she is not inhabited by organized beings. But even here, how know we but that that most beneficent emanation of the “self-evolving energy divine,” that most powerful agent in the mysterious chemistry of the spheres—the all-vivifying rays of the sun, may not be silently at work re-fitting even that “cinder of an extinct world,” for the habitation of kindred beings?
The satellites of the other planets have been proved by astronomical observation to be under physical conditions similar to that of the moon; and it is probable, therefore, that they are at all events not as yet in a proper state of habitability. Finally, as regards the planetoids or asteroids—whether we look upon them in the light of fragments of a smashed or exploded planet, or in that of germs or constituent elements of a future planet in process of formation by coalescing and agglomeration—it is plain that they present none of the leading and essential analogies to our earth that are observed in the larger planets.
To those “strange wanderers of the sky,” comets, we intend to devote a separate chapter, and will therefore now at once wing our flight beyond the narrow limits of our solar system, to the confines of the visible universe—to the threshold of the abyss of space beyond.
The innumerable multitude of celestial bodies, which seemingly preserve from age to age the same relative situation in the heavens, and are therefore
