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Cheerless to all would be his darksome tour,

Did not six moons illume his midnight hour.
When the keen north with all its fury blows,
Congeals the floods, and forms the fleecy snows,

thirty-five thousand, one hundred and nine miles in diameter;—one thousand eight hundred millions of miles distant from the sun; and that it will take eighty-three years, one hundred and forty days, and seventeen hours to accomplish its annual circuit, at the rate of seven hundred miles an hour:-He is ninety times greater than the earth.

The synodical periods (or compleat lunations) of Georgian's moons are as follow:

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The light of this planet is found equal to two hundred and forty

eight of our full moons.

C.

By the foregoing notes, it may be perceived that the solar system, to which we belong, is, in diameter, three thousand six

'Tis heat intense to what can there be known:

Warmer our frigid, than its burning zone.

Who there inhabit, must have other pow'rs,

Juices, and veins, and sense, and life, than our's.

One moment's cold, like their's, would pierce the [bone,

Freeze the heart-blood, and turn us all to stone.

hundred millions of miles; and that it comprizes thirty worlds or globes of matter, (saying nothing of a multitude of comets,) the probable habitations of myriads of intellectual creatures :-Yet all this widely extended system is but a very small portion of the whole universe; and were the whole of this solar system to be annihilated, it would be no more missed by an eye which could (were it possible) take in the whole creation, than a grain of sand on the sea shore.

Would man thus think of the immensity of God's works, where would he rest his arrogant claim to superiority over all other created beings!-Let the thought rather excite an humble, and awful, yet grateful sense of that goodness, which, besides the inestimable mercies of revelation, has, in the midst of such multifarious-such sublime arrangements of mere nature, provided so impartially-for every want of every created existence.

C.

Strange and amazing must the diff'rence be,

"Twixt this dull planet and bright Mercury :*

Yet reason says, nor can we doubt at all,
Millions of beings dwell on either ball,;

With constitutions fitted for that spot,
Where Providence, all-wise, has fix'd their lot.

Wond'rous art thou, O God, in all thy ways! Their eyes to thee let all thy creatures raise; Adore thy grandeur, and thy goodness praise.

Ye sons of men! with satisfaction know,

God's own right-hand dispenses all below :
Nor good nor evil does by chance befall;

He reigns supreme, and He directs it all.

* The note given in page 23, respecting the light and heat of planetary bodies, will apply here also.

D

At his command, affrighting human-kind,

COMETS* drag on their blazing lengths behind:

*COMETS appear but seldom, and their continuance within our view is but of short duration; consequently the observations made on them have been but few and transient. Enough, how, ever, has been observed of them to determine that they are erratic planets belonging to our system, wandering in orbits extremely elliptical; subject to similar laws of nature as the other planets are; and, in the opinion of LAMBERT and others, are habitable worlds.

Of these extraordinary globes there are about five hundred; but as their appearance, in the early ages of astronomy, excited alarm rather than veneration, we have only about one hundred, on which proper observations have been made, from whence their elements could have been computed: A table of which may be seen in HUTTON'S Philosophical Dictionary.

C.

The last which has appeared to us was in the months of September, October, and November of the present year, 1807.From observations made thereon, the head or nucleus was of a dusky, yellow colour, and apparently of the size of a star of the first or second magnitude.-Its motion in its orbit was at the rate of some hundred thousands of miles in an hour:-and its coma, or tail, little less than ten millions of miles in length. C...

Nor, can we think, that they at random rove,
But, in determin'd times, thro' long ellipses move.
And tho' sometimes they near approach the Sun,
Sometimes beyond the Georgian's orbit run,
Throughout their race they act their maker's will,
His pow'r declare, his purposes fulfil.

'Tis he alone sustains this ORB in air :

Its creatures breathe by his paternal care:

His goodness does their daily food supply, And if he but with-holds his hand, they die. 'Tis he within due bounds the flood restrains : He swells the brook which murmurs through the [plains, And o'er the mountain pours the seasonable rains.

He gives the word: the blust'ring winds arise; On billows, billows mounted, storm the skies.

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