It is a strange and unexpected fact, but absolutely true, that each sun of space is carried along with a velocity so rapid that a cannon-ball represents rest in comparison; it is at neither a hundred, nor three hundred, nor five hundred yards per second that the earth, the sun, Sirius, Vega, Arcturus, and all the systems of infinitude travel: it is at ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred thousand yards a second; all run, fly, fall, roll, rush through the void--and still, seen as a whole, all seems in repose. The immense distance which isolates us from all the stars reduces them to the state of motionless lights apparently fixed on the vault of the firmament. All human eyes, since humanity freed its wings from the animal chrysalis, all minds since minds have been, have contemplated these distant stars lost in the ethereal depths; our ancestors of Central Asia, the Chaldeans of Babylon, the Egyptians of the Pyramids, the Argonauts of the Golden Fleece, the Hebrews sung by Job, the Greeks sung by Homer, the Romans sung by Virgil,--all these earthly eyes, for so long dull and closed, have been fixed, from age to age, on these eyes of the sky, always open, animated, and living. Terrestrial generations, nations and their glories, thrones and altars have vanished: the sky of Homer is always there. Is it astonishing that the heavens were contemplated, loved, venerated, questioned, and admired, even before anything was known of their true beauties and their unfathomable grandeur? Better than the spectacle of the sea, calm or agitated, grander than the spectacle of mountains adorned with forests or crowned with perpetual snow, the spectacle of the sky attracts us, envelops us, speaks to us of the Infinite. “I have ascended into the heavens, which receive most of His light, and I have seen things which he who descends from on high knows not, neither can repeat,” wrote Dante in the first canto of his poem on “Paradise.” Let us, like him, rise towards the celestial heights, no longer on the trembling wings of faith, but on the stronger wings of science. What the stars would teach us is incomparably more beautiful, more marvelous, and more splendid than anything we can dream of. How do such contemplations enlarge and transfigure the vulgar idea which is generally entertained of the world! Should not the knowledge of these truths form the first basis of all instruction which aims at being serious? Is it not strange to see the immense majority of human beings living and dying without suspecting these grandeurs, without thinking of learning something of the magnificent reality which surrounds them?