7th magnitude 13,000. 8th " 40,000. 9th " 120,000. 10th " 380,000. 11th " 1,000,000. 12th " 3,000,000. 13th " 9,000,000. 14th " 27,000,000. 15th " 80,000,000. Accordingly, the most powerful telescopes of the day, reenforced by celestial photography, can bring a stream of more than 120 millions of stars into the scope of our vision. The photographic map of the Heavens now being executed comprises the first fourteen magnitudes, and will give the precise position of some 40,000,000 stars, distributed over 22,054 sheets, forming a sphere 3 meters 44 centimeters in diameter. The boldest imagination is overwhelmed by these figures, and fails to picture such millions of suns--formidable and burning globes that roll through space, sweeping their systems along with them. What furnaces are there! what unknown lives! what vast immensities! And again, what enormous distances must separate the stars, to admit of their free revolution in the ether! In what abysses, at what a distance from our terrestrial atom, must these magnificent and dazzling Suns pursue the paths traced for them by Destiny! * * * * * If all the stars radiated an equal light, their distances might be calculated on the principle that an object appears smaller in proportion to its distance. But this equality does not exist. The suns were not all cast in the same mold. Indeed, the stars differ widely in size and brightness, and the distances that have been measured show that the most brilliant are not the nearest. They are scattered through Space at all distances. Among the nearer stars of which it has been found possible to calculate the distance, some are found to be of the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and even ninth magnitudes, proving that the most brilliant are not always the least distant.