In investigating the question now before us, we shall first take the
case of an ethereal vortex without any reference to the ponderable
bodies which it contains, considering the ether to possess only inertia.
If there be a vortex around the sun, it is of finite extent; for if the
ether be co-extensive with space, and the stars likewise suns with
surrounding vortices, the solar vortex cannot be infinite. That there is
an activity in the heavens which the mere law of attraction is
incompetent to account for, is an admitted fact. The proper motions of
the fixed stars have occupied the attention of the greatest names in
astronomy, and motions have been detected, which according to the theory
of gravity, requires the admission of invisible masses of matter in
their neighborhood, compared with which the stars themselves are
insignificant. But this is not the only difficulty. No law of
arrangement in the stars can exist that will save the Stellar system
from ultimate destruction. The case assumed by Sir John Herschel, of a
cluster, wherein the periods shall be equal, cannot be made to fulfil
the conditions of being very numerous, without infringing the other
condition--the non-intersection of their orbits; while the outside stars
would have to obey another law of gravitation, and consequently would be
still more liable to derangement from their ever-changing distances
from each other, and from those next outside; in brief, the stability of
those stars composing the cluster would necessarily depend on the
existence of outside stars, and plenty of them. But those outside stars
would follow the common law of gravity, and must ultimately bring ruin
on the whole. We know such clusters do exist in the heavens, and that
the law of gravity alone must bring destruction upon them. This is a
case wherein modern science has been instrumental in drawing a veil over
the fair proportions of nature. That such collections of stars are not
designed thus to derange the order of nature, proves _a priori_, that
some other conservative principle must exist; that the medium of space
must contain many vortices--eddies, as it were, in the great ethereal
ocean, whose currents are sweeping along the whole body of stars. We
shall consider, (as a faint shadowing of the glorious empire of
Omnipotence,) that the whole infinite extent of space is full of motion
and power to its farthest verge; and it may be an allowable stretch of
the imagination to conceive that the whole comprises one infinite
cylindrical vortex, whose axis is the only thing in the universe in a
state of absolute unchangeableness.