Uranus is attended by _six satellites_. So minute objects are they, that they can be seen only by powerful telescopes. Indeed, the existence of more than two is still considered as somewhat doubtful. These two, however, offer remarkable and indeed quite unexpected and unexampled peculiarities. Contrary to the unbroken analogy of the whole planetary system, _the planes of their orbits are nearly perpendicular to the ecliptic_, and in these orbits their motions are retrograde; that is, instead of advancing from west to east around their primary, as is the case with all the other planets and satellites, they move in the opposite direction. With this exception, all the motions of the planets, whether around their own axes, or around the sun, are from west to east. The sun himself turns on his axis from west to east; all the primary planets revolve around the sun from west to east; their revolutions on their own axes are also in the same direction; all the secondaries, with the single exception above mentioned, move about their primaries from west to east; and, finally, such of the secondaries as have been discovered to have a diurnal revolution, follow the same course. Such uniformity among so many motions could have resulted only from forces impressed upon them by the same Omnipotent hand; and few things in the creation more distinctly proclaim that God made the world. Retiring now to this furthest verge of the solar system, let us for a moment glance at the aspect of the firmament by night. Notwithstanding we have taken a flight of eighteen hundred millions of miles, the same starry canopy bends over our heads; Sirius still shines with exactly the same splendor as here; Orion, the Scorpion, the Great and the Little Bear, all occupy the same stations; and the Galaxy spans the sky with the same soft and mysterious light. The planets, however, with the exception of Saturn, are all lost to the view, being too near the sun ever to be seen; and Saturn himself is visible only at distant intervals, at periods of fifteen years, when at its greatest elongations from the sun, and is then too near the sun to permit a clear view of his rings, much less of the satellites that unite with the rings to compose his gorgeous retinue. Comets, moving slowly as they do when so distant from the sun, will linger much longer in the firmament of Uranus than in ours.