Others will pass where we pass; we have arrived, and others will arrive after us: the thought sketched out by our souls will be pursued by theirs ... and they will not find the solution of it. For no one here begins or finishes: the worst are as the best of humans; we all awake at the same moment of the dream: we all begin in this world, and end otherwhere. Reply, sweet valley, reply, solitude; O Nature, sheltering in this splendid desert, when we are both asleep, and cast by the tomb into the attitude of pensive death. Will you to the last verge be so insensible, that, knowing us lost, and dead with our loves, you will pursue your cheerful feast, and smile, and sing always? Yes, mortals may say that when they are sleeping in the grave, spring and summer will still smile and sing; husband and wife may ask themselves if they will meet again some day, in another sphere; but do we not _feel_ that our destinies can not be terminated here, and that short of absolute and final nonentity for everything, they must be renewed beyond, in that starry Heaven to which every dream has flown instinctively since the first origins of Humanity? As our planet is only a province of the Infinite Heavens, so our actual existence is only a stage in Eternal Life. Astronomy, by giving us wings, conducts us to the sanctuary of truth. The specter of death has departed from our Heaven. The beams of every star shed a ray of hope into our hearts. On each sphere Nature chants the pæan of Life Eternal. THE END INDEX A Aberration, 300 Adams, 168 Agnesi, Marie, 5 Alcar, 34 Aldebaran, 44, 66 Alexandria, 3 Algol, 39 Ancients, views of, 30 Andrew Ellicot, 195 Andromeda, 37, 38 Angles, 289 Antares, 45, 66, 70 Antipodes, 208 Arago, 275 Arcturus, 39, 66 Asteroids, 146, 195 Astronomie des Dames, 9 Attraction, 208 Aureole, 279 Autumn Constellations, 54 Axis, 225 B Babylonian Tables, 30 Bartholomew Diaz, 176 Bear, Little, 35 Great, 32, 34, 35 Betelgeuse, 49, 66 Biela's Comet, 189, 198 Bode's law, 167 Bolides, 201 C Cancer, 72 Capella, 38, 66 Cassiopeia, 36 Castor, 44, 68 Catalogue of Lalande, 65 Catharine of Alexandria, 3 Centaur, 52, 64, 65, 80 Ceres, 147 Chaldean pastors, 30 Chaldeans, 271 Chariot of David, 32 Charioteer, 38 Chart of Mars, 140 Châtelet, Marquise du, 4 Chiron, The Centaur, 30, 51 Chromosphere, 102 Clairaut, 3 Clerke, Agnes, 7 Cnidus, 31 Coggia's Comet, 187 Comet of Biela, 197 of 1811, 186 of 1858, 174 Comets, 111, 185 Constellations, 28 figures of, 31 Autumn, 54 Constellations, Spring, 52 Summer, 53 Winter, 51 Copernicus, 125 Corona Borealis, 40 Corona of the Sun, 104 Cygnus, 40 D de Blocqueville, Madame, 5 de Breteuil, Gabrielle-Émilie, 4 de Charrière, Madame, 5 Deneb, 41