Page:Historical and biographical sketches.djvu/78

74 Milky Way whose mysteries the telescopes of his day were not powerful enough to unravel, whetted his fancy and aroused his eloquence. The Milky Way, composed of millions of small stars, seemed to him to be a vein of closer texture running through material creation, which he supposed to be confined between parallel planes of immeasurable extent. The discoveries of Herschel and others subsequently verified many of his hypotheses. “We shall find sufficient reason to conclude,” he says, “that the visible creation, consisting of revolving worlds and central suns, even including all those that are beyond the reach of human eye and telescope, is but an inconsiderable part of the whole. Many other and very various, orders of things, unknown to and inconceivable by us, may and probably do exist in the unlimited regions of space. And all yonder stars, innumerable, with their dependencies, may perhaps compose but the leaf of a flower in the Creator's garden, or a single pillar in the immense building of the Divine Architect.” His sentiments on some other subjects were occasionally interwoven. Frederick the Great he called the tyrant of the north and scourge of mankind. He commiserated with those who, because their bodies were disposed to absorb or reflect the rays of light in a way different from our own, were in America doomed to endless slavery. The rapid growth of the American colonies seemed to him to indicate an early fall. He dreaded the introduction of articles of luxury, and the growth of luxurious tastes, through a too easy intercourse with Europe. “I am ready to wish — vain wish,” he added — “that Nature would raise her everlasting bars between the New and the Old World, and make a voyage to Europe as impracticable as one to the moon.”

In March of the same year the American Philosophical