Litchfield enquirer., 1874-01-01
RARY.
SToR1Es OF INF1SrTY, by Camille Flamari-
 rion, translated from the French by s. q R Crockes; Ruhefts Bros-s Boston.


 rion, translated from the French by s.
 4 R Crockef; Roberts Bros, Boston.
 This book, by one of tho most eminent of living astronomers, leaves us with no doubt on two points, the value of its as- tronomical information, and the sublime interest of its subject. Not until We stop to think of the true meaning of the word infinity can We conceive of the stupend ous nature of these stories. They are three in number In the first, Lumen, a disembodied spirit, returns to converse with his friend still imprisoned in the flesh, concerning the wonders of light, the number of habitable worlds, and the diff ferent planitary systems. He tells how pictured on the successive waves of light endlessly pressing onward into space are all the events which have taken place in every portion of creation So vast and varied that the boldest imagination shrinks from the effort to conceive of it. As a spirit who has lately left this world, Lu- men was naturally most interested in it. Gazing from the star Capella his eyes sought and found the Paris to which he had just bidden farewell. It was Paris, familiar yet strange. He saw all the old churches, palaces, squares, and streets, and some edifices which though they were evidently venerable, he did not recognize but the new structures and the broad streets of the second Empire he failed to gee. He. could not account for the an- tique dresses and strange occurrences that he saw until he remembered that for 9 ray of light to pass from the earth to Capella required seventy-fve years, so that he was looking back upon the scenes of the first Revolution. Leaving Capella and returning toward the Earth with the speed of thought-so far outstripping that of light-Lumen meets in rapid success sion the pictures of all succeeding events in that city of changes. Having thus il- lustrated the laws of light he next tells his friend about the different planetary systems, and the inhabitants of many of the planets; for he laughs at the narrow conceit which would imagine our world to be the only habitable globe of all the millions of worlds so grandlS circling through boundless space.
 The second story relates the obseFva- tions of Comet who first noticed our small and dusky earth, surrounded by grass and mach disturbed by geologic convulsions, Tn the. year ell, ,1SS, B. 0. The long haired traveller, sweeping past the Earth at neighborly distance. of about seventy-fve hundreds of millions of leagues, would cast friendly glances at the distressed little planet, and grew to look forward toher visits, 5000 years apart, with a feeling of compassionate interest concerning it's fate. The study of 0fif worlds history through the eyes of a com et has something strangely exciting in it. It gives us at once a sense of extreme lit tleness and of overwhelming vastness; we seem to feel at the same moment the tiny heart beats of the Earth, and the resist less, ceaseless, motionless rush of the Comet through measureless space.
 The last of the stories, "In Infnity" though perhaps more sublime than ei- Lher of the others, and embracing some of the finest as we'll as most instructive passages of the book, pleased us the least There is such a vast folornness, such homelessness, in the idea of m emotionless, compassionless soul plung- ing about in the fathomless depths of eternal space to-study astronomy! We quote as one of the sublimest passages of .he book the authors conception of the Creation, which yet, grand as it is, and IS far it goes, in one thing we find want ng. We would have liked to see in it not only the Infinite Power, and the Univer- sal Intelligence, but also something of the Infinite Love of the All Father. God is no moae in any part of heaven thanIon earth ,-or, more accurately, there Is not any where in Infinity certain place with pavements of pearl, on which stands the throne of the Most High. The Elm pyreon of the middle ages no more exists than does the Olympus of the Greeks. The Paradise of Mahomet never shone save in the glowing imaginations of the prophets disciples. The seaven heavens of Buddha are no more real than they are in the gro- tesque pictures of China or Japan that figure them to you. To see God face to face is an expression freely symbolic. The eyes of the most glorifed, most angelic body. could not see or admire any where that invisible Person" ~ 'sGod is pure spirit, or rather, tAe pure spirit, conscious of itself, and of every part of the universe; person. al, but without form; infinite and eternal that is without extent or duration; as real ly present here in the heart of Paris, where I am speaking to you, as in the brighest stars; as active in the operations of teres- trial Nature as in the sublime manifesto tions of the higher spiritual spheres.
 "The infinite Being-cause of causes, principle of all that is, virtue and support of the universe, absolute, eternal-is, wholly incomprehensible by you, and me, and all creatures. His ex- istenee is indisputable, for without it it would be impossible to explain the exist ence of intelligence in the creation, of mathematics (which mankind did not in vent, but discoveredD, and of intellectual and moral truths. But the author and Supreme Judge of all things is aboye our conception.
 ARTHUR BoNN1cAsrLE, by Dr. Holland
 Scribner, Armstrong $ Go.
 A writer of work of fiction may well be congratulated when every chapter not only interests by it's narrative but interests l. of ske