Thomas Dick

“ How ridiculous is it for a man, calling himself a philosopher, to be afraid to look through a glass to an existing object in the heavens, lest it should endanger his previous opinions! And how foolish is it to resist any improvement or reformation in society, because it does not exactly accord with existing opinions, and with ‘the wisdom of our ancestors.’
It is not a little surprising, that Galileo should have first hit on that construction of a telescope which goes by his name, and which was formed with a concave glass next the eye. ”

“ And in landscapes and buildings, such is the delicacy and accuracy of such representations, that the marks of the chisel and the crevices in the stones may frequently be seen by applying a magnifying lens to the picture; so that we may justly exclaim, in the words of the Poet: ‘Who can paint like nature!.’ That LIGHT—which is the first-born of Deity, which pervades all space, and illuminates all worlds—in the twinkling of an eye, and with an accuracy which no art can imitate, depicts every object in its exact form and proportions, superior to every thing that human genius can produce. ”

“ Every succeeding 3 moment brings along with it something new and enlivening. The crescent of light towards the east, now expands its dimensions and rises upwards towards the cope of heaven; and objects, which a little before were immersed in the deepest gloom, begin to be clearly distinguished. At length the sun arises, and all nature is animated by his appearance; the magnificent scene of creation, which a little before was involved in obscurity, opens gradually to view, and every object around excites sentiments of wonder, delight, and adoration. ”

“ Colour is one of the properties of light which constitutes, chiefly, the beauty and sublimity of the universe. It is colour, in all its diversified shades, which presents to our view that almost infinite variety of aspect which appears on the scene of nature, which gives delight to the eye and the imagination, and which adds a fresh pleasure to every new landscape we behold. Every flower which decks our fields and gardens is compounded of different hues; every plain is covered with shrubs and trees of different degrees of verdure ”

“ To the same cause, likewise, are to be ascribed those beautiful and diversified appearances, which frequently adorn the face of the sky,—the yellow, orange and ruby hues which embellish the firmament at the rising of the sun, and when he is about to descend below the western horizon; and those aerial landscapes, so frequently beheld in tropical climes, where rivers, castles and mountains, are depicted rolling over each other along the circle of the horizon. The clouds, especially in some countries, reflect almost every colour in nature. Sometimes they wear the modest blush of the rose ”

“ Notwithstanding the universal brightness of the scene, the uniformity of colour thrown on every object, would most certainly prevent us from distinguishing a church from a palace, a cottage from a knoll or a heap of rubbish, a splendid mansion from rugged rocks, the trees from the hills on which they grow, or a barren desert from rich and fertile plains. In such a case, human beings would be confounded, and even friends and neighbours be at a loss to recognize one another. ”

“ Were a deep ruddy hue to be uniformly spread over the scene of creation, it would not only be offensive to the eye, but would likewise prevent all distinction of objects. Were a dark blue or a deep violet to prevail, it would produce a similar effect, and at the same time, present the scene of nature as covered with a dismal gloom. Even if creation were arrayed in a robe of green, which is a more pleasant colour to the eye—were it not diversified with the different shades it now exhibits, every object would be equally undistinguishable. ”

“ When we look at the moon through a telescope which magnifies 200 times, and survey its extensive plains, its lofty peaks, its circular ranges of mountains, throwing their deep shadows over the vales, its deep and rugged caverns, and all the other varieties which appear on the Lunar surface, we behold such objects in the same manner as if we were standing at a point 238,800 miles from the earth in the direction of the moon, or only twelve hundred miles from that orb, reckoning its distance to be 240,000 miles. ”

“ At noon day we should see the sun like an intensely brilliant globe shining in a sky as black as ebony, like a clear fire in the night seen in the midst of an extensive field, and his rays would show us the adjacent objects immediately around us; but the rays which fall on the objects remote from us would be for ever lost in the expanse of the heavens. ”

“ To every man of taste, and almost to every human being, the combination of colours in flowers, the delicate tints with which they are painted, the diversified shades of green with which the hills and dales, the mountains and the vales are arrayed; and that beautiful variety which appears in a bright summer day, on all the objects of this lower creation—are sources of the purest enjoyment and delight. It is colour, too, as well as magnitude, that adds to the sublimity of objects. ”

“ By its aid we obtain a sensible demonstration that space is boundless—that the universe is replenished with innumerable suns and worlds—that the remotest regions of immensity, immeasurably beyond the limits of unassisted vision, display the energies of Creating Power, and that the Empire of the Creator extends far beyond what eye hath seen or the human imagination can conceive.
The telescope is an instrument of a much more wonderful nature than what most people are apt to imagine. ”

“ We behold in a small fibre of a peacock’s feather, not more than one-eighth of an inch in length, a profusion of beauties no less admirable than is presented by the whole feather to the naked eye—a stem sending out multitudes of lateral branches, each of which emits numbers of little sprigs, which consist of a multitude of bright shining globular parts, adorned with a rich variety of colours. ”

“ Here we behold the operations of a Being whose power is illimitable and uncontrollable, and which far transcends the comprehension of the highest created intelligences—a power, displayed not only in the vast extension of material existence, and the countless number of mighty globes which the universe contains—but in the astonishingly rapid motions with which myriads of them are carried along through the immeasurable spaces of creation,—some of those magnificent orbs moving with a velocity of one hundred and seventy thousand miles an hour. ”

“ It has been calculated that the number of particles of light contained in such a space cannot be less than four hundred septillions—a number which is six billions of times greater than the number of grains of sand which could be contained in the whole earth considered as a solid globe, and supposing each cubic inch of it to contain ten hundred thousand grains. Such is the inconceivable tenuity of that substance which emanates from all luminous bodies, and which gives beauty and splendour to the universe! ”

“ The dark green of the forests is thus easily distinguished from the lighter shades of cornfields and the verdure of the lawns. The system of animated nature likewise, displays a diversified assemblage of beautiful colours. The plumage of birds, the brilliant feathers of the peacock, the ruby and emerald hues which adorn the little humming-bird, and the various embellishments of many species of the insect tribe, present to the eye, in every region of the globe, a scene of diversified beauty and embellishment. ”

“ Our friends and fellow men would have presented no objects of interest in our daily associations. The sparkling eye, the benignant smile, the modest blush, the blended hues of white and vermillion in the human face, and the beauty of the female countenance, would all have vanished, and we should have appeared to one another as so many moving marble statues cast nearly in the same mould. ”

“ Light, through the medium of the eye, not only unfolds to us the persons of others, in all their minute modifications and peculiarities, but exhibits us to ourselves. It presents to our own vision a faithful portrait of our peculiar features behind reflecting substances, without which property we should remain entirely ignorant of those traits of countenance which characterize us in the eyes of others.
But, what is the nature of this substance we call light, which thus unfolds to us the scenes of creation? ”

“ As the servant of his creator he distributes blessings without number among all the tribes of sentient and intelligent existence. When his rays illumine the eastern sky in the morning, all nature is enlivened with his presence. When he sinks beneath the western horizon, the flowers droop, the birds retire to their nests, and a mantle of darkness is spread over the landscape of the world. ”

“ It is not a little surprising that it should be in the power of man to invent and construct an instrument by which objects, too remote for the unassisted eye to distinguish, should be brought within the range of distinct 170 vision, as if they were only a few yards from our eye, and that thousands of august objects in the heavens, which had been concealed from mortals for numerous ages, should be brought within the limits of our contemplation, and be as distinctly perceived, as if we had been transported many millions of miles from the space we occupy, through the celestial regions. ”

“ When he declines towards the winter solstice, dreariness and desolation ensue, and a temporary death takes place among the tribes of the vegetable world.—This splendid luminary, whose light embellishes the whole of this lower creation, forms the most lively representation of Him who is the source and the centre of all beauty and perfection. “God is a sun,” the sun of the moral and spiritual universe, from whom all the emanations of knowledge, love and felicity descend. “He covereth himself with light as with a garment.” ”

“ Without the least hesitation or uncertainty, and without any perplexing process of reasoning, we can lay our hands on whatever articles we require. Colour clothes every object 165 with its peculiar livery, and infallibly directs the hand in its movements, and the eye in its surveys and contemplations. But, this is not the only end which the Divine Being had in view, in impressing on the rays of light a diversity of colours. ”

“ We should never have conceived that even the atmosphere is replenished with invisible animation, that the waters abound with countless myriads of sensitive existence, that the whole earth is full of life, and that there is scarcely a tree, plant, or flower, but affords food and shelter to a species of inhabitants peculiar to itself, which enjoy the pleasures of existence and share in the bounty of the Creator. ”

“ This quality, which varies to infinity, occasions the different kinds of rays to unite in every possible manner, and every possible proportion; and hence the inexhaustible variety of shades and hues which nature has diffused over the landscape of the world. When a body absorbs nearly all the light which reaches it, that body appears black. It transmits to the eye so few reflected rays that it is scarcely perceptible in itself, and its presence and form make no impression upon us, unless as it interrupts the brightness of the surrounding space. ”

“ There is no branch of natural science more deserving of our study and investigation than that which relates to light—whether we consider its beautiful and extensive effects—the magnificence and grandeur of the objects it unfolds to view—the numerous and diversified phenomena it exhibits—the optical instruments which a knowledge of its properties has enabled us to construct—or the daily advantages we derive, as social beings, from its universal diffusion. ”

“ The most intense darkness would cover us till the very moment of his rising; he would then suddenly break out from under the horizon with the same splendour he would exhibit at the highest part of his course, and would not change his brightness till the very moment of his setting, when in an instant all would be black as the darkest night. ”

“ All the stars which our unassisted vision can discern in the midnight sky, and the millions more which the telescope alone enables us to descry, must be considered as so many fountains of light, not merely to illuminate the voids of immensity, but to irradiate with their beams surrounding worlds with which they are more immediately connected, and to diffuse a general lustre throughout the amplitudes of infinite space. ”