SYSTEM OF THE HEAVENS

AS REVEALED BY LORD ROSSE'S TELESCOPES

SEVERAL years ago, some person or other (in fact, I believe it was myself) published a paper from the German of Kant, on a very interesting question-viz., the age of our own little Earth. Those who have never seen that paper-a class of unfortunate people whom I suspect to form the majority in our present perverse generation-will be likely to misconceive its object. Kant's purpose was, not to ascertain how many years the Earth had lived: no such barren conundrum occupied him. For, had there ever been any means of coercing the Earth into an honest answer on such a delicate point, which the Sicilian canon, Recupero,

"Thoughts on Some Important Points relating to the System of the World." By J. P. Nichol, LL.D., Professor of Astronomy in the University of Glasgow. In obedience to the facts of the case, I have indicated this particular work of my friend Professor Nichol's as having furnished --because in some imperfect sense it really did furnish—the text to which this little paper refers, and about which it may be said to hover. But it would be doing great injustice to the learned professor, if I should authorise the reader to accept so desultory a paper as an adequate and formal review of that work: and it would be doing some injustice to myself, if I were supposed to have ever designed it for discharging such a function. Grave and scientific reviews of that book were sure to be writ ten in useless abundance. And I, for my own part, if otherwise quali

*

fancied that there was, but which, in my own opinion, there neither is, nor ought to be (since a man deserves to be cudgelled who could put such improper questions to a lady planet), still what would it amount to? What good would it do us to have a certificate of our dear little mother's birth and baptism? To tell us the positive amount of years through which our Earth has existed-fifty millions, for example-would leave us in total darkness upon Kant's question-viz., What proportion does that amount form of the total career allotted to this planet? Is it the thousandth part, or the millionth? Our mother Tellus, beyond all doubt, is a lovely little thing. At any rate, therefore, she cannot be superannuated. I am satisfied that she is very much admired throughout the Solar System: and in clear seasons, when she is seen to advantage, with her bonny wee pet of a Moon tripping round her like a lamb, I should be glad to see the planet that could fancy herself entitled to sneeze at our Earth. And then, if she

fied for writing such a review, should have felt no ambition for swelling a catalogue already certain of being in excess. My purpose was humbler, but also higher-viz., this: from amongst the many relations of astronomy-1. to man; 2. to his earthly habitation; 3. to the motions of his daily life; 4. to his sense of illimitable grandeur; 5. to his dim anticipations of changes far overhead, concurrently with changes on earth-to select such as might allow of a solemn and impassioned, or of a gay and playful treatment. If, through the light torrent spray of fanciful images or allusions, the reader catches at intervals momentary glimpses of cbjects vast and awful in the rear, a much more impressive effect is likely to be obtained than through any amount of scientific discussion, and, at any rate, all the effect that ever was contemplated.

* Recupero:-See "Brydone's Travels," some sixty or seventy years ago. The canon, being a beneficed clergyman in the Papal Church, was naturally an infidel. He wished exceedingly to refute Moses; and he fancied that he really had done so by means of some collusive assistance from the layers of lava on Mount Etna. But there survives, at this day, very little to remind us of the canon, except an unpleasant guffaw that rises, at times, in solitary valleys of Etna.

(viz., our Earth) keeps but one Moon, even that (you know) is an advantage as regards some people that keep

none.

Meantime, what Kant understood by his question is something that still remains to be developed. It is this: -Let the earth have lived any number of years that you suggest, still that tells us nothing about the period of life, the stage, which she may be supposed to have reached. Is she a child, in fact, or is she an adult? And if an adult, and that you gave a ball to the Solar System, is she that kind of person that you would introduce to a waltzing partner, some fiery young gentleman like Mars; or would you rather suggest to her the sort of partnership which takes place at a whist-table? Some think that our planet is in that stage of her life which corresponds to the playful period of twelve or thirteen in a spirited girl. Such a girl, were it not that she is checked by a sweet natural sense of feminine reserve, you might call a romp; but not a hoyden, observe; no horse-play; oh no, nothing of that sort. And these people fancy that earthquakes, volcanoes, and all such little escapades, will be over, will " cease and determine," as soon as our Earth reaches the age of maidenly bashfulness. Poor thing! It's quite natural, you know, in a healthy growing girl. A little overflow of vivacity, a pirouette more or less, an earthquake plus or minus, what harm should that do to any of us! Nobody takes more delight than I in the fawn-like sportiveness of an innocent girl, at this period of life; even a shade of espiéglerie does not annoy me. But still my own impressions incline me rather to represent the Earth as a fine noble young woman, full of the pride which is so becoming to her sex, and well able to take her own part, in case that, at any solitary point of the heavens, she should come

across one of those vulgar fussy Comets, disposed to be rude and take improper liberties.

But others there are, a class whom I perfectly abominate, that place our Earth in the category of decaying, nay, of decayed women. Hair like arctic snows, failure of vital heat, palsy that shakes the head as in the porcelain toys on our mantelpieces, asthma that shakes the whole fabric these they absolutely fancy themselves to see; they absolutely hear the tellurian lungs wheezing, panting, crying, "Bellows to mend!" periodically as the Earth approaches her aphelion.

Suddenly at this point a demur arises upon the total question. Kant's very problem explodes, as Venetian wine-glasses of old were shivered by any treacherous poison they might contain. For is there, after all, any stationary meaning in the question? Perhaps, in reality, the Earth is both young and old. Young? If she is not young at present, perhaps she will be so in future. Old? If she is not old at this moment, perhaps she has been old, and has a fair chance of becoming so again. In fact, she is a Phoenix that is known to have secret processes for rebuilding herself out of her own ashes. Little doubt there is but she has seen many a birth-day, many a funeral night, and many a morning of resurrection. For, listen:-Where now the mightiest of oceans rolls in pacific beauty, once were anchored continents and boundless forests. Where the south pole now shuts her frozen gates inhospitably against the intrusions of flesh, once were probably accumulated the ribs of empires; man's imperial forehead, woman's roseate lips, gleamed upon ten thousand hills; and there were innumerable contributions to antarctic journals almost as good (but not quite) as our own. Even within our domestic limits, even where little England, in

her south-eastern quarter, now devolves so quietly to the sea her sweet pastoral rivulets, once came roaring down, in pomp of waters, a regal Ganges,* that drained some hyperbolical continent, some Quinbus Flestrin of Asiatic proportions, long since gone to the dogs. All things pass away. Generations wax old as does a garment: but eternally God says:-"Come again, ye children of men." Wildernesses of fruit, and worlds of flowers, are annually gathered in solitary South America to ancestral graves: yet still the Fauna of Earth, yet still the Flora of Earth, yet still the Sylva of Earth, does not become superannuated, but blossoms in everlasting youth. Not otherwise by secular periods, known to us geologically as facts, though obscure as durations, Tellus herself, the planet, as a whole, is for ever working by golden balances of change and compensation of ruin and restoration. She recasts her glorious habitations in decomposing them; she lies down for death, which perhaps a thousand times she has suffered; she rises for a new birth, which perhaps for the thousandth time has glorified her disc. Hers is the wedding-garment, hers is the shroud, that eternally is being woven in the loom of palingenesis. And God imposes upon her the awful necessity of working for ever at her own grave, yet of listening for ever to his far-off trumpet of resurrection.

If this account of the matter be just, and were it not treasonable to insinuate the possibility of an error against so great a swell as Immanuel Kant, one would be inclined

* "Ganges:"-Dr Nichol calls it by this name for the purpose of expressing its grandeur; and certainly, in breadth, in diffusion at all times, but especially in the rainy season, the Ganges is the supreme river in our British orient. Else, as regards the body of water discharged, the absolute payments made into the sea's exchequer, and the majesty of column riding downwards from the Himalaya, I believe that, since Sir Alexander Burnes's measurements, the Indus ranks foremost by a long chalk.