Each star, then, is not only a world, but also the center of a planetary system. It is in this light we must consider the stars, which shine over our heads in a winter night. They are distinguished from the planets by their brilliancy, and because they never change their place in the sky. According to their apparent size, they are divided into six classes, which comprehend altogether about three thousand stars. But though they have endeavoured to fix the exact number of them, it is certain they are innumerable. The very number of stars sowed here and there, and which the most piercing eye can with difficulty perceive, prove that it would be in vain to attempt to reckon them. Telescopes indeed have opened to us new points in the creation, since by their assistance millions of stars are discovered. But it would be a very senseless pride in man to try to fix the limits or the universe, by those of his telescope. If we reflect on the distance between the fixed stars and our earth, we shall have new cause to admire the greatness of the creation. Our senses alone make us already know that the stars must be farther from us than the planets. Their apparent littleness only proceeds from their distance from the earth. And in reality, this distance cannot be measured: since a cannon-ball, supposing it always to preserve the same degree of swiftness, would scarce, at the end of six hundred thousand years, reach the star nearest to our earth. What then must the stars be? Their prodigious distance and their brightness tell us,---they are suns which reflect as far as us, not a borrowed light, but their own light; suns, which the Creator has sowed by millions in the immeasurable space; and each of which is accompanied by several terrestrial globes, which it is designed to illuminate.