Lord Rosse may say, even if to-day he should die, 'I found God's
universe represented for human convenience, even after all the sublime
discoveries of Herschel, upon a globe or spherical chart having a
radius of one hundred and fifty feet; and I left it sketched upon a
similar chart, keeping exactly the same scale of proportions, but now
elongating its radius into one thousand feet.' The reader of course
understands that this expression, founded on absolute calculations of
Dr. Nichol, is simply meant to exhibit the _relative_ dimensions
of the _mundus Ante-Rosseanus_ and the _mundus Post-Rosseanus;_
for as to the _absolute_ dimensions, when stated in miles, leagues
or any units familiar to the human experience, they are too stunning
and confounding. If, again, they are stated in larger units, as for
instance diameters of the earth's orbit, the unit itself that
should facilitate the grasping of the result, and which really
_is_ more manageable numerically, becomes itself elusive of the
mental grasp: it comes in as an interpreter; and (as in some other
cases) the interpreter is hardest to be understood of the two. If,
finally, TIME be assumed as the exponent of the dreadful magnitudes,
time combining itself with motion, as in the flight of cannon-balls or
the flight of swallows, the sublimity becomes greater; but horror
seizes upon the reflecting intellect, and incredulity upon the
irreflective.
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