with four moons, and Saturn with six, the one planet being ten, and the other nine times larger than our own, it dwindled into a world of the third degree, great indeed in its littleness, but yet shorn of its grandeur. In examining more carefully these rival worlds, we find in them so many common functions, that we cannot escape from the conclusion that they were created for a common purpose. Lighted by the same beams, and heated by the same radiations,shaped in the same oblate mould,- -surrounded with atmospheres-enjoying day and night and difference of seasons, can we doubt that they were intended for the residence of beings intellectual and immortal like ourselves? When we see the moons of Jupiter and Saturn eclipsing the sun, and themselves suffering an eclipse in the shadow of the planet, we identify these worlds more strikingly with our own; but when we regard these moons in their higher function of affording a more continued light to their planets than we receive from our own, we cannot conceive of any adequate object for their creation but that of guiding the wayfarer in the night, and throwing upon the distant planet a more abundant reflection of the solar rays. In such palaces as these, so lofty and magnificent,-so nobly furnished,so warmed and so lighted up,-is there no living soul to kneel in gratitude to the Architect who made them? Is there no sovereign to hold his court in their halls, and to sway the sceptre over their boundless empires? Is there no animal life to browse upon their green savannas, no shaggy autocrat in their forests, no bulky leviathan in their oceans, -no condor in their atmospheres, to illustrate the variety of creative power? Is there no sage there to unfold the mysterious phenomena which their earth and their heavens must display, no sympathetic hearts to rehearse in their bowers and their glades those impulses of friendship and of love which are to revive and become permanent in their future being? To these interrogations the philosopher and the Christian must make the same reply. Reason and faith must on this occasion, if they unfortunately diverge in others, join in the sume anthem of gratitude and of praise.

When we survey the other planets, nearer in locality to our own, though not furnished with moons to give them light in the sun's absence, we meet with the same instructive analogies, and are led to the same conclusion, that they are habitable worlds. Venus, of nearly the same size with our Earth, and Mars and Mercury of about half its magnitude, have their days of almost exactly the

same length as our own. * In Mars its atmosphere is most conspicuous, and astronomers have observed what they regard as snow in its polar regions, and green savannas in its equatorial plains; but owing to its never being gibbous like the moon and the two inferior planets, the mountains which it undoubtedly possesses cannot be discovered by the telescope. In Venus and Mercury astronomers have observed that diversity of surface which appears in our own Earth and Mars, and in all the other planets an atmosphere which is very distinct in Venus, and in Venus and Mercury lofty mountains, which they have measured. Owing to their proximity to the Sun, however, and the consequent brilliancy of their discs, it is very difficult to study their physical structure, and from the same cause it is even possible that they may be attended with small moons which have hitherto escaped the cognisance of our telescopes. But, independently of this point of analogy with our Earth, their resemblances in physical character, and in their daily and annual movements, authorize us to conclude, that such globes of matter, warmed and lighted more effectually than our own, are still better adapted for the residence of vegetable, animal, and intellectual life.

It is hardly necessary to conduct our readers to the remoter planets of the solar system, and to advert to the ring of Saturn, and the Satellites of Uranus, and of Neptune, as strengthening our position, that all the planets around us have been created to be the seats of life, and the abodes of intelligence. The opinion that the Earth only was inhabited, became more and more presumptuous in proportion as our system was enlarged, and every discovery of a new planet became a fresh argument for a plurality of worlds.

Before quitting the general argument derived from the similarity between the different bodies of our system, we must notice the remarkable opinion maintained by Sir William Hershel, that the Sun itself is inhabited. When we consider the immense magnitude of the Sun, which is equal to all the planets put together, it was not an unreasonable sup

It is a curious fact which has not been noticed, that the mean of the days in Mars, Venus, and

Mercury, are within less than a minute of 24 hours, the length of our own day; and the mean of the days of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, are nearly coincident with 9 h. 56 m., the length of the Jupiter's day. The days of Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars, are respectively 24 h. 5 m.; 23 h. 21 m.; 24 h.; 24 h. 37 m., the mean of which is 24 h. 0 m. 45 8. The days of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, are respectively 9 h. 56 m., 10 h. 29 m., 9 h. 30 m., the mean of which is 9 h. 38 m.

position, that such an enormous mass might afford a habitation for intellectual beings, while it performed its more obvious functions of lighting, heating, and guiding the other planets of the system. Sir William conceived that the light and heat of the great central body emanated from an outward stratum of phosphoric clouds, composing its luminous atmosphere, and that the dark and solid nucleus, which we often see through openings in this atmosphere, is protected from the fiery blaze by another stratum of opaque and non-conducting clouds. That a temperate, or even a tropical climate, could be obtained by any screen of clouds, it would be difficult to conceive, but as beings may be created capable of enduring any degree of heat, we have no right to consider the probable temperature of the Sun as a proof that it cannot be inhabited. For the same reason Sir William Herschel might have repelled the objection of Dr. Young, that upon the Sun the weight of a man of moderate size would be above two tons. There are certainly no grounds of analogy upon which we can support this theory, and we have adduced it only to shew how strong must have been his faith in the doctrine of a plurality of worlds, who maintained that the Sun is the Seat of life and intelligence.

In order to corroborate the preceding views, it is necessary to remove some difficulties that have been felt by those who confide in them, and reply to some objections that have been urged by the few that oppose them. All these difficulties and objections are founded on the assumption, that the inhabitants of the planets must be of the same size, and the same physical conformation as man; and, were this admitted, it would justify the conclusion that such creatures could not rightly perform their functions in the remote planets, where the light and heat of the sun are so greatly reduced by their distance, as to be incapable of sustaining the animal and vegetable life which exists on the earth. In like manner, the inhabitants of Venus and Mercury, if they have eyes and nerves like ours, could not possibly endure that brilliancy of light and intensity of heat which these planets receive from the sun. Now, there are two answers which may be given to these objections. The cold which we presume exists in the remote planets, and the heat which is supposed to exist in the inferior ones, may be tempered by certain atmospherical conditions of which we have examples in our own earth, or by some other arrangement which we cannot divine. But independent of this supposition, the human eye could easily endure the light upon Mercury and Venus, by means of a small pupil, and a less sensitive

retina, while in the remote planets an enlarged pupil, and a sensitive retina, would enable an eye like our own to see objects as brightly as they do at present. In like manner, the nervous system which received the impressions of heat and cold, could be easily adjusted to bear the highest heat and the severest cold.

The shortness of the day in the remote planets-that period which measures our intervals of rest and labour, has been urged as an objection to the plurality of worlds. It is an objection, however, without any force. Even man, without any change in his physical conformation, could live and thrive with five hours of activity, and other five of repose. In our own arctic regions, where the diurnal motion of the earth marks no such intervals, the inhabitants of the temperate zone can perform their functions as well as in southern climates.

As the strength of the human frame must be accommodated to its weight, and as its weight, as well as that of all other bodies, depends upon the force of gravity at the surface of the planet, it has been alleged that human beings could not exist on such planets as Jupiter and Saturn, whose mass or quantity of matter is so much greater than that of our earth. This objection, as we have already seen, is a very formidable one, in reference to the Sun, where a man would weigh two lons; but it loses all its force when we make an accurate calculation of the force of gravity, and of the weight of a human body, on the largest of the planets. In the case of Jupiter, for example, its size or volume is 1330 times that of the earth, and if both planets consisted of the same kind of matter, a man weighing 150 lbs. on the surface of the earth would weigh 150 × 1330 or 199,500 lbs. at a distance from Jupiter's centre equal to the earth's radius; but if the man stood on Jupiter's surface, whose radius is eleven times greater than that of the earth, his weight would be diminished in the ratio of the square of their radii, that is, in the ratio of 11 x 11 or 121 to 1. Hence, if we divide 199,500 lbs. by 121, we shall have 1649 lbs. as the weight of the man on the surface of Jupiter, or eleven times heavier than he is here. But the materials which compose Jupiter are much lighter than those of which our earth consists, and, consequently, the quantity of attracting matter is much less than we have supposed. The density of Jupiter is to the density of the earth in the ratio of 24 to 100, or less than four to one, so that by dividing 1649 lbs. by 4, we have 412 lbs. as the weight of a man on Jupiter, who weighs here only 150 lbs., that is, only 24ths greater, a difference which actually

exists between many individuals in our own planet. If we make the same calculation for Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, we shall find that in Saturn the weight of a man is very little greater than on our earth, and that in Uranus and Neptune, it is a very little less; so that beings of the same physical constitution as ourselves could exist without inconvenience on all the remote planets; and plants, and trees, and buildings, such as those which occur on our earth, could grow and stand secure, in so far as the force of gravity is concerned.

In replying to objections such as those we have been considering, we have perhaps conceded too much to the limited views of the

persons who made them. To assume that the beings who occupy a plurality of worlds, are, necessarily, to be either men or anything resembling them, is to have a low opinion of that infinite skill which has produced such a variety in the form and structure and functions of vegetable and animal life. In the various races of man which occupy our globe, there is not the same variety which is exhibited in the brutes that perish. Although the noble Anglo-Saxon stands in striking contrast with the Negro or the islander of the Pacific, and the lofty Patagonian with the diminutive Esquimaux, yet in their general form and functions and composition they are essentially the same. But when we look into the world of instinct, and survey the infinitely varied forms which people the earth, the ocean, and the air; when we range with the naturalist's eye from the elephant to the worm-from the leviathan to the infusoria-and from the eagle to the ephemeron, what beauty of form-what diversity of function-what variety of purpose is exhibited to our view! In all these forms of being, reason might have been given in place of instinct, and animals the most hostile to man, and the most alien to his habits, might have been his friend and his auxiliary, in place of his enemy and his prey. If we carry our scrutiny deeper into nature, and survey the infinity of regions of life which the microscope discloses, and if we consider what other breathing worlds lie far beyond even its reach, we may then comprehend the variety of intellectual life with which our own planets and those of other systems may be peopled. Is it necessary that an immortal soul should be hung upon a skeleton of bone, or imprisoned in a cage of cartilage and of skin? Must it see with two eyes, and hear

* We have taken the preceding numbers from a very interesting article in Dr. Lardner's Museum of Science and Art, one of the few works of the kind which can be recommended as at once popular and

accurate.

with two ears, and touch with ten fingers, and rest on a duality of limbs ? May it not reside in a Polyphemus with one eyeball, or in an Argus with a hundred? May it not reign in the giant forms of the Titans, and direct the hundred hands of Briareus ? But setting aside the ungainly creations of mythology, how many probable forms are there of beauty, and activity, and strength, which even the painter, the sculptor, and the poet could assign to the physical casket in which the diamond spirit may be enclosed; how many possible forms are there, beyond their invention, which eye hath not seen, nor the heart of man conceived?

But no less varied may be the functions which the citizens of the spheres have to discharge, and no less diversified their modes of life, and no less singular the localities in which they dwell. If this little world demands such duties from its occupants, and yields such varied pleasures in their discharge;If the obligations of power, of wealth, of talent, and of charity to humanize our race, to unite them in one brotherhood of sympathy and love, and unfold to them the wonderful provisions for their benefit which have been made in the structure and preparation of their planetary home;-If these duties, so varied. and numerous here, have required thousands of years to ripen their fruit of gold, what inconceivable and countless functions may be assigned to that plurality of intellectual communities, which have been settled, or are about to settle, in the celestial spheres? What deeds of heroism, moral, and perchance physical! What enterprises of philanthropy,what achievements of genius must be required in empires so extensive, and in worlds so grand!

Under what skies, and in what climates, these planetary races are to live and move, may be conjectured from the place which they occupy in the system. It may not be in cities exposed to the extremes of heat and cold,

nor in houses made with hands,-nor in the busy market-place,-nor in the noisy Forum, nor in the solemn temple,-nor in the ark which rests upon the ocean,-that these feats of power and reason are to be performed. The being of another mould may have his home in subterraneous cities warmed by central fires,—or in crystal caves cooled by ocean tides, or he may float with the Nereids upon the deep,-mount upon wings as eagles, or have the pinions of the dove that he may flee away and be at rest. In our bald and meagre conceptions of the conditions of planetary life, we may gather some ideas from the existences around us. In the cities and dwellings and occupations of instinct in our own planet, rude though they be, we may

trace the lineaments of the cities and dwellings and occupations of reason in another.

The motion of our sun in absolute space, attended by all the primary and secondary planets and comets of the system, is one of the most extraordinary facts which astronomy presents to us. That this group of celestial bodies are moving round some distant centre -some enormous globe which controls their motion, cannot be doubted. So distant is that centre, that though the motion of our system is at the rate of fifty-seven miles in a second, it may require thousands of centuries before it completes a single round of its orbit. We do not mention this great cosmical truth as a positive argument for a plurality of worlds; but it displays in the most striking manner the absurdity of the opinion, that machinery so vast is to remain in action during cycles so long, and that an ephemeral race like our own, seated in so small a chariot, may be the only passengers which are thus wafted through universal space-enclosed within the orbits of magnificent globes and the network paths of a thousand comets. The mind recoils from a sentiment so absurd and so incompatible with every idea which we can form of the economy of wisdom and of power, which is exhibited around us. It is a sentiment, indeed, which if the astronomical mind could give it a moment's consideration, it would place in the same category as that of a fleet of merchantmen chartered to carry a single mustard seed to the Great Mogul; or that of the largest possible railway train making the round of Europe with no other passenger than Tom Thumb!

When we quit the limits of the Solar system, and span that enormous void which lies between it and the nearest fixed star, we encounter the binary and multiple system of stars, to which the law of gravity has been traced, and where we have worlds revolving in elliptical orbits round worlds, as in the system which we have left behind us. As we advance in space to the clusters of stars and nebulæ, where all seems fixed and immovable -where the orbits described dwindle into luminous points, and where at last these points are themselves inseparable and unseen. we lose almost all the data on which we have maintained the doctrine of a plurality of worlds within the planetary system. No moons, no days and nights, no change of seasons, no atmospheres, no valleys and mountains greet the astronomer's eye in his survey of sidereal space. But in their stead we have suns innumerable-bodies of enormous magnitude that might fill perhaps the annual orbit of our earth, shining certainly with light of their own, and possessing all the colours, and endowed with the optical properties, of the light of our own sun.

We have therefore few analogies to guide us in our inquiry if these distant globes are the abodes of life, and the residence of rational beings; but we have one great principle which supplies their place, and which cannot fail to lead us to a sound conclusion. There are many individuals who readily believe that planets like their own are the abodes of instinct and reason, and who would stand aghast with incredulity were they told that every star in the heavens, and every luminous speck is a stellar group,-that every point of a nebula which the telescope has not yet separated from its neighbours, is a sun or a world like their own, and that immortal beings are swarming throughout universal space, infinitely more numerous than the drops of water in the ocean, or the atoms of sands upon its shores. But it is just as difficult to believe, because it is just as difficult to comprehend, what these persons must and do admit, that innumerable worlds of matter fill the immensity of space, and are kept in their place by the laws of gravity, which all matter must obey. To people such worlds with life, in place of increasing the difficulty, is the only way to remove it. It assigns the cause of their existence, and, however mortifying to human pride, and humbling to human reason, is the doctrine of an infinity of worlds, yet that pride is but rightly mortified, and that reason but truly humbled, when we realize the grand combination of infinity of life with infinity of matter. Were it otherwise, we might, without presumption, assert in the language in which the wise Alphonzo spoke of the Cycles and Epicycles of Ptolemy, that had we been present at the creation of the universe, we could have given its Creator good advice. To suppose that the Almighty filled universal space with light, or its medium, streaming from worlds innumerable to worlds that cannot be numbered, with no eye to receive it but that of the tiny occupants of the little star on which we dwell, and which intercepts only an infinitesimal of its rays, and that he launched these innumerable worlds on their eternal path in order that the descendants of Adam might study their motion, and write books upon Astronomy, is an opinion which could only find credence in minds of the most limited capacity, and in hearts devoid of all sympathy and feeling.

There is another aspect of this question which we would press on the attention of those who consider the earth as the only seat of life and intelligence. Those persons who can bring themselves to believe that all the other planets of the system are uninhabited can have no difficulty in conceiving that the earth also might have been in the same category; and consequently, the sun with all his gorgeous vassals, and the planets with all their faithful satellites, would have performed their daily