Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/213

 lion of Satan and his rebel followers, God hurled them through the floor of Heaven and down through the darkness of immeasurable space to a place in Chaos hollowed out to receive them. This place contained such dire discomforts that Satan in his wrath swore revenge.

Satan had heard that in order to hollow out this awful place in Chaos, the ether, which was believed to fill all space, flew upward

the stars walling-in a Universe which was to contain a dwelling place for a new race which might eventually take the place of the rebels cast from Heaven. The stars were then surrounded by a translucent shell which protected this new creation from the cold and tempests of outer space.

Satan searched long and ardently through the darkness for this splendid ball of light. Finally he found it, hanging on its golden chain from Heaven, and, descending within by the radiant stairway of the angels, passed the stars and the planets in their sliding spheres of impalpable crystal, and discovered the earth, radiant in the brightness of the sun! Of the further adventures of Satan we need not speak, but the handling of the whole subject is masterly and brought to Milton undying fame.

The idea of the crystalline spheres first came to Eudoxus in the 4th century B. C. from watching the movements of the planets among the stars. He imagined that there must be nine of these hollow, transparent globes enclosed one within the other and surrounding the quiescent body of the earth; first, the "primum mobile," which carried around all the inner spheres and communicated to them a universal motion, next a sphere for all the stars, then one for the sun, one for the moon, and one for each of the five planets then known. These spheres were conceived to be of