thousand millions of miles. It would
thus appear, that not only does gravitation keep our earth in its
place in the solar system, and the solar system in its place in our
astral system, but it also may be presumed to have the mightier duty
of preserving a local arrangement between that astral system and an
immensity of others, through which the imagination is left to wander
on and on without limit or stay, save that which is given by its
inability to grasp the unbounded.

The two Herschels have in succession made some other most remarkable
observations on the regions of space. They have found within the
limits of our astral system, and generally in its outer fields, a
great number of objects which, from their foggy appearance, are
called nebulae; some of vast extent and irregular figure, as that in
the sword of Orion, which is visible to the naked eye; others of
shape more defined; others, again, in which small bright nuclei
appear here and there over the surface. Between this last form and
another class of objects, which appear as clusters of nuclei with
nebulous matter around each nucleus, there is but a step in what
appears a chain of related things. Then, again, our astral space
shews what are called nebulous stars,--namely, luminous spherical
objects, bright in the centre and dull towards the extremities.
These appear to be only an advanced condition of the class of objects
above described. Finally, nebulous stars exist in every stage of
concentration, down to that state in which we see only a common star
with a slight BUR around it. It may be presumed that all these are
but stages in a progress, just as if, seeing a child, a boy, a youth,
a middle-aged, and an old man together, we might presume that the