ordinarily visible in England with the naked

eye, is thus summed up:

Of the first magnitude

Of the second.

Of the third

17

79

228

510

834

In different parts of the globe, different sets of the stars are visible, but always in comparatively small numbers to the naked eye. But how vast the numbers to the telescopic vision! Recollect, too, with the accounts of their numbers, that each particular fixed star is believed to be a sun to a system of planets, like the sun of our own system; and then what can it be possible to say sufficient, either of the multitude of the heavenly bodies, or of the immensity of space?

CHAP. XXX.

MAGNITUDES OF THE FIXED STARS. AMAZING MAGNITUDE OF THE GREAT STAR VEGA. CLUSTERS OF STARS.

BUT, if the fixed stars resemble our own sun or star in being surrounded by planets, our sun, and consequently its planets, bear little resemblance, in point of magnitude, to the fixed stars, and consequently to their planets. The sun, and all its planets, dwindle into comparative atoms, at a view of the fixed stars, if the modern astronomers, with their modern telescopes, can entirely be trusted. We are assured (for example) that the star a, in the constellation Lyra, of which the distance from the earth is twenty billions of miles, has a diameter of 2,659,000,000 miles, or three thousand times that of the sun, or the same as three-fourths of the diameter of the whole solar system, the orbits of the comets excluded; that is, three-fourths of the orbit of the

planet Uranus, called otherwise Herschel and the Georgium Sidus!

This, in general terms, is to say, that the magnitude of the star Vega, or a Lyræ, surpasses that of the sun, more than the magnitude of the sun surpasses that of Mercury; or, that the disproportion between that star and the sun is perhaps three times as great as that between the earth and Jupiter; for a display of which latter disproportion you must consult a future page!

But, again, you will hear, in another chapter, that at the surface of the sun, a man would weigh two hundred tons. What, then, would he weigh at the surface of the star Vega? Tell me how many thousand tons?

I told you, in my chapter about the sun, or the star of our own system, that great star as it is, in comparison with our planet the earth, and with all the planets put together, still it is a very small star, as compared with the stars in general; and see, now, though very imperfectly,

in such a figure as this below, what it is to say, that the size or magnitude of the sun, supposing

it such as it is here drawn, is surpassed by that of the star a Lyræ, by three-fourths as much as our orbit of Uranus (the very outermost of our white circles,) surpasses our drawing of the sun!

The determination of the diameter of a Lyræ is due to a distinguished English astronomer* An objection, indeed, under the Newtonian. theory of light, has been started, to the possibility of its accuracy; "but, however this may be," (says a still later astronomical authority, while adverting both to the magnitudes and distances now assigned to the fixed stars,) “it cannot be doubted that the scale cannot be greatly different t."

Many clusters of stars appear like white clouds, or like comets without tails. They suggest the idea of globular spaces in the heavens, filled full of stars, and constituting a society of stars apart from all the rest. Το attempt to count the stars in one of these globular clusters, says Sir John Herschel, would be a vain task. They are not to be reckoned by hundreds. Many must contain from ten to

The late Dr. Brinkley, Lord Bishop of Cloyne. + Quarterly Review, vol. xxxviii. page 9.

N