The solar system seems to us very vast; the abyss which separates our world from Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, appears to us immense; relatively to the fixed stars, however, our whole system represents but an isolated family immediately surrounding us: a sphere as vast as the whole solar system would be reduced to the size of a simple point if it were transported to the distance of the nearest star. The space which extends between the solar system and the stars, and which separates the stars from each other, appears to be entirely void of visible matter, with the exception of nebulous fragments, cometary or meteoric, which circulate here and there in the immense voids. Nine thousand two hundred and fifty systems like ours, bounded by Neptune, would be contained in the space which isolates us from the nearest star! It is marvelous that we can perceive the stars at such a distance. What an admirable transparency in these immense spaces to permit the light to pass, without being wasted, to thousands of billions of miles! Around us, in the thick air which envelops us, the mountains are already darkened and difficult to see at seventy miles; the least fog hides from us objects on the horizon. What must be the tenuity, the rarefaction, the extreme transparency of the ethereal medium which fills the celestial spaces! The sun is center and ruler and king in his own system. But as a star, he is only one among many stars, some greater, some less than himself. From the far siderial heavens he is hardly recognized even as a star among the constellations, so faint is his light. Do the suns which surround us form a system with that which illuminates us, as the planets form one round our solar focus, and does our sun revolve round an attractive center? Does this center, the point of the revolutions of many suns, itself revolve round a preponderating center? In a word, is the visible universe organized in one or several systems? No Divine revelation comes to instruct men on the mysteries which interest them most--their personal or collective destinies. We have now, as ever, but science and observation to answer us.