that of any created Being! For how inadequate must the utmost stretch of finite faculties be to represent infinity! The stars, disposed in constellations, and surrounded by concentric circles, may perhaps assist the imagination a little: The attempt in SCENE V. if not admired, we hope will be forgiven. But was it possible we could actually take our flight into infinite space, or be borne on the wings of lightning, to the most distant fixed Star we can now see, even there, perhaps, we should find ourselves on the confines of creation, and see as many stars before us as we left behind! For space has neither top nor bottom in it: it is a circle whose centre is every where, but whose circumference is no where! Even systems themselves may have revolutions round one another; and account for that difference of distance that we are constantly observing to arise amongst the fixed stars; for new stars appear, rise into magnitude, and then diminish and disappear, which would also be accounted for by supposing that our Sun himself is in progressive motion towards some part of infinite space, and carrying his system of worlds along with him. Stars of the _first_ magnitude, in Flamsted’s time, dwindle into those of the _third_ or _fourth_, in our time. Some of the stars change their magnitude periodically: as Algol, in Medusa’s Head, which rises from the third magnitude to the second, in two days and twenty-one hours.—Where such periodical disappearances are short, they have been referred with probability to quick revolutions of such stars on their axis, with part of their disk opaque; or to the regular intervention of some very considerable Planet to intercept them from us. But re-appearances of this kind, after very long intervals, would indicate rather a revolution in a great orbit. By analogy we conclude, that at a proper distance our Sun would dwindle into a fixed Star among the rest, and his system of worlds disappear. Now as we see that almost every particle of our globe swarms with life and animals, we cannot suppose the other bodies of our system to be only intended as a faint spangle for mortals to gaze at; more especially as they are as well calculated for inhabitants as ours, revolving as regularly round the same Sun, and seeming to have every other convenience for rational and brute inhabitants[5]. But to carry this idea into infinite space; to recognize Suns and Systems, above us, below us, to the East, the West, the North, the South; to consider each Sun as the centre of a system like ours, and every world inhabited!—In short, the astonished fancy turns round, and is entirely lost and sunk in the abyss of nature! Well might the Psalmist say, that, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handy work.” Well might he express himself as overwhelmed with the idea of the power and omnipresence of the Deity; since all our discoveries serve only to convince us, that a progress of inexpressible