but in disparity of age, The Creed and the Hope," &c., assumes her relative position, being in fact a few months junior in age, and many years in thought and wisdom to The Essay.' We may be thought unpardonably severe-not on the books-if we say, that the analogy does not fail when you pass beyond these sweet opening passages of apparent unity to the diametric variance which pervades the works themselves. Would that we could refrain from adding, that, if the author of The Creed and the Hope,' &c. had preserved the same anonymous disguise which the writer of the Essay' affects, we should have been led into the serious blunder of attributing his volume-not only by way of analogy, but in respect of authorship-to some not very juvenile member of the weaker sex. We are bound, however, to state, that his book has yet one further characteristic feature of womanhood. It attains to, and defends conclusions probably right, but does so by arguments of little worth, and considerable prolixity.

The correlation of our two volumes is further apparent when we pass from the title-page to the table of contents. We have a series of chapters in each, devoted to the consideration of the subject in connexion with religion, the argument from geology, the knowledge or hypotheses which we possess of the nebula, fixed stars, planets, and solar system, the discussion of objections, and finally, in each, the future of the universe. If all the knowable touching these transcendant subjects is comprised within the limits of these two volumes, then, indeed, we possess in these two Blue Books a valuable mass of evidence. Alas, for the satisfaction of intellect, we are led thereby to entirely diverse conclusions. In the one volume, a very bulky mass of very ponderous thought, ingenious argument, and elaborate dissertation, is expended in an effort to maintain a paradox, and overthrow a popular belief. In the other, a highly discursive strain of querulous remonstrance feebly advocates the established conviction,-sometimes by false philosophy-sometimes by random theory-sometimes by not indisputable analogy-and not seldom by mere bombast.

Before we enter upon the subject-matter of these doctors' disagreement, we must once more congratulate ourselves, not only that we have philosophers who can unbend the rigid constraint of inductive science, and stoop for awhile to the comparative puerilities of airy speculation; but, moreover, that the less deeply thinking public is not, as yet, so wholly immersed and engrossed in the grovelling round of mere

The third grace seems to have its tribute of respect in the above-quoted lines of sentiment, which are immediately subjoined to the title.

material results, and positive acquisitions to the capital of ascertained facts, but that it greedily devours and discusses the guesses and counter-guesses of the wise.

Ever since the explosion of the old Ptolemaic doctrine, that our globe is the centre -if not the sum and substance-of all creation, a suspicion has been growing up, which has ranged, according to the constitution of different minds, from possibility to approximate conviction, that it may hold but a very insignificant position in the universe. Dislodged from its ancient security, and hurled from the patient shoulders of Atlas through devious paths of space, demonstrated to thread its way about some other and nobler body in labyrinthal spirals, which constitute a very trifling part in the mazes traced out by the wanderers of the sky, the venerable earth became less and less the subject of blind and self-complacent adoration. What had been demonstrated to hold good of its physical relation to the rest of the universe-that this world plays but a most subordinate part in the system of creation-naturally suggested itself as a possible condition of its moral and intellectual position, Just as in the progress from infancy to maturity one learns gradually to abandon the narrow notions of infancy; as one's sympathies expand by degrees beyond the family circle; as the child drops by degrees the idea that papa, mamma, and nurse are the three most important potentates in existence, for whom, in fact, everybody else exists; as, finally, he learns that there are other, and perhaps brighter, homes, filled with wealthier inhabitants, more numerous, more important, or more fair; so it has been with the conception of the well-informed concerning the brother spheroids of our own system, the kindred systems which, with ours, constitute the galaxy, and finally the dim hazy nebula, which seem at least to be the galaxies of immeasurably distant heavens. It is, of course, by very gradual steps that such huge and bold generalisations are adventured. The progress of the opinion of mankind hereon has been very analogous to that which has occurred in the growth of individual thought. Every thinking man can probably recollect the difficulty he once had in understanding how it was that the earth was round like an orange,' and not flat, in indefinite extension, as had appeared to him when, elevated beyond the capabilities of his little legs, he was allowed to observe creation over the adjoining hedges. Then came the very hard lesson, that he was by no means to consider himself as defining the top' of the world; that good people in the antipodes were not at all standing on their heads, nor topsy-turvy, nor in any other than his own fashion. A good deal of confusion of ideas, and a slight sensation of vertigo, attended his efforts to eman

cipate himself from the idea that the sun really traversed the heavens. When the annual and diurnal motions had robbed him of all opinion of stability in all he had once considered immoveable, it remained to puzzle out how, so far from his own summer hay-fields and winter nights being the standard of the human family, there are people who experience every gradation of temperature, and every duration of day and night, from one hour to six months. At length, with repeated efforts and increasing years, the theory of his own globe is mastered. In spite of the confusion of ideas consequent on a consecutive perusal of Joyce's Scientific Dialogues,' he no longer imagines days to be long in summer, because things expand by heat, and to be short in winter, because they contract by cold. We cannot digress to trace the unobserved effect of other than astronomical studies, which, by a parallel advance, aid him in developing powers of generalisation, and in renouncing the foolish conceit that his interests, his world, his culture, and he, are the final causes and focal centre of all existence. From history, from classics, from art, and from politics, he learns the maxim, nihil humani alienum puto; from metaphysics and philosophy he learns to expand its scope even beyond the humani omne, as the Times in its peculiar Latinity would say; from religion he learns to feel sympathy with other than mundane matter; from all he learns to repudiate the absurdity, χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος. Not that all this progress is won at the stage whither we have already conducted him; but such is the tendency, and such or such-like the indirect influences, of a liberal education. So is his way paved to the more ready reception of the arcana of astronomy. To learn that the planets weave their mystic dance, not only around another than his own globe, but without the slightest reference to it, and without the slightest perceptible effect, for good or for evil, on its fortunes, must no longer present a difficulty to his mind. Step by step, he is learning the comparative unimportance of his habitation; gradually the idea of his own unimportance in the whole creation opens upon him as not impossible. Strange analogies and curious conjectures force themselves upon him, as he learns and admires the reproduction, in the case of the planets, of contrivances and phænomena with which he is familiar, and which had seemed to be peculiarly adapted to the use of intelligent and sentient beings. If he has been in the habit of contemplating with grateful admiration the arrangement whereby one satellite supplies the absence of sunlight, and that chiefly and most energetically when most required, what shall he conclude from the furniture of other planets, which, like his own, have day and night, and which accordingly enjoy satellites

proportioned in number and position to their needs? If it be any legitimate step in the argument from design, that our moon is longer above the horizon, and rides higher in the zenith, when our nights are longest and darkest, to what but design shall he attribute the arrangement in the motions of Jupiter's satellites, whereby it is impossible they should all be at once below the horizon? If the rotation of our earth, and the inclination of its axis of revolution to its orbitual plane, produce such obvious and useful effects on the vicissitudes of days and seasons, what shall be supposed the purpose of the like phænomena in planets more noble in their proportions than

our own?

We may well conceive such lines of thought to give rise to very curious conjectures in a contemplative mind, especially if the imagination be warm. But perhaps our astronomer, having learned many a lesson of cautious induction, and a wholesome dread of mere conjecture, in the school of practical science, forbears to proclaim, or even to encourage, the thoughts that brood within him. If strange fancies of previous existence on diverse orbs seem to him to involve, possibly, some distantly approximate solution of the mystic aváμvnois, which comes at moments across us all, saying, I have been in this scene, or acted in this combination of circumstances before!' or if the congregation of different elements from different spheres on one terrestrial stage might haply account for the conflict of opinions, and sympathies, and interests around us, he checks such wandering imaginations as, perhaps, not altogether reverent, and certainly not as yet necessitated by any scientific induction. But still the semi-conviction remains,- These wonders and 'complex systems were made for some use; their marvellous ' resemblance to our own suggests that that use was not wholly 'dissimilar from ours.'

We do not think that any valuable suggestion has ever been thrown out to explain the use of the planets to ourselves. There are, it would appear, persons to whom it seems satisfactory to imagine, that the kingly Jupiter with his attendant moons, the glorious Saturn and his triplicate girdle, the stately Uranus, and that interesting stranger,' whom the obstetric arts of Adams and Le Verrier guided to its birth (and whom the tardy incredulity of our observers has prevented our claiming as indisputably our own), exist, and have existed, only to win the admiring study of Chaldæan shepherds, to perplex the brains and tangled horoscopes of planet-stricken astrologers, to puzzle speculators, to furnish a Theory' for the Senate House, and finally to be gazed at by themselves through the great Northumberland! Or, perhaps, they deem it cause enough for the crea

tion of Venus that she should, at rare intervals, transit the sun's disc, and determine our distance from that orb, while it may be sufficient reason for the existence of the other planets, that some such recondite use may be hereafter discovered for them also! Was ever dream so self-complacent? Had vision ever fabric so baseless? What is this but to bid the sun and the moon and the eleven stars to make obeisance unto us?' Meanwhile men are born, and struggle on, and die; and are reproduced in descendants, who are born, and struggle on, and die again; and what wot they of lunar theory and planetary disturbance, and determination of longitude, and exploded planets, and exploded theories? Yet without such information, it is certain that they can never learn the magnificent lessons which these orbs can teach the votaries of science, and which, we are told, are sufficient reason for their creation. If, then, it is for man that they were created, how is it that the overwhelming mass of men have not a single correct notion about them? For man? Why, of course they were, like all other of God's works, created (among other and, it may be, more special uses) for man! For all men to admire in the spangled firmament, for some men to study with more inquiring ken, for the thoughtful to exclaim, with deepest awe and humblest consciousness of insignificance: O Thou that hast set Thy glory above the Heavens, when I consider Thy Heavens, the work of Thy 'fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained, 'what is man, that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that Thou visitest him!' Of course, they were created for man! Incidentally, they may help him in his approach to God; but can we conceive, even on a survey of the planets alone, that those wondrous constitutions, of which the most splendid and the most delicate objects were never seen by any man, and of which the laws and harmony were utterly unintelligible to any man, before the age of Newton-can we conceive that those systems, which are even now utterly unknown to all but a few philosophers, and concerning which even philosophers' wisdom is comparative ignorance, were made specially for man?

6

How are these convictions strengthened by further insight into the universe? Every well educated man of the present age will have had thoughts such as we have sketched out before his mind. But they to whom Science has unrolled her ample page have further convictions based on, perhaps, we ought hardly to say higher argument, but, at all events, irresistible impressions. Unless, indeed, our star-gazers read, as read the astronomer of Uz, backwards, they can hardly fail to concede the force of argument to the analogies which negative