It has been so long a received opinion that a general uniformity of magnitude and distribution characterises the stellar system that it is with some diffidence I venture to express a different view. And here let me not be misunderstood. I am fully sensible that it is only in certain popular treatises of astronomy that a belief in anything like a real uniformity of structure in the sidereal system is attributed to astronomers of authority. It is not any such imaginary theory that I have now to deal with, however; but with opinions which have found a place in the works of astronomers from whom I very unwillingly differ.

I propose to exhibit the reasons which have led me to believe that, so far from knowing the real figure of the sidereal system, astronomers have not been able to penetrate to its limits in any direction; that leading stars, such as those discussed in the preceding chapter, are distributed throughout space to the very farthest limits and beyond the very farthest limits that our most powerful telescopes can attain to; that the stars are arranged in groups and clustering aggregations, in streams and whorls and spirals, in a manner altogether too complex for us to hope to interpret; and that in these aggregations stars of all degrees of real magnitude are mixed up, from suns as large as Sirius down to orbs which may be smaller than any of the primary planets of the solar system.