velling from the Pleiades to us, at that incomprehensible pace
of which you already know, takes a hundred and ninety years to reach us!
At this incredibly remote distance lies the main part of the cluster
from us; but it is more marvellous still that we have every reason to
believe that the outlying stars of this cluster are as far from the
central ones as the nearest star we know of, Alpha Centauri, is from us!
Little wonder was it, then, that men hesitated to ascribe to the
Pleiades any real connection with each other, and supposed them to be
merely an assemblage of stars which seemed to us to lie together.

With the unaided eye we see comparatively few stars in the Pleiades. Six
is the usual number to be counted, though people with very good sight
have made out fourteen. Viewed through the telescope, however, the scene
changes: into this part of space stars are crowded in astonishing
profusion; it is impossible to count them, and with every increase in
the power of the telescope still more are revealed. Well over a thousand
in this small space seems no exaggerated estimate. Now, it is impossible
to say how many of these really belong to the group, and how many are
seen there accidentally, but observations of the most prominent ones
have shown that they are all moving in exactly the same direction at
the same pace. It would be against probability to conceive that such a
thing could be the result of mere chance, considering the infinite
variety of star movements in general, and so we are bound to believe
that this wonderful collection of stars is a real group, and not only an
apparent one.

So splendid are the great suns that illuminate this mighty system, that
at least fifty or sixty of them far surpass our own sun in brilliancy.
Therefore when we look at that tiny sparkling group we must in
imagination picture it as a vast cluster of mighty stars, all controlled
and swayed by some dominant impulse, though separated by spaces enough
to make the brain reel in thinking of them. If these suns possess also
attendant planets, what a galaxy of worlds, what a universe within a
universe is here!

Other star clusters there are, not so conspicuous as the Pleiades, and
most of these can only be seen through a telescope, so we may be
thankful that we have one example so splendid within our own vision.
There are some clusters so far and faintly shining that they were at
first thought to be nebulae, and not stars at all; but the