But it may be answered, that the temperature of a planet depends on other causes the condition of its atmosphere, and the internal heat of its mass-as is the case with our earth; and such "may" be the case in Jupiter; and, "if" so, may secure a temperature sufficiently genial to sustain such animal and vegetable life as ours; yet, it is owned, it cannot "increase the feeble light which Jupiter derives from the sun;" but an enlargement of the pupil of the eye, and increased sensibility of the retina, would make the sun's light as brilliant to Jovians as to us."* Besides, a brilliant phosphorescent light "may" be excited in the satellites by the sun's rays. Again, the day of ten hours may be thought insufficient for physical repose; but, it is answered, five hours' repose are sufficient for five of labour. "A difficulty of a more serious kind,† however, is presented by the great force of gravity on so gigantic a planet as Jupiter;" but Sir David gives us curious calculations to show that a Jovian's weight would be only double that of a man on the earth.

Struck by such a formidable array of differences, when he was in quest of resemblances only,

"Alike, but, oh! how different! " Sir David rebukes the sceptic for forming so low an opinion of Omnipotent Wisdom, as to assume that "the inhabitants of the planets must be either men, or anything resembling them;-is it," he asks, "necessary that an immortal soul should be hung upon a skeleton of bone, or imprisoned in a cage of cartilage and skin? Must it see with two eyes, and bear with two ears, and touch with ten fingers, and rest on a duality of limbs? May it not rest in a Polyphemus with one eyeball, or in an Argus with a hundred? May it not reign in the giant forms of the Titans, and direct the hundred hands of Briareus? The being of another world may have his home in subterranean cities, warmed by central fires; or in crystal caves, cooled by ocean tides; or he may float with the Nereids upon the deep; or mount upon wings as eagles; or

rise upon the pinions of the dove, that he may flee away, and be at rest!"§

Let us pause at this point, and see how the question stands on the showing of the respectively imaginative and matter-of-fact disputants themselves. Sir David Brewster, being bound to show that analogy forces us to believe Jupiter inhabited, is compelled to admit a series of signal discrepancies in physical condition; expecting his opponent, in turn, to admit such a series of essential alterations, both of inert matter and organisation, as will admit of what?

totally different modes of animal and intellectual existence-so different, as to drive a philosopher into the fantastic dreams in which we have just seen him indulging. Not so the Essayist, a master of the Inductive Philosophy. He does not presume impiously to limit Omnipotence; but reverently owns His power to create whatever forms and conditions of existence He pleases. But when it is asserted that He has, in fact, made beings wholly different from any that we see," he cannot believe this without further evidence." || And on this very subject of the imaginary inhabitants of Jupiter, he says, after reading what his heated and fanciful opponent has advanced,"You are hard," he makes an objector say, 66 on our neighbours in Jupiter, when you will not allow them to be anything better than boneless, watery, pulpy creatures."" To which he answers, "I had no disposition to be hard on them when I entered upon these speculations. I drew, what appeared to me, probable conclusions from all the facts of the case. If the laws of attraction, of light, of heat, and the like, be the same there as they are here, which we believe to be certain, the laws of life must also be the same; and, if so, I can draw no other conclusions than those which I have stated." ¶

Says the Essayist, I know that my Maker can invest with the intellect of a Newton, each of

a fact; or I must believe in any kind of nonsense that any one can imagine.

The planet Jupiter affords a fair sample of the procedure of the Essayist and his opponent, with reference to all the other primary planets of the Solar system. From Mercury, in redhot contiguity to the Sun, to Neptune, which is at thirty times the Earth's distance from it, and from which as we have seen it derives only one ninehundredth part of the light and heat imparted to ourselves by the Sun,-Sir David Brewster will have all inhabited, and the physical condition of each correspondingly altered to admit of it: central heat, and eyes the pupils of which are sufficiently enlarged, and the retina's sensibility sufficiently increased, to admit of seeing with nine hundred times less light than is requisite for our own organs of sight! "Uranus and Neptune," concludes the triumphant Pluralist*-nothing daunted by the overwhelming evidences of physical difference of condition" are doubtless"-with the Sun-" the abodes of Life and Intelligence the colossal temples where their Creator is recognised and worshipped the remotest watch-towers of our system, from which his works may be better studied, and his glories more easily descried!"

Why, with such elastic principles of analogy as his, stop short of peopling the Meteoric Stones with rational inhabitants? whom, and whose doings, as in the case of the Moon, magnificent" instrument, yet to be constructed, may discover to us?

some

nearly equal-about the same as that of ironstone; while the density of the thoroughly-baked planet Mercury is equal to that of gold. "Now it appears, on the contrary," he continues, "that the density of Jupiter very little exceeds that of water; that of Uranus and Neptune is exactly that of water; while Saturn is so light, that it would float in water like a globe of pine wood. . . . The seas and oceans of these planets must consist of a liquid far lighter than water. It is computed that a liquid on Jupiter, which would be analogous to the terrestrial oceans, would be three times lighter than sulphuric ether, the lightest known liquid; and would be such that cork would scarcely float in it!"

Thus much for the planets,—before quitting which, however, we may state that, according to Dr Lardner, about as staunch a Pluralist as his admirer Sir David Brewster, a greater rapidity of rotation, and smaller intervals of light and darkness, are among the characteristics distinguishing the group of major planets from the terrestrial group. He also adds that another "striking distinction" is the comparative lightness of the matter constituting the former. The density of Venus, Mars, and our earth, is

Commending these trifling discrepancies to Sir David's attention, while manufacturing his planetary inhabitants in conformity with them, shall we now follow his flight beyond the solar system, and get among the Fixed Stars? Here we are gazing at the Dog-Star! "I allow," says a pensive objector to the Essayist, "that if you disprove the existence of inhabitants in the planets of our system, I shall not feel much real interest in the possible inhabitants of the Sirian system. Neighbourhood has its influence upon our feelings of regard,— even neighbourhood on a scale of millions of miles!"

Here our Pluralist is quite at home, and evidently in great favour. The stars twinkle and glitter with delight at his gleeful approach, to elevate them into moral and intellectual dignity, and at the same time, perhaps, select "some bright particular" one, to be hereafter distinguished as the seat of his own personal existence; whence he is to spend eternity in radiating astronomical emanations throughout infinitude.

"Then, unembodied, doth he trace,

By steps each planet's heavenly way? A Thing of Eyes, that all survey, A Thought Unseen, yet seeing all! "§ He stands in the starry solitude, waving his wand, and lo! he peoples

+ Dial., p. 23. scan," says Sir David, lofty spheres in which

each glistening speck with intellectual existence, with the highest order of intelligence, as in the case of that little star, the sun, which he has quitted. Now as to these same FIXED STARS, we can easily guess the steps of Sir David's brief and satisfactory argument. If the stars be suns, they are inhabited like our sun; and if they be suns, each has its planets, like our sun; and if they have planets, they are inhabited like our planets; and if they have satellites like some of ours, they are also inhabited. But the stars are suns, and they all have planets, and at least some of these planets, satellites; therefore, all the fixed stars, with their respective planetary systems, are inhabited (Q. E. D.) Here are Sir David's words :-"We are compelled to draw the conclusion that wherever there is a sun, there must be a planetary system; and wherever there is a planetary system, there must be Life and Intelligence." * This is the way in which, it seems, we worms of the earth feel ourselves at liberty to deal with our Almighty Creator: dogmatically insisting that every scene of existence in which He may have displayed His omnipotence, is but a repetition of that particular one in which we have our allotted place! As if He had but one pattern for Universal Creation! Only one scheme for peopling and dealing with infinitude! O, that the clay should think thus of Him that fashioneth it! Forgetting, in an exulting moment of blindness and presumption, His own awful words, My thoughts are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. For as the Heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts!+

We are now, however, about to people the Fixed Stars. The only proof that they are the centres of planetary systems, resides in the assumption that these Stars are like the Sun; and as resembling him in their nature and qualities, so having the same offices and appendages:-independent sources of light, and thence probably of heat; therefore having

attendant planets, to which they may impart such light and heat, and these planets' inhabitants living under and enjoying those benign influences. Everything here depends on this proposition, that the Stars are like the Sun; and it becomes essential to examine what evidence we have of the exactness of their likeness. § In the Preface to his Second Edition, the Essayist, whose scientific knowledge few will venture to impugn, boldly asserts that "man's knowledge of the physical properties of the luminaries which he discerns in the skies, is, even now, almost nothing;" and "such being the state of our knowledge, as bearing on the doctrine of the plurality of worlds, the time appeared to be not inopportune for a calm discussion of the question,-upon which, accordingly," he adds, "I have ventured in the following pages." In the same Preface he has ably condensed into a single paragraph his views on the nature and extent of our present knowledge on the subject of the Fixed Stars. ||

In the opening of the chapter devoted to this subject (ch. viii.), he admits "the special evidence," as to the probability of these stars containing, in themselves, or in accompanying planets, inhabitants of any kind, "is, indeed, slight, either way."

As to Clustered and Double stars, they appear to give us, he says, but little promise of inhabitants. In what degree of condensation the matter of these binary systems is, compared with that of our solar system, we have no means whatever of knowing: but even granting that each individual of the pair were a sun like ours, in the nature of its material, and its state of condensation, is it probable that it resembles our Sun also in having planets revolving about it? A system of planets revolving about, or among, a pair of Suns, which are at the same time revolving about one another, is so complex a scheme [apparently], so impossible to arrange in a stable manner, that the assumption of the existence of such schemes, without a vestige of evidence, can hardly require refutation. No