it not appear still more astonishing to beings such as we have now supposed?[33] Notwithstanding these wonderful properties of the organ of vision, the eye, when unassisted by art, is comparatively limited in the range of its powers. It cannot ascertain the existence of certain objects at the distance of three or four miles, nor perceive what is going forward in nature or art beyond such a limit. By its natural powers we perceive the moon to be a globe about half a degree in diameter, and diversified with two or three dusky spots, and that the sun is a luminous body of apparently the same size--that the planets are luminous points, and that about a thousand stars exist in the visible canopy of the sky. But the ten thousandth part of those luminaries, which are within the reach of human vision, can never be seen by the unassisted eye. Here the TELESCOPE interposes, and adds a new power to the organ of vision, by which it is enabled to extend its views to regions of space immeasurably distant, and to objects, the number and magnitude of which could never otherwise have been surmised by the human imagination. By its aid we obtain a sensible demonstration that space is boundless--that the universe is replenished with innumerable suns and worlds--that the remotest regions of immensity, immeasurably beyond the limits of unassisted vision, display the energies of Creating Power, and that the Empire of the Creator extends far beyond what eye hath seen or the human imagination can conceive.