the accuracy of our vision, when we read the conjecture that the glorious stars which compose the sidereal universe,-that "Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades," which Scripture tells us "God made," were never created by Him at all, and "are really long since extinct !" He had previously stated, "that in consequence of the time employed in the transmission of visual impressions, our seeing a star is evidence not that it exists now, but that it existed it may be many thousands of years ago;" and thinking that such a statement might seem to some readers to throw doubts upon reasonings which he had employed, he makes the following observation :—“ It may be said that a star which was a mere chaos when the light by which we see it set out from it, may, in the thousands of years which have since elapsed, have grown into an orderly world. To which bare possibility we may oppose another supposition, at least equally possible, that the distant stars were sparks or fragments struck off in the formation of the Solar system, which are REALLY long since extinct, and survive in appearance only by the light which they at first emitted”!

66

With such a speculation before us, we need not put the question with which we intended to conclude this chapter. If the stars are not suns, for what conceivable purpose were they created? Our author has answered the question by asserting, that they were never created at all! To such philosophy and theology we prefer that of the poet

"Each of these stars is a religious house;

I saw their altars smoke, their incense rise,
And heard hosannahs ring through every sphere.
The great Proprietor's all-bounteous hand
Leaves nothing waste, but sows these fiery fields
With seeds of reason, which to virtues rise
Beneath his genial ray."

YOUNG.

CHAPTER XIV.

OBJECTIONS FROM THE NATURE OF THE PLANETS.

HAVING sullied the glories of the sidereal world by converting the stars and systems which compose it, into vapour, gas, and comets' tails, the Essayist proceeds to apply the same process to the planets of the Solar system, converting those exterior to the Earth into water and mud, and the interior ones into cinder or sheets of rigid slag like the moon!

This process commences with Neptune, which he describes as a dark and cold world, where the light and heat of the Sun is incapable of

66

unfolding the vital powers, and cherishing the vital enjoyments of animals;"-an assumption without any evidence to support it. It is true, that if we consider the solar influences as emanations following a geometrical law, their

power

upon the surface of Neptune must be immensely enfeebled; but such a law does not exist. Although the Sun is nearest the Earth in winter, his light and heat are, from different causes, greatly reduced, and we know, as we have shewn in a former chapter, that there may be conditions of the atmosphere of the remoter planets which may procure for them more genial influence from the Sun, or there may be temperatures in their interior which may supply the place of radiated heat.

The same observations which apply to Neptune are applicable to Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter, the same objections on the part of the Essayist, and the same reply to them. Jupiter, however, is the planet to which he especially calls our attention; and after much irrelevant speculation respecting the internal condition of our globe, as produced by the superincumbent weight of its outer formations, and "allowing for the compression of the interior parts of Jupiter," he pronounces it "tolerably certain that his density is not greater than it would be if his entire globe were composed of water," and he concludes that Jupiter must be

a mere sphere of water. He afterwards states that there is "much evidence against the existence of solid land" in that planet; but in opposition to this evidence, he subsequently contributes a few cinders at the centre,-articles, doubtless, of peculiar value and interest, where everything else is water. The existence of cinders, however, where there is no heat, and where, as we shall presently see, the water is ice, must have perplexed his chemistry, and hence he wisely withdraws them, by telling us that the waters in Jupiter are bottomless, that is, without a nucleus of cinders.

In order to prove that Jupiter and the exterior planets cannot be inhabited, he adduces the extreme cold which must exist upon their surface; but when his assertion that Jupiter is a sphere of water, and, if peopled at all, peopled with cartilaginous and glutinous monsters, boneless, watery, pulpy creatures, floating in the fluid, is met with the objection that the waters must be frozen into ice, he has no difficulty in making Jupiter as hot to answer this one purpose, as he formerly made it cold to answer another. In this wonderful process of