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During all that time there can have been no great diminution in the supply of heat radiated by the sun. The astronomer, in considering this argument, has to admit that he finds a similar difficulty in connection with the stars and nebulas. It is an impossibility to regard these objects as new; they must be as old as the universe itself. They radiate heat and light year after year.
Professor Gazen was quite alone in his observatory when I arrived, and busily engaged in writing or computing at his desk. "I hope I'm not disturbing you," said I, as we shook hands; "I know that you astronomers must work when the fine night cometh." "Don't mention it," he replied cordially; "I'm observing one of the nebulas just now, but it won't be in sight for a long time yet."
The nebulas are reasonably believed by many astronomers to be examples of the ancient condition of the physical universe, masses of matter which for some reason as yet unknown have not progressed in their consolidation to the point where they have taken on the characteristics of suns and their attendant planets.
Neither the Pleiades, the Northern Crown, the Magellanic Clouds nor the great nebulas of Orion, or of Argo, no sparkling cluster, no corona, no group of glittering star-dust that the travellers had ever gazed at, presented such attractions as the diamond ring they now saw encompassing the Earth, just as the brass meridian encompasses a terrestrial globe.
And at that question it seemed that a great hand swept carelessly across the blackness of the farther sky, and smeared it with stars and suns and shining nebulas as a brush might smear dry paint across a canvas. The bishop stared in front of him. Then slowly he bowed his head, and covered his face with his hands.
Then too the different misty nebulas; the comets and the different-coloured stars white, blue, and green. In short, endless wonders, my boy, such as excite, awe, and teach us how grand, how vast is the universe in which our tiny world goes spinning round. Come, boy, do you think you can feel interested in all this, or will you find it dry?" "Dry, uncle!
Those who heard him read his Thesis at the Medical Commencement will not soon forget the impression made by his fine personal appearance and manners, nor the universal interest excited in the audience, as he read, with his beautiful enunciation, that striking paper entitled "Unresolved Nebulas in Vital Science."
Passing now from our solar system, which appears to be subject to the action of the same forces as those we experience on our globe, there remains an innumerable host of fixed stars, nebulas, and nebulous clusters of stars. To these the attention of astronomers has been more earnestly directed since telescopes have been so much enlarged.
They are acquainted with the revolutions and uses of comets; they understand the system of those meteoric formations of stones which have so much astonished you on earth; and they have histories in which the gradual changes of nebulas in their progress towards systems have been registered, so that they can predict their future changes.
The electric lights, for example, hazy green-haloed nebulas, must have gone on burning at least for a time; amidst the thickening darkness the huge presses must have roared on, printing, folding, throwing aside copy after copy of that fabricated battle report with its quarter column of scare headlines, and all the place must have still quivered and throbbed with the familiar roar of the engines.
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