may stand alone.* Our readers will, we think, be at no loss to understand, why the examination of this particular nebula should have been looked to with special and concentrated interest; and why, while hundreds remain still uninvestigated, its resolution should be held perfectly conclusive as to the resolvability of all; as to the non-existence of the nebulæ of Herschel, and the consequent unfoundedness of his speculations regarding them. More than any other, even that in Andromeda, it exhibited all the distinctive peculiarities which seemed to him to separate between firmamental and true nebulæ. It was the one most easily and immediately seen, and thence was fairly presumed to be the nearest to us in space of all. It nevertheless has remained unchanged the last of all yet investigated. It was, to appearance, the most loose and formless of all: and-unlike that in Andromeda, the only one which, as regards nearness of visibility, can compete with it,-it exhibited, under the search of all instruments up to the six-feet speculum, no sensible trace of local aggregation, or brightening of light. Hence the supposition of its being a firmament involved also that of its being a mere uniform stratum of stars, -a feature not presented by any recognised cluster whatever. In short, it exhibited, in the greatest degree, and with the most marked distinctness, all those peculiarities which induced the separation of the true from the firmamental nebulæ. And accordingly, when, with regard to it, all these peculiarities became, not, indeed, wholly explicable, but certainly referable to mere contingent incidents of distance, vast

We believe much of the antipathy which has been manifested, and of the incredulity which has prevailed, at least with a certain class of minds, with regard to this hypothesis, have originated less in any clear and broad appreciation of its scientific merits or demerits, than in its having been first promulgated by one with whom law was the only God, and its having been more recently interwoven with a scheme of creation in which law is the substitute for a present God. And for such the resolution of the nebulæ, involving as they deemed it to do the entire overthrow of Laplace's scheme, has been rather a triumph of faith over scepticism, than a simple expansion of knowledge and science. We believe the church were none the weaker, and the world all the better, if the faith of the church were more fearless, especially with regard to physical science and its discoveries or speculations, than it has often shown itself to be; if it were better content to leave Him who creates and sustains to determine the time, the order, the procession, the sensible modes of his working; and to accept, though it should be from the atheist or the materialist, whatever they shall discover or wisely conjecture with regard to these, reserving it to itself to infuse all these discoveries with that presence of • Him who is invisible, which its faith can alone truly discern. Laplace's speculation is no more essentially atheistic, or tending towards that faithless faith, than is any other speculation or discovery in physical science. Let his planetogeny carry us back far as it may, and the astrogeny of Herschel bear us up to a far earlier epoch still; there still precedes this beginning, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;' and the long eras of fixed evolution and defined and continuous succession but embody the extension of that creative act, and continue the revelation of the creative will, as the Will that arranges, completes, and sustains.

ness, &c., all probability was gone that, with regard to any which were less markedly thus characterised, these peculiar features of appearance had any deeper significance than they were now approved to have had for it: and all the nebulæ, examined or not, brightened up and dilated into firmaments—their dim shadowiness of light telling but of the voids that severed from them, and their quaint and formless forms but calling to higher views of stellar arrangement, and to greater openness of eye and of soul to the light and glory these fantasies of form may yet reveal.

We turn now, however, to a more specific survey of the revelations made to us with regard to the determinate forms, and, in so far as these in any degree suggest them, the internal constitution of some of these firmamental nebulæ. But we must forewarn our readers against regarding these revelations as final, or supposing that the determination of these appearances is necessarily in all respects complete. Other, and yet more powerful instruments, coming hereafter into operation, may quite possibly as far expand, and as extensively modify, the forms we now behold, as the one whose achievements we are now considering has done; may bring before us portions of these clusters, which are now lost to us by distance, or by the faintness of their light; and place thus before us aggregations yet more irregular, and arrangements more at variance with all our preconceptions of mutual universal relation

of order, harmony, and law. Yet it would not be easy to conceive forms and arrangements more so than some of those already presented to us, and as they at present appear. The very name cluster, implying, as it does, a visible hanging together of the whole, is hardly applicable to them; for often hosts of these firmamental stars seem wandering and streaming away from the mass into space, as the fig-tree droppeth her untimely leaves ;' or, it may be, by a process the converse of this, gathering in from their lonely places in creation, to become members of these majestic brotherhoods; caught up and incorporated with itself by the great family, as it, perchance, circles on round some indefinite centre of universal force, and measures out the annus magnus of physical creation.

Turning, then, to some of these nebulæ, as they formerly were, and as they now appear—we find in the constellation Lyra one whicb, as a nebula, waz sufficiently remarkable ; a dim, pale ring, or circular zone of light, of pretty uniform breadth and clearness, the included unenlightened space wholly unoccupied by anything like a central nucleus; and the nature of the internal changes which, on the supposition of its being a true aggregation of condensing nebulous matter, were assumed to be in progress within it,

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indicated by its form as certainly peculiar, and seemingly incomprehensible. The fuller and more efficient observation which has approved it a firmament of suns, has left to it its fundamental peculiarity of form, and only superadded to this yet greater strangeness. It is now discerned to be an annular stratum of stars; apparently, from the uniformity and homogeneity of its light, of nearly uniform depth and distribution, and wholly without central or local nuclei, or marked crowding together of its orbs at any point. The included hollow, however, is no longer void. It is seen to be occupied by narrow layers or filaments of stars, stretching all in one direction, and, so far as observation can, with its present means, discern, distinctly isolated both from each other, and from the inclosing zone. Nor is this all. From the outer edge of that zone itself, similar filaments stretch out at very regular intervals, and in every direction, giving it exactly the appearance of a wheel with conical and pointed teeth: these, as well as the interior ones, presenting a comparative faintness of light, which we naturally and legitimately attribute either to greater sparsity of constituent orbs, or to diminished depth in stratum of them.

But this is, comparatively, a very partial illustration of change in sensible form among these resolved or resolving nebulæ. We have given us, for example, by Mr. Nichol, a representation of what one of the most beautifully circular, or rather spherical, of these bodies has become, under the search of the three-feet speculum: a somewhat crowded central knot of stars, with an immense extent of looser, but utterly non-uniform star-dust around it; the whole presenting no longer any approach to circular or spherical arrangement. Yet more extraordinary is the present aspect of the so-called Dumb-bell nebula; which, formerly exhibiting close resemblance of form to the object whose name it bears, and suggesting, in connexion with Herschel's hypothesis, the thought of a binary system developing from it, has now put on an appearance which can scarcely be well defined or described. The nearest approach to simile we can find for it is that of a great anchor, the lower part, or flukes, composed of dense starlight, shading away towards the edges and points ; the stock or stem a somewhat similar array, but rather less bright and dense; and the upper arms and ring a still denser, though irregular and unequal mass ; the whole being enveloped in an extended haze, which seems to foretell still further revelations regarding it awaiting us hereafter. More extensive still the changes which the sensible form of another of these bodies has undergone, and more marvellous and incomprehensible yet the result. Formerly

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a dim and obscure ellipsoid, of uniform light and homogeneous structure, characterised by its seemingly perfect completeness and compactness, it presents itself now to our gaze under the likeness of a crab, from which Lord Rosse's name for it has been taken; or, perhaps, rather that of a hybrid between the scorpion and centipede :-an oblong or elliptical body, tapering away to an immense elongated tail, fringed on either side with an immense array of streaming arms and filaments, irregular alike in length and breadth, and in direction of stretch; the body presenting what we frequently, though by no means invariably find-crowding together or greater depth of orbs toward the centre, diminishing towards the circumference; the tail and filaments dim and faint in comparison, and rather shading off into the surrounding darkness, than abruptly ceasing to be.

Among the pre-recognised firmaments, however, one change of sensible aspect has been noted and pictured, which casts all these into the shade. There was one of these, situated on the extreme limit of telescopic observation, which seemed the exact counterpart of what our own must appear, as seen from a certain distance, and in a particular line of vision ; an annular zone of stars, inclosing within its hollow a detached globular cluster, the ring throughout about a third of its extent cloven into two, with a belt

of comparative darkness between its parts. All trace of that resemblance has now disappeared. This mighty system —for mighty it must be, even among these mightinesses—has now put on the aspect of a great spiral shell, with two distinct and seemingly spherical nucleated masses of stars, occupying, the one its apex, and the other its opening, and apparently gathering up towards them the vast winding convolutions which coil and stream between them. A strangely regular irregularity characterises these convolutions themselves. They extend themselves not in continuous or homogeneous strata, but by a succession of brightening and darkening streamers, the brighter patches of one spiral lying generally opposite the darker of the next; while the base of the shell is fringed by a vast array of orbs, whose arrangement and location at once suggest to the fancy the idea of a flow of stars inward from the environing spaces.

It is vain for us at present to look for eren approximative calculation of the distance or extent of these systems of orbs, still more to attempt definitely to estimate them. With regard to the first, enough may be safely deduced to satisfy us that distances we have hitherto regarded as very vast, dwindle into insignificance compared to them; and we believe the estimate we formerly alluded to may be safely taken as within the truth--that some of these far world-mists lie now before our gaze, not as they at

present are, but as they were millions of years ago ;* so long has the light which falls upon the eye that seeks them been, in traversing the void which intervenes between them and us. Hence the definition of the telescope as an instrument which approaches us to them, or them to us, is radically a defective one; for it penetrates into space alone, not into time. Were it otherwisecould we divide, again and again, by successive actual strides at will the intervening voids, till but such a fractional part remained unvanquished as the telescope leaves with regard to the meaner of the two indefinitudes which environ these great ones of creation -could we thus outstrip the slow descent of their light, and its revelations of their phases, yet stranger revelations might be brought down to us, and the phases of a few centuries back, compared with those of the far more distant eras of which alone we can at present take cognizance, might suggest to us something with regard to the mighty progressions which we intuitively assume, as bearing these sun-systems on toward the consummation of all things. Suggest something: we do not say reveal much. For in the evolution of their progressions these millions of years may be of very small account-less than the moment to the dewdrop, or the summer morning to the strong-limbed oak.

Equally vain is it for us to attempt estimating the individual extent of these far off firmaments. We know, indeed, enough to assure us that here also we must lay aside all preconception as worthless by deficiency, and stand prepared for more definite future revelations, which may make our milky way and all our stars-less than a hundred years ago the all-hardly worthy to take its place even among the humbler of these its brethren. We have seen that to Sir William Herschel, and to many another, cautious and docile as he, it was a less violation of the principles of pure induction to conceive a new and unknown form of matter, than to assume the being of systems of the farness and the extent which many of these must now claim. And, now that we know the truth-know, for example, that the cloud-flake in Orion, first

* Of this fact a very strange use has been made in a small tract which has been recommended from at least one London pulpit, as well as by the press, "The Stars and the Earth" the purport of which is to bring to us clearer conception of the omnipresence and omniscience of Deity, by showing that there is pictured out upon space a continuous record of the sensible changes and transactions of time, which it would require but a sufficient height of position and energy of sensitive or perceptive power, to read as a simultaneous representation. We recommend the author, before he continues, as he threatens to do, a speculation so crude and gross, to consider well whether this were a God, or the omniscience of a God, which he seeks thus to elucidate, and not rather a mere gigantic man, the subject and even abject creature of space and time and his so-called omniscience; but the extension of man's lowest kind of knowledge, and that one wherein he is surpassed by some among the lowest of the brute creation-his perception of the sensible or visible.