With this, the conclusion of the “bridal bidding,” I conclude, Sir,
Your constant reader,
W. C.
Newcastle upon Tyne,
August, 1827.
[357] An endeavour as to render any additional assistance unnecessary.
Discoveries
OF THE
ANCIENTS AND MODERNS.
No. VIII.
The Milky Way.
That lucid whitish zone in the firmament among the fixed stars, which we call the “Milky Way,” was supposed by the Pythagoreans to have once been the sun’s path, wherein he had left that trace of white, which we now observe there. The Peripatetics asserted, after Aristotle, that it was formed of exhalations, suspended high in air. These were gross mistakes; but all the ancients were not mistaken. Democritus, without the aid of a telescope, preceded Galileo in remarking, that “what we call the milky way, contained in it an innumerable quantity of fixed stars, the mixture of whose distant rays occasioned the whiteness which we thus denominate;” or, to express it in Plutarch’s words, it was “the united brightness of an immense number of stars.”