The Sun.
London, England, 1847-03-31 00:00:00

LITERAT URE.

THOUGHTS ON THE SYSTEM OF THE
WORLD. By J. P. Aiello!, LL.D.

Since the science of astronomy was first afforded some
appreciable stability by the revelations of the telescope
of Galileo, no more startling announcements have been
made as to the mechanism of the heavens, than those
contained in this noble and eloquent volume from the
pen of Dr. Nichol. The book has been suggested ira-
mediately by the facts revealed through the instrumen-
tality of the monster speculum fabricated lay Lord Rosse.
Gratitude to that nobleman for the exercise of his genius
and industry in unfolding some of the mysteries of God's
creation, has incited Dr. Nichol to compare him to the
illustrious Danish astronomer, Tycho Brabe, and in ad-
dition to that has instigated the production of these very
beaut ful, extraordinary, and intereeting chapters. It is
but natural that the stellar discoveries which are con-
tained in the present volume should have become by this
time universally known ; they are such discoveries as are
most readily promulgated throughout society, they are
discoveries not 'one jot less marvellous than those pro-
claimed by the Tuscan, in his " Nuncio Sidereis," when
he beheld the cusps of Mercury, the moons of Jupiter,
or the maculas upon the disc of the solar globe. From
the time which has elapsed, therefore, since the original
appearance of the revelations of the great Rosse tele-
scope, it will be unnecessary for us to do more than simply
mention the nature of those revelations. Our chief
purpose just now is to remark upon the exquisite graces
of the book as a composition, upon the enthusiasm into
which the writer frequently soars in the course of his
sublime narrative, and upon the majestic morality by
which every sentiment and disclosure is characterised.
The broad fact upon which its pages are based is .jn re-
lation to the Nebular hypothesis of Sir William Her-
schel, and its utter and eternal dispersion by the
monster speculum at Parsonstown in Ireland. That is
the arch revelation which Dr. Nichol has blown through
this volume as through a golden trumpet. With an
intense reverence for the vast intellectual capacities
of the great Herschel, and with something almost like
remorse at destroying a scheme of so much intrinsic
loveliness, Dr. Nichol here entirely dispels the notion
that the nebulae are suffusions of vapour, in certain loca-
lities of space, being the germs of worlds. From the
magnificent hypothesis of Sir William Herschel, or
rather simultaneously with its conception, grew up the
celebrated theory of La Place as to the birth of the solar
system. With the dissipation of the one dream the
foundations of the other are loosened; with the downfall
of Herschel's hypothesis La Place's theory is left without
any extrinsic support. As the writer of the work before us
intimates, the latter will henceforth have to rest solely
upon its own merits. The difficulties around it are
doubled; its permanency is more questionable than ever;
but under these remarkable emabarrassments the glory
of its ultimate demonstration (supposing that ultimate
demonstration to be possible) will be wonderfully in-
creased. So bewildering is the vastness and profundity
of space, as conveyed to the imagination by the resolution
of the riebulm into infinite multitudes of stars, so astonish-
ing is the bare supposition that those blear masses of light
lying in the depths of the sky are literally star dust, SO
sublime are the suggestions arising from this rending in
twain of the veil of the celestial temple, that the mind of
man is almost appalled by the accession of grandeur
dawning upon his finite intelligence. Hence it is that
we can appreciate the sentiment which way probably
have originated the crude belief of Herschel in eluci-
dation of three impenetrable problems of the nebular
lights. " What wonder," as Dr. Nichol exclaims
in a burst of beautiful emotion, " what wonder
though even he who had clomb heights so
lofty, and passed unbewildered through many
untracked lands, should yet, in presence of a phenome-
non which portended to summon into view schemes of
being so unknown before, and so surpassingly dazzling,
have felt that his imagination had lost its daring, and
thereupon assumed as a refuge the easier and more pro-
bable hypothesis of a sill shining fluid, whose existence
would veil the variety and temper .the glories of this
overpowering univere !" But the ineiorabto and solemn
voice of science has procla,med the omega of that ignorant
and credulous vision. Toe dire has, has become more
and more perceptible under tfie scrutiny of telescopic
agencies until it has broken up into distinct stars upon
the eye of the ti-1 scope of Lord Rosse. The announce-
ment of this grand rev. lstion was made iu a letter written
to Dr. Nichol by that enlightened and laborious noble-
man, dated March 19th, 1846. The nebula examined
was the famous nebula in Orion. "We could
plainly see," says that memorable letter, "that all
about the trapezium is a mass (f stars ; thig rest
of the nebula also abounding with stars, and
exhibiting the characteristics of resolvability strongly
marked.' What fields of creative glory open
upon the fancy at the enunciation of those few but
thrilling words ! What infinitudes of life I What A
pomp of globes shining upon us from the incalculable
distances of the heavens ! " The nebulous spots," says
Dr. Nichol, " resolved into stars is a fact which of itself
vastly modifies our conception of the magnitude of the
Creation ; but how hopelessly does imagination strain
to enlarge itself, that so we realise the interior gorgeous-
ness of these distant groups ! In 4he masses of nebulous
stars, circular or compact galaxies of all orders of glory
may now be traced, leading from the splendid cluster in
Hercules, as their lowest point up through schemes of
being, in which sun is nearer sun, until their entire skies
merge into one blaze of light and one throng of activities;
—not like ours, coldly.studded with points far apart,
whose mutual influences are sundered by huge abysses!
But high above all stands Orion, the pre-eminent glory
and wonder of the Sidereal Universe. Considering it as
so remote that its light cannot reach us in less than sixty
thousand years, and at the same time as occupying so
large an apparent portion of the heavens, how stu-
pendous must be the extent of that Nebula! It would
seem almost as if all other clusters hitherto gauged, were
collected and compressed into one, they would not sur-
pass this mighty group, in which every wisp, every
wrinkle, is verily a SAND-HEAP of stars!" It is atter this
superb delineation of perhaps the grandest spectacle in
the visible creation that Dr. Nichol makes this meek
and beautiful ejaculation—" There are cases in which,
though Imagination has quailed, Reason may still
adventure inquiries, and prolong its speculations; but at
times we are brought to a limit across which no human
faculty has the strength to penetrate, and where as now
—as if on the threshold of the very Infinite—we can
only bend our beads and silently ADORE!" Not only,
however, does he picture to himself and to the reader the
resolvability of the nebular haze into multitudes of con-
tiguous suns, not only does he insist upon the migration
of the whole of the solar system through space round a
given centre, say the brighter point in the Pleiades, not
only does he enlarge upon the mutations which this very
system must have undergone in the course of its pro-
gressive formation, but he dilates upon the probability of
the grander revolutions of the constellations in the skies,
he marvels as to the lapse of time since the three stars
in the belt of Orion appeared in a different aspect before
they merged into their present symmetry, and muses
upon the modifications of form which in!" tke dread past"
must have bean perceptible in Perseus and the Milky
Way! After commenting upon the exquisitely sequen-
tial character of creation and the matchless uaiformity
and adaptation throughout, the author rises to a theme
beyond even the majesty of those mighty orbs that
glitter in the night sky. The passage is among the most
masterly and earnest in this masterly and earnest work.
There is a harmony in it that drowns the dissonance of
infid. lit, .

That grand display of segn -nee must surely have life
within it, and a condition different from mere orderly
collocations between one event and another as the sub
stratum of their concurrence, the mind demands a CAUSE.
That cause is not discernible, and therefoie not repre-
sentable ; but lam assured, by the strongest intuitions
of my being, that it exists. I must seek it, then, in the—
region of the UNREPLIESENTABLE-111111011g realities inde-
pendent of time and space. Now, I know no cognate
idea unless that of WILL. Power or force has no anala-
gon in my mind, except a FREE ACT; and, therefore, as
the link of every tur►i of the infinite successions of the
material universe, I descry even the immanence of its
GREAT GOD! Law is not merely the Almighty's
minister: the order of the world is nut merely his ordi-
nance; the forces, if so we name them, which express
oiler, are not powers or inferior energies he has evoked
from the silences, and to whose guardianship he has in-
trusted all things, that so he himself might repose. No!
above, below, and around there is GOD, there his dread
Omnipresence, speaking to finite creatures through
Finite Forms, a language, which only the Living Heart
can understand I In the rain and sunshine, in the soft
zephyr, in the cloud, the torrent, and the thunder, in the
bursting blossom and the fading branch, in the returning
seasons and the rolling star—there is the INFINITE
ESSENCE, and the mystic development of His Will ! "
Upon the geological reflections of this eloquent writer,
and also upon his weird-like topographical account of
the surface of our earth's satellite, the moon, we shall
not pause to make any detailed observation. Both por-
tions of the work can perform their own missions, with-
out any adventitious assistance, without guide-post or
interpretation. Besides storing the mind with novel and
wholesome knowledge, this production is calculated to
exercise a mural influence over its readers, filling their
hearts with awe, and humility, and admiration.

THE STORY OF LILLY DATVSOIV. By Mrs.
Crowe, Authoress of" Susan Hopley." 3 Vols.
The story of Lilly Dawson presents a strange
compound of the natural and the improbable. The
main incidents which it relates are about as mar-
vellous and unlikely as any to be met with in any
romance ; while, on the other hand, the lesser occur-
rences, the minor particulars and various minutiae of
the whole are detailed in the most natural manner
possible. Although from its many extraordinary
coincidences and unnatural catastrophes we are corn,
pelled to regard the whole work as purely fictitious,
yet from the accurate delineation of character,
from the probable manner in which events,
however unlikely in themselves, lead one into
the other, and especially from the great simpli-
city and truthfulness with which domestic scenes and
incidents are pourtrayed, each chapter (with a few
exceptions) is invested with an air of reality; and as
we read on, all appears natural, and, consequently,
interesting. The character of Lilly, the heroine, is
in its entirety certainly not a natural one—it is
purely ideal—but it embodies a very beautiful notion,
one full of truth and worthy of all attention, and one
which, though generally admitted in theory, is as
generally denied in practice—namely, that in the
various duties and difficulties of life, the heart is the
best teacher and the best guide; and that as our
purest thoughts and noblest actions—humility, devo-
tion, self-sacrifice, and a myriad others--are inspired
by its gentle promptings, so is a pure and affectionate
heart the best portion and suret guide, better, more
valuable, and more available than these merely mental
endowments or fascinating
i manners or refined ac-
complishments. This idea s fully carried out in the