I understand, said the Marchioness; I am quite of your opinion; if the planets moved round the earth, the time employed by each would be different, according to their various distances, as is the case in their revolutions round the sun: is not that what you mean? Precisely so, madam, answered I; their unequal distances from the earth would produce an inequality in their revolutions round her: and the fixed stars, being so extremely remote from us, so far beyond all that could have a general movement round us, at least situated in a place where such a motion must be very feeble, is there any probability of their revolving round us in four-and-twenty hours, like the moon which is so near to us? Ought not the comets likewise which do not belong to our vortex, which have such irregular courses, and such different degrees of swiftness, to be exempted from performing this daily circle round our world? No, planets, fixed stars, and comets too, must all turn round the earth! Were there but a few minutes difference in the time of their revolutions we might be satisfied with it; but they are all exactly equal, never varying in the slightest degree; surely this is a suspicious circumstance. Oh! replied the Marchioness, I could venture to say this exactitude existed only in our imaginations. I am glad that any thing inconsistent with the genius of nature, which this equality in so many moving bodies would be, should depend on our motion, and she, even at our expense, be free from the charge of inconsistency. For my part, said I, I dislike a perfect regularity, and I don't approve of the earth's turning every day on her axis in exactly twenty-four hours; I am disposed to think the time varies. Varies! she exclaimed; do not our clocks shew that it is always equal? Oh! replied I, I don't depend on clocks, they cannot always be perfectly right; and should they be so, and sometimes shew that the earth has made a longer or shorter tour in four-and-twenty hours than usual, it would be thought that we ought rather to suspect them of being wrong than to attribute any irregularity to the revolutions of the earth. That is paying an extravagant respect to her, I should depend no more on the earth than on a clock; the one might be put out of sorts almost by the same causes as the other, only I think it would take longer time to produce a sensible irregularity in the earth; that is the only advantage I should allow her to have over a clock. Might not the earth by degrees get nearer to the sun, and then, finding herself in a situation where the matter was agitated with greater violence, perform her motion on her axis, and her revolution round the sun, in a shorter time? In that case the years would be shorter, and the days too, but we should not perceive the difference, for we should still divide the year into three hundred and sixty-five days, and the days into twenty-four hours. So that without living