ASTRONOMH.
{"newspaper_name": "Delaware journal.", "edition": "01", "page": "p1", "byline": ""}
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Among those natural sciences which have called
forth thr highest powers of the mind, astronomy claims
for herself the most exalted place. The bodies OF
which it treats are of themselves calculated to pre-
possess us in its favour. Their vast and nconceva-
BILE magnitude, their distance almost Infinite
their unaccountabe number, and the rapldity and
regularity of their movements, excite, in ordinary
men, the most intense curiosity,and to minds othgh-
er birth hold out the noblest exercise Tor their pow
erS But While our judgement thus anticipates its
pleasures and triumphs, the imagination discovers
among the starry spheres boundless field for its
creative energies. Drawing its materials from our
own gobe,-from its variety of life and beauty, and
from the condition and destiny of its species,--it
percevcs in every planetary body. world like our
own, teeming with new forms of life, and new or
ders of intelligence and regards it as the theatre of
events whose origin, whose durationand final cause.
must forever be involved in mpenetrabe dar kness.
Advancing beyond our own system, 1t recognizes IN
every twinkine star the central flame ofnew groups
of planets, and pursuing its trace only in one out of
an infinite number of directions it descrles system
beyond system. following each other in endless sue
cession till it returns exhausted in its strength, and
bewildered amid the number, the extent, and the
magniiicence of its creations.


| But while astronomy thus affords to our intelec-
tual nature a field commensurate with its highest
efforts it is fraught with no less advantage to our
moral being. The other sciences, may, indeed, lay
claim to similar influence, for where is the hand
Of skill unseen or the arrangement of benevolence
unfet but the objects which they present to us are
still those of our own subIunary world They are
often too familiar to excite admration.-too much
under our power to command respect,-too deeply
impressed with our own mortality to enforce the
lesson which they are so we'll fitted to suggest. The
|plains which we desoate, the institutions which we
overturn, and the living beings which we tramplt
on to destroy, are not likely to be instruments Of
our moral regeneration. Among scenes, indeed


where man is the tyrant, who can expect him to BIT
the moralist and the philosopher


/ How dferentis it with the bodies which the as
tronomer contemplates. For man they were no
made and to them his utmost power cannot reach
The world which he inhabits forms but the Fraction


an unit in the vast scale in which they are mould
ed II disappears even in the range of distance a


which they are placed and when seen from som