refractors at Pulkova and
Cambridge, the most irresolvable of these nebulae have given way; and the
better opinion now is, that every one of them is a galaxy, like our own
milky way, composed of millions of suns. In other words, we are brought
to the bewildering conclusion that thousands of these misty specks, the
greater part of them too faint to be seen with the naked eye, are, not
each a universe like our solar system, but each a "swarm" of universes
of unappreciable magnitude.[A] The mind sinks, overpowered by the
contemplation. We repeat the words, but they no longer convey distinct
ideas to the understanding.

[Footnote A: Humboldt's _Cosmos_, iii. 41.]

CONCEPTIONS OF THE UNIVERSE.

But these conclusions, however vast their comprehension, carry us but
another step forward in the realms of sidereal astronomy. A proper
motion in space of our sun, and of the fixed stars as we call them, has
long been believed to exist. Their vast distances only prevent its being
more apparent. The great improvement of instruments of measurement
within the last generation has not only established the existence of
this motion, but has pointed to the region in the starry vault around
which our whole solar and stellar system, with its myriad of attendant
planetary worlds, appears to be performing a mighty revolution. If,
then, we assume that outside of the system to which we belong and in
which our sun is but a star like Aldebaran or Sirius, the different
nebulae of which we have spoken,--thousands of which spot the
heavens--constitute a distinct family of universes, we must, following
the guide of analogy, attribute to each of them also, beyond all the
revolutions of their individual attendant planetary systems, a great
revolution, comprehending the whole; while the same course of analogical
reasoning would lead us still further onward, and in the last analysis,
require us to assume a transcendental connection between all these
mighty systems--a universe of universes, circling round in the infinity
of space, and preserving its equilibrium by the same laws of mutual
attraction which bind the lower worlds together.

It may be thought that conceptions like these are calculated rather to
depress than to elevate us in the scale of being; that, banished as he
is by these contemplations to a corner of creation, and there reduced to
an atom, man sinks to nothingness in this infinity of worlds. But a
second thought