60,000,000,000,000 of miles, or 600,000 diameters of the earth's orbit, or
about sixty million diameters of the sun himself. Taking this for the
average distance between the stars, although it is doubtless much greater,
and supposing them to be equal in magnitude to each other, and to the sun,
we have these most striking results. The sun and the star in Cygnus (and
so of the others) would present the same relation as that of two balls of
ten inches diameter placed ten thousand miles apart, or one a thousand
miles above the North Pole, and the other a like distance below the South
Pole of our earth. Preserving the same ratio, we might represent them
again, by two half-inch bullets placed, the one at Chicago, and the other
on the top of the City Hall in the City of New York; and so on, until
finally we would come down to two points, less than a thousandth part of
an inch in diameter, requiring the microscope to render them visible, and
situated at the distance of a mile asunder. Suppose then an inch of the
finest thread of thistle-down cut into a thousand sections, and a globular
space as large as the sphere of our earth, occupied with such invisible
specks, at distances from each other never less than a mile at least, and
we have a fair representation of the visible universe--on a reduced scale,
it is true, yet still preserving all the relative magnitudes, and all the
adjusted proportions of the parts to each other, and to the whole. On any
scale we may assume, all that partakes, in the lowest degree, of sensible
materiality, bears but an infinitessimal proportion to what _appears_ to
be but vacant space. In this view of the matter it becomes more than a
probability that there is no relatively denser solidity than this any
where existing. Even in the hardest and apparently most impenetrable
matter, the ultimate particles may be as sparse in their relative
positions, as are, to each other, the higher compound and component bodies
which we know are dispersed at such immense distances as mere points in
space.

But not to dwell on this idea, there is another of a kindred nature to
which we would call attention, although it must often have come home to
every serious mind. Who can soberly contemplate the mighty heavens without
being struck with what may be called the ISOLATION of the universe, or
rather, of the innumerable parts of which it is composed. To the most
thoughtful spirit a sense of loneliness must be a main, if not a