8/33 It is an honor to man, put upon him from above, as one of the gratuitous dignities of his being. "An undevout astronomer is mad," said one who had opened his mind to a broad grasp of the wonders which this upper heaven holds in its bosom. No glass, no geometry that Newton ever lifted at the still star-worlds above, could do more than _reveal_. At the farthest stretch of their faculty, they could only bring to light the life and immortality of those orbs which the human eye had never seen before. They could not tint nor add a ray to one of them all. |