The nature of these appearances soon cleared itself up thus
far, that generally they were found to be starry worlds, separated from
ours by inconceivable distances, and in that way concealing at first
their real nature. The whitish gleam was the mask conferred by the
enormity of their remotion. This being so, it might have been supposed
that, as was the faintness of these cloudy spots or _nebulae_, such
was the distance. But _that_ did not follow: for in the treasury
of nature it turned out that there were other resources for modifying
the powers of distance, for muffling and unmuffling the voice of stars.
Suppose a world at the distance _x_, which distance is so great as
to make the manifestation of that world weak, milky, nebular. Now let
the secret power that wields these awful orbs, push this world back to
a double distance! _that_ should naturally make it paler and more
dilute than ever: and yet by _compression_, by deeper centralization,
this effect shall be defeated; by forcing into far closer neighborhood
the stars which compose this world, again it shall gleam out brighter
when at 2_x_ than when at _x_. At this point of compression, let the
great moulding power a second time push it back; and a second time it
will grow faint.
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