Luckily, neither in the proposition itself, nor in the manner in which it is advocated, is there anything to disturb my previous conviction as to the true meaning of this word (which, in the well-known passage in the _Tempest_, is, beyond all doubt, "haze" or "vapour"), since few things would be more distasteful to me than to encounter any argument really capable of throwing doubt upon the reading of a passage I have long looked upon as one of the most marvellous instances of philosophical depth of thought to be met with, even in Shakspeare,--one of those astonishing speculations, in advance of his age, that now and then drop from him as from the lips of a child inspired,--wherein the grandeur of the sentiment is so out of all proportion to the simplicity and absence of pretension with which it is introduced, that the reader, not less surprised than delighted, is scarcely able to appreciate the full meaning until after long and careful consideration. It is only lately that the nebular theory of condensation has been advanced, for the purpose of speculating upon the probable formation of planetary bodies. Yet it is a subject that possesses a strange coincidence with this passage of Shakspeare's _Tempest_. Perhaps the best elucidation I can give of it will be to cite a certain passage in Dr. Nichols' _Architecture of the Heavens_, which happens to bear a rather remarkable, although I believe an accidental, resemblance to Shakspeare's words: _accidental_, because if Dr. Nichols had this passage of the _Tempest_ present to his mind, when writing in a professedly popular and familiar style, he would scarcely have omitted allusion to it, especially as it would have afforded a peculiarly happy illustration of his subject. I shall now quote both passages, in order that they may be conveniently compared: "Our revels now are ended--these our actors As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air--INTO THIN AIR: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all that it inherit--shall dissolve-- And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind." "---- in the laboratory of the chemist matter easily passes through all conditions, the solid, liquid, and gaseous, as if _in a sort of phantasmagoria_; and his highest discoveries even now are pointing to the conclusion, that the bodies which make up the solid portion of our earth may, simply by the dissolution of existing combinations, _be ultimately resolved into a permanently gaseous form_."--Nichols' _Architecture of the Heavens_, p. 147.