Bring before your mind the thought of a large shining balloon, for the Sun, about 35 feet through. This would be in the centre. Mercury, a crab-apple one inch and a half through, will float round the Sun at a distance of _one quarter of a mile_. Venus, a very large apple, nearly four inches through, will float round it at a distance from the Sun of about _half a mile_. Earth, another very big apple, rather bigger than Venus, has her pathway all round at a distance of _three quarters of a mile_. Ten feet off from the Earth floats her tiny Moon. Mars, another very small apple, two inches through, is more than _one mile_ off from the Sun, with two tiny moons. Jupiter, a large globe three feet and a half through, travels with his five moons at a distance of about _three miles and three quarters_--the Planetoids lying between him and Mars. Saturn, a globe three feet through, goes round with his moons and rings at a distance of about _seven miles_. Uranus, a ball less than one foot and a half through, floats with his four moons in a pathway over _fourteen miles_ off from the Sun. Neptune, the outer planet, a rather bigger ball than Uranus, with one moon, travels at a distance of over _twenty-one miles_. So, on this little scale, the whole pathway of Neptune would be somewhere about forty-two miles across. All the other worlds would have their journeys inside that circle. Only comets would go farther off than Neptune’s pathway. Where now must we put the very nearest star known to us in all the sky? On this scale we must put it about TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND MILES AWAY! And every single inch in those two hundred thousand miles would stand for 2,000 miles of _real_ star-distance. Now do you begin to see what an enormous gap divides us from the stars? If we could bring down the whole of the great Solar System to so small a size that it could lie between New York and West Point _then_ the very nearest star known to us would be nearly as far away as the Moon is from the Earth. The nearest star would be 200,000 miles off. Our Moon now is 240,000 miles off. And this great gap is around the Sun’s kingdom on all sides, stretching away in every direction. We have not found one single star _nearer_ than that, though countless multitudes of stars are very, very much farther away. Can you picture to yourself a little Solar System lying between New York, and West Point--the whole of it there, unless perhaps a few comets might stray a short way beyond; all the worlds, all the moons, all the meteors, nearly all the comets, doing their yearly journeys round and round in this space of forty-two miles? And then, around that small kingdom of worlds, a great blank empty space, north and south, east and west, above and below, in every direction, nearly as far as the Moon in our sky before a single star could be reached! How very, very distant they are you begin now to see; do you not?