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[Illustration: 51 Messier; 99 Messier]




  THE
  PLURALITY OF WORLDS.

            On Nature's Alps I stand,
    And see a thousand firmaments beneath!
    A thousand systems, as a thousand grains!
    So much a stranger, _and so late arrived_,
    How shall man's curious spirit not inquire
    What are the natives of this world sublime,
    Of this so distant, unterrestrial sphere,
    Where mortal, untranslated, never strayed?

                                        NIGHT THOUGHTS.

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION
  BY
  EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D.D.,

  PRESIDENT OF AMHERST COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF
  THEOLOGY AND GEOLOGY.

  BOSTON:
  GOULD AND LINCOLN,
  50 WASHINGTON STREET.

  1854.

  Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
  GOULD AND LINCOLN,
  In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of
  the District of Massachusetts.




PREFACE.


Although the opinions presented in the following Essay are put forwards
without claiming for them any value beyond what they may derive from the
arguments there offered, they are not published without some fear of
giving offence. It will be a curious, but not a very wonderful event, if
it should now be deemed as blamable to doubt the existence of
inhabitants of the Planets and Stars, as, three centuries ago, it was
held heretical to teach that doctrine. Yet probably there are many who
will be willing to see the question examined by all the light