But still is thine aspiring spirit Warm'd with a nobler fire- The fairest, loftiest things of earth Oh, in this Holy Treasury, Dig deep, and find the gold!" C. T. WORLDS IN THE SKY.* WE have before us a book which the author calls an Essay on the Plurality of Worlds, but which is a very elaborate argument to disprove the existence of any world but our own. The writer treats the subject with all the learning and embellishment which an opulent intellect is able to supply; and, certainly, it would be difficult to imagine a more lamentable country than he presents to our contemplation in his starry survey. We never remember to have seen so fruitful or striking an illustration of the proverb, that "all which glitters is not gold." Two or three examples will be sufficient. There is Saturn, encircled by his ring, and attended by his luminaries; how the beholder is confounded to hear that this splendour is altogether illusory, and that Saturn himself is only an abyss of lava and mud. There is Jupiter-who has not admired his marvellous radiance ?—but he is only a mass of slime after all, in which a seed of life may be just beginning to stir. Behold Venus, too, with her brilliant disc. Surely, of her we shall have better tidings. By no means. Venus is a vast heap of dust and cinders. The morn of life will scarcely be ex 1. Of "The Plurality of Worlds:" an Essay. Fourth Edition. Parker and Son, West Strand. 2. "More Worlds than One." By Sir David Brewster. Murray. pected in such inhospitable climes. Some forms of existence, however, the essayist is willing to concede. Jupiter may be an aquarium on a very enormous scale. In Mars, also, there would be something to engage the curiosity of Professor Owen, in the land and sea Saurian and the Dinotherium-each, doubtless, under such favourable circumstances, singularly hideous and happy; while innumerable whales exult in an unlimited number of "roods," and seals bask on gigantic icebergs, undisturbed by exploring parties. Venus, likewise, is allowed to be inhabited, if she will be contented with insects in fireproof coats, and invisible except through a microscope. Our hasty impression was, in first reading these speculations, that the essayist had spent a genial evening with Gulliver, and was resolved to try a rival expedition. We are bound to say that the captain is beaten. For a little burlesque we had been prepared by the pleasantry of Fontenelle, who makes such agreeable remarks on planetary tempers, and the excess of nervous excitement in Mercury. But let not the writer be supposed to be always facetious. His design is serious. The object of the essay is to prove the absence of intellectual life under such an economy as the planets and stars present. But his peremptory statements are not always beyond the reach of correction. Jupiter, for instance, is said to be a sphere of water; but Sir David Brewster objects that the light reflected from his surface would then, under certain conditions, contain a large portion of polarized light, which it does not. In reference to the same planet, the essayist conjectures that the power of vision would be greatly impeded by the faintness of the sun-light; and Sir David replies, that an enlargement of the pupil of the eye, with an increased sensibility of the retina, would make the sun's rays as brilliant as they are in England. In reading such arguments as the essayist advances, and upon which he builds such imposing theories, we cannot help being struck by the weakness of the premises. Why must planetary life be London life, with its Athenæum and cabstand? Has the Great Artificer only one mould? Is the principle of adaptation to be ignored? We are not, in any respect, acquainted with the capacities of our own organs and senses, even as they are already endowed. We have read of one person in whom the retina was so tender that in the dark night he could distinguish the colours of things put within the curtains, while he was asleep; and of another, whose nerve of hearing was so acute that it caught a distant whisper inaudible by every other ear. Dogmatic assertions are the attributes of omniscience or conceit. To say that because a man, of the 19th century, could not live in Saturn, no representative of the human family could, seems, in our judgment, to involve the same absurdity as an essay by Sir Benjamin Brodie, which was to prove the impossibility of curing a blind man by anointing his eyes with clay wetted. The sun does not fare better with the essayist than the planets. It is true that Sir William Herschell was disposed to people it densely; and Sir David Brewster suggests that the double atmosphere of the sun need not deprive its inhabitants of their beautiful prospects, since the planets and stars might be seen through openings in it. But the essayist is not a slave to authority. The moon affords more opportunities of investigation. We are informed that a trip of six months, by a common train, would have made Bishop Wilkins happy, and fulfilled his favourite wish of an introduction to the Selenites. Lord Rosse's telescope is our present substitute for the rail. It is affirmed that a building, like Westminster Abbey, could be traced by that unparalleled detective. But of what use is the most inquisitive or penetrating eye in a desert of cinders and slag? For of such ignoble materials the moon is said to be composed. When the comets have been despatched, as they are with the usual and rapid positiveness of the essayist, the fixed stars remain. Having exterminated every indication of intellectual life up to their territory, he is prepared to inflict on them the same sentence. The number of stars seen by the naked eye may be about 4000; but when the telescope is turned upon them, the blue depths are sown with light, and, like the sands on the sea-shore in multitude, stars flash upon the glass. Each little space is a separate kingdom of glory. In whatsoever direction the telescope looks, a spangled vault seems to fill it. Each star, though presenting a mere point of light to the eye, is believed to be a sun of magnitude, perhaps equal to our own, and accompanied by planetary systems, of which it is the centre. The essayist, indeed, is driven by his hypothesis to discountenance this view, and defers any conjectures about the peopling of the stars until he is satisfied that they are suns and lightsystems. One question arises, and who has not asked it of his own heart while beholding a summer sky? What is there beyond the stars? And the answer is-other stars, brighter and lovelier, in a scale of ascending magnificence-worlds beyond worlds-all glorious, and all God's. It was the conclusion of the elder Herschell that the depth of the milky way, in some places, admitted of 500 stars being ranged in a line, one behind the other, and "each separated from the other by a distance equal to that which divides our sun from the nearest fixed star." The essayist receives no gratification from these enlargements of the Sky-kingdoms. Every new discovery hampers his theory. For this reason the resolution of nebula is treated by him with considerable doubt. The stars, into which the glass breaks up the luminous vapour, are, in his eye, simply dots. But Mr. Baden Powell states, on the authority of observers, that the appearance is perfectly and brilliantly that of stars, and that their actual stellar nature was considered to be unquestionably established. The reader will have been anticipating some rare result to follow from the essayist's general survey. The "uncreating word" of Pope's goddess was not mightier in desolation; and, like her, this great anarch What, then, is the aim of the essay? The glorification of man. The universe is depopulated that he may reign; the planets and stars are debased, that his abode may be exalted; man, the special object of God's care; the earth, the prepared kingdom of God's love. Chalmers, in his famous lectures, had combatted that objection to the truth of Revelation, which was founded on the assumed insignificance of man, by supposing other races, in other regions, to share in his privileges, and be blessed in his blessings. But the vastness of the scheme brought perplexity with it; and the timid believer might naturally wonder if God's eye would single him out amid the countless hosts of heaven. The present essay meets any such difficulty in the simplest and, at the same time, in the most conclusive manner. It denies altogether the existence of any intellectual life, except that which moves and breathes on the earth. Man need not be afraid lest God should disregard him, for God has no other creature of whom to be mindful. If the magnificence and the lustre of Jupiter or of Saturn should dazzle and daunt the beholder, he is consoled by the assurance that they are "the permanent receptacles of the superfluous water and air of the system"-in fact, the wastepipes of the universal reservoir; and so, with a few strokes of the pen, the essayist erases "the green abodes of life" from the creed of the Christian, and hands them over to the keeping of the poets. Now, we are inclined to accept the hypothesis respecting man, and to reject it respecting the Worlds in the Sky. We will dignify one, and not desolate the other. Call man, if you please, the crowned head of creation, and let the world in which he is placed be pre-eminently the Holy Land of the universe. We say nothing against the titles. He may well be ennobled in whose likeness God came; and that place may well be consecrated in which He suffered. The human type is shown to be the highest type, not merely by His putting it on, but by His retaining it. The robe of flesh is still worn by Him; and when He comes again, He will come as the Son of man, clothed in a human body, resplendent indeed and glorious, but bearing the marks of His sufferings and the tokens of His love. In this sense, therefore, we admit the kingliness of man, and do homage to his crown; and for the same reason we acknowledge the sanctity of his abode. The tomb of the Immortal has made earth the cathedral of God. Is man worthy to be thus elevated? Do his qualities fit him for his throne? Does his character make it conceivable "that he should be thus selected-taken into such guardianship-admitted into such a dispensation-graced with such a favour?" The essayist replies to the question by affirming man to be an intellectual, moral, religious, and spiritual creature, and brought by these qualities into a special relation to God. There is, we think, a sort of epic grandeur and harmony in this view of man's majesty and privileges; but we cannot agree to the conditions which the essayist deems essential to the support of it. Why is the sky to be laid waste, that the earth may be magnified? We might dispense with inhabitants in the sun. The sun has his own work; a work how various, magnificent, and unbroken! He guides, illu |