Pluton

“ His dream spun its fragile net about the planets of the Solar System, about their moons, about every single foot of planetary ground where men had gone to build and create a second homeland—the mines of Mercury and the farms of Venus, the pleasure-lands of Mars and the mighty domed cities on the moons of Jupiter, the moons of Saturn and the great, cold laboratories of Pluto. ”

“ For it was a world, a sister planet of our earth, far greater than our earth indeed, that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death. Neptune it was had been struck, fairly and squarely, by the strange planet from outer space, and the heat of the concussion had incontinently turned two solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence. Round the world that day, two hours before the dawn, went the pallid great white star, fading only as it sank westward and the sun mounted above it. ”

“ Our familiar planets, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, the earth, and even our little moon, seem to raise their voices and take actual part in the councils of almighty power, to move about as perpetual benefactors, gathering and spreading beneficence abroad, instead of cowering, a hapless few, like [251] storm-stayed travellers, around the dying embers of our poor old sun, passive recipients of the light and heat and life which we have been taught to believe are slowly sinking into ashes and fading away in eternal darkness and death. ”

“ The other kingdom was so far away that even the all-seeing eyes of Jupiter were strained to catch any glimpse of the shapes that moved noiselessly there, for this was the realm of Pluto, god of the underworld, that dread country of darkness and unending gloom, where no ray of sunlight ever came, and where the sad spirits of the dead wept for the lost world of love and light and laughter. ”

“ The latest generation has already succumbed to this ebbing of vitality with time. Every one of the satellites of the planets—those of Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter, and our own Moon—is practically dead; born so the smaller which never were alive. Our own Moon carries its decrepitude on its face. ”

“ Thus, in the sublime chronology to which we are directing our inquiries, we first find ourselves called upon to consider the globe which we inhabit as a child of the sun, elder than Venus and her younger brother Mercury, but posterior in date of birth to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; next to regard our whole system as probably of recent formation in comparison with many of the stars of our firmament. We must, however, be on our guard against supposing the earth as a recent globe in our ordinary conceptions of time. ”

“ And then just as the sun controls the planets revolving round it, so do many of the planets themselves preside over subordinate systems of revolving globes. Our earth has a single attendant, the moon, which, under the guidance of the earth’s attraction, performs its monthly journey; Jupiter has its five moons, while Mars has two, and Saturn eight or nine, besides his incomparable system of rings, and we must also add that Uranus has four satellites and Neptune one. ”

“ The planets are all globes, more or less flat at the poles, like an orange, and each is turning and swaying on its axis, thus exposing every part to the light and warmth of the sun. They are divided by the planetoids into an inner and an outer band. The inner four are Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars; the outer four are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Moreover, a number of comets and swarms of meteoric stones or meteorites are circulating round the sun in eccentric paths, which cross those of the planets. ”

“ That magnificent planet which—as Phosphorus or Lucifer, Hesperus or Vesper, the evening star, the morning star, or the shepherd’s star—has never failed to attract the rapturous admiration of the most indifferent observers, here revealed herself with unprecedented glory, exhibiting all the phases of a lustrous moon in miniature. ”

“ Great buildings we built upon Neptune's surface, and deep we tunnelled below its surface, also. Through breaks in the great cloud-screen about our world we looked forth and saw with our instruments the other planets that moved about our sun, and looked forth also into space and saw the hosts of other suns that moved at vast distances from our own. ”

“ First there came into the hall the seven planets of the skies, Mercury in white satin, with golden girdle and wings, carrying his wand, or caduceus, in his hand. Mars appeared in armor, and Venus in sea-green flowing draperies as if she had just risen from the waves. ”

“ Many or all of you may have seen a total eclipse of the Moon, when the Earth comes between the Moon and the Sun and cuts off the Sun's light from it; the Earth is so much bigger than the Moon that it casts a shadow wide enough to envelope the Moon for an hour and more. You remember Jupiter's big shadow and how the little satellites disappeared into and remained in it for a long time before they came out on the other side. The Earth's shadow is much smaller than that of Jupiter, but it is still large enough to swallow the Moon entirely. ”

“ The constellations in all their splendor would circle before their eyes with the revolution of their planet about the sun, and with the exception of the sun itself—which they could see by making a journey to the opposite hemisphere—all the members of the solar system would pass in succession through their mid-heaven, and two of them would present themselves with a magnificence of planetary display unknown on the earth. ”

“ Another shift in our course rapidly carried us out of the shadow of the earth and into the all pervading sunshine. Then the great planet beneath us hung unspeakable in its beauty. The outlines of several of the continents were clearly discernible on its surface, streaked and spotted with delicate shades of varying color, and the sunlight flashed and glowed in long lanes across the convex surface of the oceans. Parallel with the Equator and along the regions of the ever blowing trade winds, were vast belts of clouds, gorgeous with crimson and purple as the sunlight fell upon them. ”

“ Then it created an immense sensation, for never before in the memory of man had any one found a new planet. All those previously known had been known for ages; they give their names to the days of the week, Satur (n) -day, Sun-day, Mo (o) n-day are called after Saturn, the Sun, the Moon. Our English names for the other days do not remind us of the planets, but the French names (Mar-di for Mars, Mercre-di for Mercury, Jeudi for Jupiter, Vendredi for Venus) are probably known to you. ”

“ Our favored planet, not like the airless moon, is folded in the kindly bosom of an atmosphere which, while ministering nourishment to man and accommodating itself to all his movements and vicissitudes, interposes as his shield against the fiery influences of the solar system, even to arresting and consuming those countless meteoric stones, showered upon us from stellar space, before they can penetrate to the lower aerial strata. ”

“ Thus we see the moon to be a dumb, dead, deserted planet, wheeling on in its orbit around the earth, and carried with the earth in its greater orbit around the sun. Silvery sweet and fair, this queen of the night is a planet that long, long ago passed its childhood and its prime, and fell, in its old age, a prey to fire. ”

“ Imagine, as an invisible point in this infinity, our own sun as it speeds on into unknown regions of the heavens, surrounded by its planets, each one revolving in its own proper orbit—Jupiter, the giant-planet, with his moons, and Saturn with his rings. ”

“ The Sun is in the center and his planets circle around him. Next to him is playful little Mercury, then beautiful Venus, then our own planet Earth. Beyond it, we find ruddy Mars, the four hundred and fifty baby planets, giant planet Jupiter, the ringed planet Saturn, and the last two planets, Uranus and Neptune. All these planets are under the control of the sun, and cannot get away from him. ”

“ Our flight now carried us so rapidly through the flocks of solar bodies--flocks, past counting unless to their heavenly Shepherd,--that scarcely could they expand themselves before us into the magnitude of moons, before they sank behind us into pale nebular gleams; and their planetary earths could not reveal themselves for a moment to the transcendent rapidity of our course. At length Sirius and all the brotherhood of our constellations and the galaxy of our heavens stood far below our feet as a little nebula amongst other yet more distant nebulae. ”

“ The spectacle of our great planet, glowing in its fullest splendor in the midnight sky, pied and streaked with water, land, cloud, and snow, is one that might well excite among the astronomers of another world, so fortunately placed to observe it, an interest even greater than that which the recurrence of total solar eclipses occasions upon the earth. ”

“ Put one of the cold thin moons of Saturn into the centre of the solar system,—would the universe revolve about that little dot? Loyal matter with irresistible fealty gravitates towards the sun, and wheels around the balance-point of the world's weight, be it where it may, called by whatever name. ”

“ The Ptolemaic system regarded the Earth as the centre, with the following bodies, all called planets, revolving round it in the order stated:—the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. ”

“ That the five primary planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, with their several orbits, encompass the sun. That Mercury and Venus revolve about the sun, is evident from their moon-like appearances. When they shine out with a full face, they are, in respect of us, beyond or above the sun; when they appear half full, they are about the same height on one side or other of the sun; when horned, they are below or between us and the sun ”

“ Mighty masses of cloud, such as would suffice to enwrap the entire globe on which we live, form over large regions of Jupiter or Saturn, change rapidly in shape, and vanish, in the course of a few minutes; and many are content to believe that what has thus taken place resembles the formation, motion, and dissipation, of our own small clouds, though the sun pours but about a twenty-seventh part of the heat on Jupiter, and but about a hundredth part on Saturn, which we receive from his rays. ”

“ We are furnished with indications of the time of revolution of the planets in their orbits, and of the satellites in theirs; we perceive the mode of formation of Saturn’s rings. We find an explanation of the physical condition of the sun, and the transitions of condition through which the earth and moon have passed, as indicated by their geology. ”

“ On the other side, Pluto, fierce, in a mantle black as night, with a tiara of diamonds and a sceptre of ebony, is in the midst of an isle enclosed by the windings of the Styx;—and this ghostly stream rushes into the darkness, which forms under the cliff a great black gap, a shapeless abyss. ”

“ The mountains on the surface of Venus and the moon, and the continents and oceans of Mars, attest the existence of upheaval and subsidence, and of volcanic fires, capable of producing such phenomena, and of course of sources of light in those planets, such as exist on the earth. We know, then, most certainly, that there are many other bodies capable of producing light besides the sun. That God could command the [Pg 412] light to shine out of darkness, and convert the very ocean into a magnificent illumination, the following facts clearly prove. ”

“ In the year 1401 or 1402, the sun being got below the horizon, there appeared in the west a bright and shining comet, sending out a tail upwards, in splendor like a flame of fire, and in form like a spear, darting its rays from west to east. When the sun was sunk below the horizon, by the lustre of its own rays it enlightened all the borders of the earth ”

“ For countless ages the hot nebula whirled aimlessly through space. At length it began to take shape, the central mass threw off planets, the planets cooled, boiling seas and burning mountains heaved and tossed, from black masses of cloud hot sheets of rain deluged the barely solid crust. ”

“ Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Earth, Venus, Mercury, and the Sun, occupy that [330] small portion of the heavens which we term our Universe. These planets, with their satellites, moving with amazing celerity in the same direction, and almost in the same plane, compose a wheel of an immense diameter, whose axis supports the whole weight, and which by the rapidity of its own rotation must inflame and diffuse heat and light throughout the whole circumference. ”

“ Conjunctions of Mars and Venus in certain parts of the sky cause rain and thunder, those of Jupiter and Mercury storms, those of the sun and Saturn turbid and disagreeable air. The most ancient writers on agriculture, as well as poets and astrologers, have observed that the rising and setting of the more conspicuous stars simultaneously with the sun produced rain, wind, and other atmospheric changes, particularly when the planets joined their effect to that of the stars. ”

“ PLUTO—HADES.
Ques. Who was Pluto?
Ans. He was the son of Saturn and Ops, and the brother of Jupiter and Neptune. In the division of his father’s kingdom, the infernal regions were allotted to him, and he is therefore called the king of Hell.
Ques. How is Pluto represented?
Ans. He is seated on a throne in the midst of clouds and darkness; he wears a crown of ebony, and holds a key in his hand instead of a sceptre.
Ques. What does the key signify?
Ans. It seems to imply, that when once the dead are received into Pluto’s kingdom, the gates are locked upon them and there is no escape. ”

“ That our planet was a nebulous mass at a date at most somewhere between twenty millions and one hundred millions of years ago, we have all heard, and we have also had explained to us some of the proofs of this fact. Our planet is still imperfectly cooled. At a comparatively recent period in the history of this stellar universe, this little point of it was a spheroid of glowing vapor, from which the moon had not yet been separated. The present heat of the earth is an indication of its youth. ”