Lynchburg daily Virginian. [volume] (Lynchburg [Va.]) 1852-1861, 1854-05-29
From the Boston Euening Transcript.
The Plurality of Worlds.

Only three centuries ago the idea of plurality
of inhabited globes was considered an unwar-
rantable and heretical speculation, The stars
''patines of bright gold" with which the
floor of heaven was ''thick naid." But the pro-
gress of astronomy, which has detected the pres
enoo of vast and distant orb, wherever the sky
is spotted with drop of light, has carried with
IT the speculation that each planet is inhabited
as our earth is, and that every fixed star is the
| centre of a populous system of satellites kindred
with our own The conception of peopled uni
verse has become the moral glory of astronomy;
and if it should be disproved DOUBTLESS the ma
iority of reflective minds would feel at first, that
the majesty of the armament was STRICKEN
The greater imp rtanee that would be given to
the intelligent jewellers in this planet, would not
atone, probably, for the forlorn isolation of our
mother earth, when conceived AS patiently meas
uring her obit amid an unsocial and empty fir
mament.
But the general belief in the popuousness ofthe
heavens has begun to be questioned. An Eng
fish writer has recently impeached it in a work
entitled The Plurality of Worlds" Messrs
Gould x Lincoln of this city, have reprinted the
volume IN excellent style, and at moderate cost
1t Is very subtle and mastery, and, in some
parts very brilliant book. The suppositon
that all the solid globes in space must 5e mhabi-
ted, the author considers is disspated by the
examinations of the moon, which is PROV
orb
The general prejudice being thus rebutted, the
writer subjects the nebuln and the motions and
appearances of those of the fixed stars which
have been scrntlnized by powerful telescopes,
to most rigid examination, which he thinks
warrants the belief that they are vaporv and
lnchoate masses instead of solar centres of solid
planets-thn clay of celestial systems which
God Is slowly fashioning, perhaps for future hab-
ltations, on His creative wheel.
The great planets beyond Mars and the Aste-
rods present characteristics of watery and cloudy
balls wholly unfit for the habitaton of intelligent
beings. Within the path of our world the globes
he arguesare too hard and hot to be seats of life
The earth, he contends, is the border ground of
the whole system, where all the conditions of life
gaseous, solid and fluid, in equilibrium, max
king it the domestic hearth for rational life The
whole chapter on the Solar System is one Of the
most skilfu and fascinating pieces of conicctur-
al logic, pressing all the known facts of science
INTO harmony with startling theory, that it has
ever been our fortune to meet 1t may not con-
vince cool aud cautious reader but it will make
the authors theory respectable; it will challenge
admiration OF his powers; and it surely will pre-.
sent the most recent discoveries of Astronomy in
fresh and vivid light. In this respect, "a giving
IA new expression to the prominent features of
astronomical science, the work is of great value
Large and powerful use is made of the revca-
tons OF Geology To buttress the writer's hypoth-
esis against objections. That science shows us
by what inoonceivably slow processes our planet
has been prepared to be the abode of num-
Spaoe was stained at first. perhaps, with aforA
less continent of nebulous mist, which by slow
cycles, was reduced and defned,on the vast can
vas of Eelptie, to the outline of a globe Fol-
lowing the indications of Geology, we see this
sketch elaborated through ages, by pencils of
light and brushes Of storm, from palette fur.
nshed with sea and fame, till it became fit for
then the artistic processes go on laying in str,l-
tum after stratum of rock, each witnessing a