15. What an august! what an amazing conception, if human imagination can conceive it, does this give of the works of the Creator! Thousands of thousands of Suns, multiplied without end, and ranged all around us, at immense distances from each other, attended by ten thousand times ten thousand Worlds, all in rapid motion, yet calm, regular, and harmonious, invariably keeping the paths prescribed them; and these Worlds peopled with myriads of intelligent beings, formed for endless progression in perfection and felicity.
16. If so much power, wisdom, goodness, and magnificence is displayed in the material Creation, which is the least considerable part of the Universe, how great, how wise, how good must HE be, who made and governs the Whole!
CHAP. II.
A brief Description of the Solar System.
[PLATE I.] Fig. 1.
The Solar System.
17. The Planets and Comets which move round the Sun as their center, constitute the Solar System. Those Planets which are nearer the Sun not only finish their circuits sooner, but likewise move faster in their respective Orbits than those which are more remote from him. Their motions are all performed from west to east, in Orbits nearly circular. Their names, distances, bulks, and periodical revolutions, are as follows.
The Sun.
[PLATE I.] Fig. I. The Sun.
The Axes of the Planets, what.
19. Having mentioned the Sun’s turning round his axis, and as there will be frequent occasion to speak of the like motion of the Earth and other Planets, it is proper here to inform the young Tyro in Astronomy, that neither the Sun nor Planets have material axes to turn upon, and support them, as in the little imperfect Machines contrived to represent them. For the axis of a Planet is a line conceived to be drawn through it’s center, about which it revolves as on a real axis. The extremities of this line, terminating in opposite points of the Planet’s surface, are called its Poles. That which points towards the northern part of the Heavens is called the North Pole; and the other, pointing towards the southern part, is called the South Pole. A bowl whirled from one’s hand into the open air turns round such a line within itself, whilst it moves forward; and such are the lines we mean, when we speak of the Axes of the Heavenly bodies.