e applied and mark the
result. Mist and haze have disappeared; the telescope has pierced
right through the stupendous distance, and only the vast abyss of
space, boundless and unfathomable, is seen beyond.

Let us pause here for a moment to think what we have done. Light,
travelling with its enormous velocity, requires on an average
considerably over ten years to traverse the distance between our Solar
System and Stars of the first magnitude, but the dimensions of the
Milky Way are built up on such a huge scale that to traverse the whole
stratum would require us to pass about 500 stars, separated from each
other by this same tremendous interval; 10,000 years may therefore be
computed as the shortest time which light, travelling with its
enormous velocity, would take to sweep across the whole cluster, it
being borne in mind that the Solar System is supposed to be located
not far from the centre of this great star cluster, and that the
cluster comprises all stars visible arrayed in a flat zone, the edges
of which, where the stratum is deepest, being the locality of the
Milky Way.

Let us once more continue our journey. We have traversed a distance
which even on the wings of light we could only accomplish in many
thousands of years, and now stand on the outskirts of our great star
cluster, in the same way, and I hope with the same aspirations, as
when we paused the last time on the confines of our Solar System.
Behind us are myriads of shining orbs, in such countless numbers that
human thought cannot even suggest a limit, and yet each of these is a
mighty globe like our Sun, the centre of a planetary system,
dispensing light and heat under conditions similar to what we are
accustomed to here. Let us, however, turn our face away from these
clusterings of mighty suns, and look steadfastly forward into the
unbroken darkness, and once more brace our nerves to face that
terrible phantom--_Immensity_.

We require now the most powerful instruments that science can put into
our hands, and by their aid we will again essay to make another stride
towards the appreciation of our subject. In what, to the unaided eye,
was unbroken darkness, the telescope now enables us to discern a
number of luminous points of haze, and towards one of these we
continue our journey. The myriads of suns in our great star cluster
are soon being left far behind; they shrink together, resolve
themselves into haze, until the once glorious universe of coun