Such considerations lead to the conclusion that the former watery condition of our planet was not its first state, and that we must trace it back to a previous reign of fire. The reasons which can be adduced in support of this are no doubt somewhat vague, and may in their details be variously interpreted; but at present we have no other interpretation to give of that chaos, formless and void, that state in which "nor aught nor nought existed," which the sacred writings and the traditions and poetry of ancient nations concur with modern science in indicating as the primitive state of the earth. Let our first picture, then, be that of a vaporous mass, representing our now solid planet spread out over a space nearly two thousand times greater in diameter then that which it now occupies, and whirling in its annual round about the still vaporous centre of our system, in which at an earlier period the earth had been but an exterior layer, or ring of vapour. The atoms that now constitute the most solid rocks are in this state as tenuous as air, kept apart by the expansive force of heat, which prevents not only their mechanical union, but also their chemical combination. But within the mass, slowly and silently, the force of gravitation is compressing the particles in its giant hand, and gathering the denser toward the centre, while heat is given forth on all sides from the condensing mass into the voids of space without. Little by little the denser and less volatile matters collect in the centre as a fluid molten globe, the nucleus of the future planet; and in this nucleus the elements, obeying their chemical affinities hitherto latent, are arranging themselves in compounds which are to constitute the future rocks. At the same time, in the exterior of the vaporous envelope, matters cooled by radiation into the space without, are combining with each other, and are being precipitated in earthy rain or snow into the seething mass within, where they are either again vaporised and sent to the surface or absorbed in the increasing nucleus. As this process advances, a new brilliancy is given to the faint shining of the nebulous matter by the incandescence of these solid particles in the upper layers of its atmosphere, a condition which at this moment, on a greater scale, is that of the sun; in the case of the earth, so much smaller in volume, and farther from the centre of the system, it came on earlier, and has long since passed away. This was the glorious starlike condition of our globe: in a physical point of view, its most perfect and beautiful state, when, if there were astronomers with telescopes in the stars, they might have seen our now dull earth flash forth--a brilliant white star secondary to the sun.