exist for thousands of years, and
still be seen by us every night as a twinkling point in our great
telescopes.

Remembering these facts, you will, I think, look at the heavens with a
new interest. There is a bright star, Vega, or Alpha Lyrae, a beautiful
gem, so far off that the light from it which now reaches our eyes
started before many of my audience were born. Suppose that there are
astronomers residing on worlds amid the stars, and that they have
sufficiently powerful telescopes to view this globe, what do you think
they would observe? They will not see our earth as it is at present;
they will see it as it was years (and sometimes many years) ago. There
are stars from which if England could now be seen, the whole of the
country would be observed at this present moment to be in a great
state of excitement at a very auspicious event. Distant astronomers
might notice a great procession in London, and they could watch the
coronation of a youthful queen amid the enthusiasm of a nation. There
are other stars still further, from which, if the inhabitants had good
enough telescopes, they would now see a mighty battle in progress not
far from Brussels. One splendid army could be beheld hurling itself
time after time against the immovable ranks of the other. They would
not, indeed, be able to hear the ever-memorable "Up, Guards, and at
them!" but there can be no doubt that there are stars so far away that
the rays of light which started from the earth on the day of the
battle of Waterloo are only just arriving there. Further off still,
there are stars from which a bird's-eye view could be taken at this
very moment of the signing of Magna Charta. There are even stars from
which England, if it could be seen at all, would now appear, not as
the great England we know, but as a country covered by dense forests,
and inhabited by painted savages, who waged incessant war with wild
beasts that roamed through the island. The geological problems that
now puzzle us would be quickly solved could we only go far enough into
space and had we only powerful enough telescopes. We should then be
able to view our earth through the successive epochs of past
geological time; we should be actually able to see those great animals
whose fossil remains are treasured in our museums tramping about over
the earth's surface, splashing across its swamps, or swimming with
broad flippers through its oceans. Indeed, if we could view our own
earth reflected