Litchfield enquirer., 1832-07-26

and /. had sauntered up the castles top to
enjoy the breeze that played around it, and
TO admire the unclouded armament thai
glowed and sparkIed with unusual lustre
! from pole to pole. The atmosphere was
| in its nurcst and finest state of vision the
Midway was distinctly developed through
out its whole extent; every planet and
every star above the horizon, however
near and brilliant, or distant and faint, lent
its lambent light or twinkling ray to give
variety and beauty to- the hemisphere ;
while the round, bright moon $50 distinct
ly defined were the lines of her figure, and
so clearly visible even the rotundity OF
her form,) seemed to hang off from the
azure vault, suspended in midway air; or
STOPPING forward from the armament her
fair and radiant face. as if to court and re-
turn our gaze. ..t... ..4.-
We amused ourselves for sometime, in
observing through IA telescope the planet
Jupiter, sailing in silent majesty with his
squadron Of satellites along the vast ocean
of space between US and the fixed stars;
and admired the felicity of that design, by
which those distant bodies have been par
celled out and arraycd into consultations,
so as to have served not only fer beacons
to the ancient navigator, but, as it were
for landmarks to astronomers Of this day /;
enabling them, though in different coun-
tries, to Indicate to each other with ease
the place and motion Of these planets, the
comets and magnificent meteors which in
habit, revoIve, and play in the intermedi-
ate space.
We recalled and dwelt with delight on
the rise and progress of the science of as
,ronomy on that series of astonishing dis
coveries through successive ages, which
display, in so strong light, the force aud
reach of the human mind; and on those
bold coniectures and sublime reveries,
which seem TO tower even to the confines
Of divinity, aud denote the high destiny to
which mortals tend: that thought, for in
stance, which is said to have been first
started by Pythagoras, and which modern
astronomers approve; that the stars which
we call fixed, although they appear to us
to be nothing more than large sparkles OF,
various sizes gliuering on the same con-
cave surface, are, nevertheless, bodies as
large as our sun, shining like him with ori-
ginal and not reflected light, placed at in
calculable distances asunder, and each star
the solar centre of system of planets
WHICH revolve around it, as the planets be-
longing 10 orr system do around the sun
that this is not only the case with all the
stars which our eyes discern in the irma-
ment, or which the telescope has brought
within the sphere of our vision, but, ac-
cording 10 the modern Improvement ofthis
thought, that there e:o probably other
stars wh"sc light has not yet reached us,
although light moves with velocity mill
ion times greater than that ola cannon ball
that those luminous appearances, which
we observe in the armament like flakes Of
thin white cloud, and windows, as it were,
which open to tho other ornaments, far,
far beyond the ken of human eye, or the
power ofoptical instruments, lighted up like
ours with hosts of stars or suns that this
scheme goes on through infinite space,
which is filled with thousands upon thou
sands of those suns, attended by ten thou
sand times ten thousand worlds, all in rapid
motion, yet calm, regular and harmonious,
invariably keeping The paths prescribed to
them and tl,ese worlds peopled with my
fIaOS OI IntSljgent OeiuSS'
One would think this conception, thus
extended, would be bold enough to satisfy
the whole enterprise of the human imagin-
alton. But what an accession of glory,
and nagnifcence does Dr.. Herschel super
add, when, instead Of supposing all those
suns fixed, and the motion confined to their
respective planets, he looseDs those multi
tudinous suns themselves from their sta
tons, sets them all in Motion with their
splendid retinue Of planets and satellites,
and imagines them, thus attended, to per-
form astupendous revolution, system above
system, around some grander unknown
centre, somewhere in the boundless abyss
of space land when, carrying on the pro-
cess, you suppose that centre itself not sta
tionary, but also counterpoised by other
masses in the immensely Of space, with
which, attended BY their accumulated trains
of
Planets, and suns, and adamantiDe spheres
Wheeling unstaken through the void immense
it maintains harmonious concert, surround
ing in its vast career some other centre
still more remote an4 stupendous which in
its turn" You overwhelm me" cried Ro-
sale, as was laboring to pursue the i'm
meDsc concatenation ;-"my mind is be-
wildered and lost in the effort TO follow
YOU. and finds no point in which TO rest its
weary wing" Yet there Is point, my
dear RosaIie-,he Throne Of the Most