In the first place, it may be considered as an instrument or machine which virtually transports us to the distant regions of space. When we look at the moon through a telescope which magnifies 200 times, and survey its extensive plains, its lofty peaks, its circular ranges of mountains, throwing their deep shadows over the vales, its deep and rugged caverns, and all the other varieties which appear on the Lunar surface, we behold such objects in the same manner as if we were standing at a point 238,800 miles from the earth in the direction of the moon, or only twelve hundred miles from that orb, reckoning its distance to be 240,000 miles. When we view the planet Saturn with a similar instrument, and obtain a view of its belts, and satellites, and its magnificent rings, we are transported, as it were, through regions of space, to a point in the heavens more than _nine hundred millions of miles_ from the surface of our globe, and contemplate those august objects, as if we were placed within five millions of miles of the surface of that planet.[34] Although a supernatural power, sufficient to carry us in such a celestial journey, a thousand miles every day, were exerted--it would require more than two thousand four hundred and sixty years, before we could arrive at such a distant position; yet the telescope, in a few moments, transports our visual powers to that far distant point of space. When we view, with such an instrument, the minute and very distant clusters of stars in the Milky Way, we are carried in effect through the regions of space to the distance of _five hundred thousand millions of miles_ from the earth; for we behold those luminaries through the telescope nearly as if they were actually viewed from such a distant point in the spaces of the firmament. These stars cannot be conceived as less than _a hundred billions_ of miles from our globe, and the instrument we have supposed brings them within the two hundredth part of this distance. Suppose we were carried forward by a rapid motion towards this point, at the rate of a thousand miles _every hour_, it would require more than _fifty-seven thousand years_, before we could reach that very distant station in space to which the telescope, _in effect_, transports us. So that this instrument is far more efficient in opening to our view the scenes of the universe than if we were invested with powers of locomotion to carry us through the regions of space, with the rapidity of a cannon ball at its utmost velocity; and all the while we may sit at ease in our terrestrial apartments.