THE NEW FLANET.

THE newly-discovered planet, Astræa, is a companion of the four little ones ascertained, about forty years ago, to exist between Mars and Jupiter, all revolving at nearly equal distances from the sun. If it be no bigger than the smallest of these, it probably is not forty miles in diameter, or possessed of a surface measuring more than the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Think of a tight little Island in this spherical form, wheeling along in independent fashion through space with all its proper features of vegetation and of animated being a perfect miniature of those respectably-sized orbs of which our own is a specimen! And supposing there are men and women upon it, think of the miniatures of nations which they must compose, and of all their other social arrangements in proportion!

and treaties will be entered into as between Jersey and Guernsey for an exchange of wine against woollen cloths, let the rest of the forty-mile world pine at the arrangement as it pleases. Colonies, too, will not fail to raise a pother. There will be an Algiers of parish size, with an Abd-elKader storming for its defence; and two mighty countries, representing a Britain and an America, will spurt out big words about an Oregon of the extent and value of the Moor of Rannoch.

The Astræans, although their world is so little, will see it to be a firm and stable thing beneath their feet, with all the other bodies of space revolving round it. If not yet arrived at the use of the telescope, and of the rules of geometry, they will believe their sphere to be the great central world, to which every thing else is subordinate. But even if they have advanced as far in these matters as ourselves, they will think and speak on the understanding that Astræa In that case, a piece of land the size of is the world-the only place where they four or five English counties will be a good- know for certain there are human beingsly continent, and a mass of sea like the all the other spheres being only conjectuFirth of Forth a perfect Mediterranean. A rally scenes of life. Even to those most range of hills such as those of Derbyshire enlightened on such points, the immediatewill be as a set of Alps or Himalays to the ness of their own little globe will give it an Astræans, and their Danubes and Amazons importance and a centrality which they will will be about the size of our best Scotch scarcely be able to attribute to any other burns. Rutlandshire would be a large edi-mass within their range of observation. tion of the Russian empire in Astræa. There will be a great deal of self-esteem The more common-sized kingdoms would in the Astræans respecting their poor little be about the magnitude of our ordinary hummingtop of a world. They will look parishes. It is inconceivable, however, upon themselves, doubtless, as very high that the people of this little planet are intelligences, and great will that man think split up into nations so extremely small. himself who becomes known for his acts or Let us rather suppose that they form but words to one-fourth of them. He will also four or five in all, each occupying as much esteem himself a most liberal-minded and land as about half the Isle of Wight. Some cosmopolitan person, who advocates that quarter of a million in all they might be al- the five great countries should live at peace lowing that the land in Astræa is for the with each other, and that statesmen should most part fit to produce sustenance for hu- legislate impartiality for the good of the man beings. Narrow as is that fold of ex- whole people of the globe. They will have istence, and limited its population, there on record their first circumnavigators and will no doubt be room for the display of discoverers of countries; their Drakes, and human passions in Astræa. It will have Frobishers, and Columbuses; the men of its wars occasionally. A Frederick the giant-heart, who ventured upon untraversed Great will set all its Europe in a flame, for seas of the width of the straits of Calais, possession of a Silesia of the size of the and dared to put a girdle round a globe no Regent's Park. An Alexander, having in- less than a hundred and twenty miles in vaded an India resembling Cornwall in ex- circumference. They will also have their tent, will sigh, and with something like rea- great men of philosophy, of letters and of son, to think that there are no more worlds arts. Would it not be curious to get a to conquer. There will be class interests peep into one of their biographical dictiontoo. Some little Britain will make fierce aries, and see what sort of men had been resolves to raise all its own corn, under the Astræan Homer and Milton, the Aswhatever difficulties, and at whatever cost: træan Socrates and Newton, the Astræan

Phidias and Raphael? Their universal state of original ignorance, fully persuaded history would be not less amusing! What that Astræa was the Mundas or world, and narrations of conquests pushed over the that all the luminous bodies which, like us, space of one of our degrees of latitude; they see in the sky, were merely a drapery and how interesting to trace civilization as hung up for the regalement of their eyearising in a certain parishlike space of sight. What a mighty thing Astræa is, ground, and then spreading slowly into the and what a grand set of beings are the adjacent parishes! Great notions entertain- Astræans! A sun to give us warmth and ed, too, about the origins of all those little vegetation. Stars to begem our nightly nations; some sprung from demigods, view, Sister Pallas, or Vesta, occasionally no less. One particularly great people, sailing pretty close by, about the size of a convinced that they were destined to be moon, as if by way of a holiday spectacle. the leading people in the world, because Every thing very nice and complete about they were twenty thousand more in num- us. But lo! astronomy begins to tell strange ber than any other. A Napoleon in As- tales.-It now appears that there are cotræa-what a droll phenomenon! Think ordinate bodies called planets, probably inof him setting out with the idea that his habited as well as ours, and of infinitely country-la Belle something-measuring larger size. The stars, moreover, are suns, about ten miles each way, was destined to having other planets in attendance upon predominate over the world. And behold them, and these probably residences for him then overrunning his little Italy, Aus- human beings too. All at once, Astræa tria, Prussia, in succession, and thinking shrinks from its position as the centre and he had it all safe. But behold, he is at principal mass of the universe, into the length led by constant success into an en- predicament of a paltry atom, hung looseterprise where nature happens to be against ly on to a machine whose centre is far him, and he sinks more rapidly than he otherwise. And the Astræans-the Peorose. Then histories, poems about him, ple of the World-the Metropolitans of wondering at the vastness of a genius which Space-are degraded in a moment into a grasped at a dominion embracing perhaps set of Villagers. What a fall is there, my as much ground as belonged to the king countrymen, for a respectable set of worldof the East Saxons. Deplorations for so ers, who happened not to possess sufficient great a spirit, pining like the chained eagle self-esteem to bear them up against it! on an islet, wretched as a toy-disappointed What an overturn to all the ordinary ideas child, because he could not be allowed any of Astræan mankind! One can imagine longer to play the conqueror! He left a the fact making its way over such a baby name at which the world grew pale-this globe in the course of a couple of days, forty-mile world, to wit-to point a moral and thus producing a universal hanging and adorn a tale. And yet this, however down of heads and thrusting of tails whimsical it may look from our eight-thou- between legs, as it were simultaneously. sand-mile globe, would undoubtedly be very What a sad state for a world to be inserious to the Astræans. For just as As- not a bit of spirit or spunk remaining in træa is to us, so is the earth to a planet it; not one Astræan fit to say a cheering like Jupiter or Saturn, where men may be word to another! In such a state of things, speculating about our Tellurian history ex- one can imagine hardly a word of any kind actly in the present strain, although, as is spoken in Astræa for a week. It would well known we regard our Napoleon as look as if the planet were never to get up something very tremendous. its head again in life. There would, however, be varieties in the moods of Astræans on this distressing subject. Some, a little more vaporing than the rest, would by and by suggest that no matter for the small size of the globe; the smaller the globe, the bigger the people, for, gravitation being less with us than in larger worlds, we require larger size to keep us fast to the ground. Let neighbor Jupiter, then, plume himself on his vast diadem, but his people must be pigmies in comparison with us. The malicious, again, would feel a conso

It is possible after all, that the Astræans have a more just view of themselves and their world in comparison with other worlds and other peoples. They may be, perchance, a more modest example of human nature than their earthly brethren; and it may have therefore happened that when they first learned, from their Copernicuses, Newtons, and Herschels, how matters really stood in the universe, that they felt extremely abashed and disheartened about it. Let us for a moment imagine them in their

us.

lation in the idea, that there was at least proportions, there are strong suspicions of one planet no larger than Astræa. It is your being only a bit of a planet, a shred always a great matter to have associates in of some respectable mass that blew to any misfortune or degradation that befalls pieces one day. However, we are very Come along, then, friend Pallas, you glad to think that you and your sister and we against any of these lumbering fragments have all got round again, and worlds. Huzza for the tight, light, nice, found yourselves able to go on as before trim, little planets! In time, the first feel- in the business of perihelion revolution. ings of humiliation would wear off, and If we cannot preach in the kirk, you know perhaps the Astræans would at last come we may sing mass in the quire; better a to look upon their world as not so bad after wee buss, say we in Scotland, than nae all. Well, if we are only a kind of village bield. And you, Astræans, we would rein the solar system, why, let us just make commend you, if you be at all in comfortathe best of it, and endeavor to be content. ble circumstances, not to be jealous or inAnother view occurs respecting Astræa, vidious of the people of the larger planets; that, if it had advanced in the arts condu- for if we on earth be any fair specimen of cive to locomotion, and spins at any thing them, we can assure you there is nothing like an average rate of speed upon its axis, in the solar system for you to be envious it may be quite possible to go round it in a about. Things are but in a so-so state single day, and thus enjoy either perpetual amongst earthly mankind-three-fourths of noon, or perpetual midnight, or perpetual them mere barbarians; and even amongst dawn or sunset, as taste may dictate. And the civilized nations, a vast proportion not only this, but if there should be any know life but as a scene of toil and misery! violent discrepancy of seasons in the little To let you into a little secret, man is a selfglobe, it will only be like going down into Hampshire to move from the winter to the summer hemisphere, and thus realise all the advantages which the migratory birds possess in our sphere. One can imagine an Astræan of the upper classes having one house in the north temperate zone, and another in the south, and dividing his year of fifty months between them, so as to dispense with coal-fires and paletots continually. The poet will not therefore need to say to the cuckoo, Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee-we'd make with joyful wind our annual visit round the globe, companions of the spring; for at the proper season he will find railways advertising cheap trains to accomplish the same purpose. The convenience of all this must be very great, and for those having money and leisure, existence in Astræa will, we take it, be rather pleasant. Even in the power of sayingTaking a trip round the world the other day, I met with a strange adventure about the hundred and eightieth degree of longitude, &c., there will be a happy piquancy. What snobs they will be who have not been at least once round the world in Astræa.

ish being, who frustrates his happiness by his very eagerness for his own benefit. There has therefore never been such a thing as real happiness known upon Tellus, grand as it may appear to you, even without the aid of a telescope. We only hope that matters will, by and by, be more agreeable, and that our remote descendants will have less occasion for grumbling.— Tom Thumb of worlds, who can tell but you know all this, and, contented with your own small field of existence, look down with pity on us wretched earthlings! Well for you to be in such a frame of mind. But in that case, we wrap ourselves up in our pride, and, sternly hushing our misery in our bosoms, bid you good by, and think not of us. While we have strength to bear, who can have any right to visit us with compassion?

A MISTAKE. The Revue Britanique, in its Spin on, then, trig little ultra-zodiacallast number, commits one of the richest blunders we have had the good fortune to laugh at in a long last, but perhaps not quite least addition to time. In a Life of Nelson, it describes the imthe solar family. We of the Earth, As-mortal hero's preparations for the battle of Cotræa, are glad to make your acquaintance, penhagen; and says that, after those preparations and see you amongst us. We cannot, in were completed, he went in his gig with some of sober truth, flatter you with the idea that his captains to reconnoitre the Danish fleet, adding an explanatory foot-note to the effect that the we consider you altogether on an equality aforesaid gig was-"a sort of cabriolet !!"-Lit. with us, for, overlooking your diminutive Gaz.

Where once that glory flowed, have ebbed away
Light, life, and motion, and along its way
The dull stream slowly creeps, a shallow thread;
Yet at the hidden source, if hands unblest

Disturb the wells whence that sad stream takes
birth,

The swollen waters once again gush forth-
Dark bitter floods rolling in wild unrest.