at some time or other paid homage to the Queen of Night [1], and thanked her for the gentle light which has shown the way to some fair hand.
We say, in blunt scientific terms, that she—or it—is a satellite of the earth, suspended in her—or its—present position by the contrasted attraction of the sun and the earth. This is the unromantic version of the naked fact.
There was a time when the earth was an uncomfortable semi-incandescent mass, in the act of cooling off for practical purposes. The atmosphere was tropical throughout the globe. All things were intensely impregnated—or, as the philosophers say, supersaturated—with carbon. Between the dry land and the waters there was no division. There was no ocean, and consequently to continents. All was bot mud, with here and there a lake or a short river, and here and there a dry, parched, torrid eminence. In those days there were animals and plants, but no human beings. Both animals and plants were like the age in which they flourished—to our notions monstrous, Monsters were the rule, both in the vegetable and the animated world. Creatures were born, and grew to sizes which dwarf the elephant. Plants thrust their beads above the mud, and, in that carboniferous atmosphere, attained heights
- ↑
"As when the Moon,[2] refulgent lamp of night
O'er heav'n's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure sled,
And tip with silver ev'ry mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies."Homer.
The earth is accompanied by a Moon or satellite, whose distance is 237,000 miles and diameter 2,160. Her surface is composed of hill and dale, of rocks and mountains, nearly two miles high, and of circular cavities, sometimes five miles in depth and forty in diameter. She possesses neither rivers, nor lakes, nor seas, and we can. not discover with the telescope any traces of living beings, or any monuments of their hands. Viewing the earth as we now do, as the third planet in order from the gun, can we doubt that it is a globe like the real, poised in ether like them, and, like them, moving round the central luminary?
- ↑ As when the moon, &c. This comparison to inferior to none in Homer. It is the most beautiful night-piece that can be found in poetry. He presents you with a prospect of the heavens, the wear, and the earth; the stars shine; the air is serene, the world enlighten'd, and the moon mounted in glory.
