[Footnote 75: Kepler, "Astronomia Nova, seu de Motibus Stellæ Martis," p. 53 (ed. 1609).] [Footnote 76: The reader should turn to Kepler's immortal work, "De Motibus Stellæ Martis," for the manifold attempts of the astronomer to bring calculation into agreement with observation. In every page is revealed what has been finely called "the passionate patience of genius."] [Footnote 77: There is certainly no exaggeration in comparing the earth to a point, since the diameter of the sun is 112 times that of the earth, and its mean distance a little more than 12,000 terrestrial diameters: the earth is but a microscopical point in space, if we compare it to the place occupied by the central luminary.] [Illustration] CHAPTER II. _WHAT MAY BE SEEN UPON THE EARTH._ "I care not, Fortune, what you me deny; You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace; You cannot shut the windows of the sky Through which Aurora shows her bright'ning face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns by living streams at eve." [Illustration] Of all the strata composing our planetary mass, the most important, so far as man is concerned, is, at the same time, the most superficial; for it is here that all the phenomena of life transpire. Our vegetable earth is the great laboratory in which are prepared all the solid, liquid, and gaseous aliments necessary for the nourishment of animal life. It is on the surface of the globe that men play their various parts. And why? Can it be for no other purpose than to modify, in some degree, its aspect, that they occupy the terrestrial surface? One would be tempted to think so on consulting what these majestic _bimanes_ pompously designate their "Universal History." Regions formerly blooming with fertility,--gay with gardens, and orchards, and meadows,--musical with brooks, and glorious with harvest,--are now uncultivated and barren. Monuments which seemed adapted to defy the winds and the rains, and the corroding touch of the years, lie shattered in ruins; and with them the once populous cities and the once mighty empires of which they were the pride. The jackal howls among the broken columns of Tadmor; the sand-drifts have accumulated above the splendour of Memphis and Thebes. With their stones other monuments are raised, other cities are embellished, and other empires, which, in their turn, undergo the same unalterable fate: a perpetual relation of human forms, in every respect comparable with that which transpires in the bosom of the prolific earth, our common mother and nurse.