APPENDIX. ON THE SCENERY IN A PATCH OF INFINITE SPACE.* (DEDUCED FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES.) "Now trace cach orb with telescopic eyes, And solve the eternal clock-work of the skies." THE SUN AND SOLAR PHENOMENA OF OUR SYSTEM.-The sun-the central luminary of our system—the scource of light and heat appears to prosecute daily a stately procession through the heavens, owing to the rotation of the earth upon its axis, ascending like an intensely brilliant ball from the eastern horizon, and declining towards the western. Excepting the regions bordering on the poles, every part of our globe, within the interval of twenty-four hours, is brought beneath the action of the solar rays, and withdrawn from them-its "mountains and all hills, its fruitful trees and all cedars." The unfailing continuity and nice precision with which this has transpired, age after age, strikingly illustrates the stability of the natural laws. The decline of the sun to the horizon is as imposing a spectacle as his advance to it, when the atmosphere favors the exhibition of his descent. The most gorgeous sunsets are those of the West Indies, during the rainy season; the sky is then sublimely mantled with gigantic masses of clouds, * Infinite space belongs to God, and to God alone. Infinite Power has filled that space with suns and systems, but there has been room for all.— Professor Mitchell. which are tinged with the glare of the descending luminary, and which seem to be impatiently waiting for his departure in order to discharge their pent-up wrath on the bosom of the night. In the South Atlantic the 'sunset has a milder and more sober aspect. In the Eastern tropics it has generally an overpowering fierceness, as though the last expression of the solar heat should be the greatest. But during the summer, in temperate latitudes there is often a serenely beautiful horizon, a mellowness of light, together with a rich and varied coloring on the sky, which combine to render the European sunsets far more attractive than those which are intertropical. The milder radiance of the "great light" in parting from us presents a picture to the eye of the sentiment of the All-Merciful, "Again, a little while and ye shall see me."" And how open to observation are wise Contrivance and bountiful Design in the unvarying position of the sun in the centre of our system, and the axical rotation of his tributaries, which not only guarantee the regular return of their surfaces to his presence, but the undimin ished power and splendor of his beams! If, adopting the něbular hypothesis, we suppose the masses of the sun and of the planets to have been gradually formed, under control of the law of attraction, the question still arises, how it came1 to pass, that the self-luminous matter was collected into one mass at the centre, and not gathered into many masses like the matter of the planets. So striking did this circum-” stance appear to Newton, that he remarked in his first let ter to Bentley: "I do not think it explicable by mere natural causes, but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and contrivance of a Voluntary Agent." E The mean distance of the sun from our earth, as deter-*** mined by observation of the transit of Venus, is ninety-five* millions of miles; and according to Laplace, this must be within of the true distance, so that no error is involved either way greater than about a million of miles. The im→→ mense magnitude of the solar body appears from the fact that he occupies so much space in the heavens, and presents such a stately aspect, with so vast an interval between us. If a locomotive had been started five centuries and a half ago, and had been travelling incessantly at the rate of twenty miles an hour, it would only now have accomplished a space equal to that which lies between the terrestrial and the solar surface. Though light comes from the former to the latter in about eight minutes, a cannon ball would not perform the same feat, retaining its full force, under twenty-two years. That an object therefore should be so splendidly visible as the sun, so far removed, and should so powerfully influence us with light and heat, argues the stupendous dimensions of his volume. His direct light is supposed to be equal to that of 5570 wax candles placed at the distance of one foot from an object; and so great is the power of his rays, that some of the men employed in constructing the Plymouth Breakwater, had their caps burnt in a diving bell, thirty feet under water, owing to their sitting under the focal point of the convex glasses in the upper part of the machine. His real diameter of 882,000 miles is equal to 111 times that of our earth; and his circumference of 3,764,600 miles describes a bulk nearly a million and a quarter times larger than our globe, and above five hundred times greater than the united volume of all the planetary bodies of our system that revolve around him. If his mass occupied the place of the earth, it would fill up the entire orbit of our moon, and extend into space as far again as the path of that satellite. The density of the solar substance is, however, far less than that of the matter of our globe. If the two bodies could be weighed in a balance, the weight of the sun would not preponderate in the same proportion as his bulk, but be only 354,936 times heavier. This proportion is about a fourth less than that of his magnitude; so that the same extent of solar substance would be found four times lighter than the same extent of terrestrial substance. THE MOON AND LUNAR PHENOMENA OF OUR SYSTEM.Next to the greater light that rules the day, the most useful and interesting to us of all the bodies in our universe, is the lesser light that rules the night. The proximity of the moon, the relation in which she is linked to the earth, the power she exerts upon our ocean in drawing up its billows, and the great importance of the lunar theory to safe navigation, have intently fixed the eye of science upon her orb; while the mild radiance with which she shines in the heavens, the advantage of her light to the terrestrial traveller, and the beauty and regularity of her changing phases, have elicited the admiration of barbarian and polished races. The unfailing performance within a definite period of a synodical revolution, or the cycle included between each conjunction with the sun, when she is invisible, called synodical, from the Greek word signifying a coming together, has rendered the moon a convenient time-keeper to men in rude states of society, and won for her the love and respect of savage tribes. Among the wandering hordes of the western continent such a number of moons measures the duration of a journey, and the lapse of events; and successive lunar appearances are discriminated by coincident terrestrial occurrences, as the wild-strawberry moon, the wild rice-gathering moon, the ice-moon, the deer-rutting moon, and the leaf-falling moon. Some of the sacred ceremonies of the Jews, in the early periods of their history, were regulated by the sign of the lunar crescent in the heavens, and the rabbins relate, that persons were stationed on the tops of the mountains to watch for the first appearance of the moon, which event was proclaimed by signal fires throughout the land. For the last six thousand years the eye of man has gazed with delight upon her face, whether in courtly or in rustic life, from old baronial halls or cottages obscure. Th. meek splendor, the quietude, the fidelity, of which the luminary is a visible image, bewitch the senses, excite the imagination, and have originated some of the most captivating strains of poetic description, among which the Trojan bivouac scene in the Iliad still stands peerless. "The troops exulting sat in order round, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light." An imaginary soliloquy, put into the mouth of Milton by a living writer, strikingly expresses the emotions of such a mind, upon first perceiving the curtains about to fall between him and the resplendence of day and night, through the blindness that attended his declining years. "Beautiful light! beautiful lamp of heaven! what marvel that the blinded and benighted heathen should ignorantly worship thee? What marvel that a thousand altars, in a thousand ages, should have sent up their fumes of adoration unto thee, the mooned Ashtaroth-unto thee, the Ephesian Diana -unto thee, the nightly visitant of the young-eyed Endymion? What marvel, that to those who knew not, neither had they heard of the One, Uncreate, Invisible, Eternal, thou shouldst have seemed meet Deity to whom to bend the knee, thou first born offspring of his first created gift! thou blessed emanation from his own ethereal glory! What wonder, when I, his humble follower, his ardent though unworthy worshipper-when I, an honest though an erring |