Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Stephen H. Sentoff and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [Illustration: 51 Messier; 99 Messier] THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS. On Nature's Alps I stand, And see a thousand firmaments beneath! A thousand systems, as a thousand grains! So much a stranger, _and so late arrived_, How shall man's curious spirit not inquire What are the natives of this world sublime, Of this so distant, unterrestrial sphere, Where mortal, untranslated, never strayed? NIGHT THOUGHTS. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D.D., PRESIDENT OF AMHERST COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AND GEOLOGY. BOSTON: GOULD AND LINCOLN, 50 WASHINGTON STREET. 1854. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by GOULD AND LINCOLN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PREFACE. Although the opinions presented in the following Essay are put forwards without claiming for them any value beyond what they may derive from the arguments there offered, they are not published without some fear of giving offence. It will be a curious, but not a very wonderful event, if it should now be deemed as blamable to doubt the existence of inhabitants of the Planets and Stars, as, three centuries ago, it was held heretical to teach that doctrine. Yet probably there are many who will be willing to see the question examined by all the light which modern science can throw upon it; and such an examination can be undertaken to no purpose, except the view which has of late been generally rejected have the arguments in its favor fairly stated and candidly considered.