THEIR ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 7 seemed no larger than the finest particles of dia mond dust. The general forms of these systems are various; but one at least has been detected as bearing a striking resemblance to the supposed form of our own. The distances are also various, as proved by the different degrees of telescopic power necessary to bring them into view. The farthest observed by the astronomer were esti mated by him as thirty-five thousand times more remote than Sirius, supposing its distance to be about twenty millions of millions of miles. It would thus appear, that not only does gravitation keep our earth in its place in the solar system, and the solar system in its place in our astral system, but it also may be presumed to have the mightier duty of preserving a local arrangement between that astral system and an immensity of others, through which the imagination is left to wander on and on without limit or stay, save that which is given by its inability to grasp the unbounded. The two Herschels have in succession made some other remarkable observations on the regions of space. They have found within the limits of our astral system, and generally in its outer fields, a great number of objects which, from their foggy appearance, are called nebulcp.; some of vast ex-
