"When we reflect on the magnificence of the great picture of the universe... we are lost in the contemplation of the immensity of the prospect, and returning to the comparatively diminutive proportions of our individual persons, and of all the objects with which we are most immediately connected, we cannot help feeling our own insignificance in the material world. The mind, notwithstanding, endeavours to raise itself above the restraints which nature has imposed on the body, and to penetrate the abyss of space in search of congenial existences. But in speculations of this kind, reason and argument must give way to conjecture and imagination; and thus, from natural philosophy, our imaginations wander into the regions of poetry; and it must be confessed that the union of poetical embellishment with natural philosophy is seldom very happy. ...his object is, to say a little, very elegantly, in very circuitous, and somewhat obscure terms. But the information, which the natural philosopher has to impart, is too copious to allow of prolixity in its detail; his subjects are too intricate to be compatible with digressions after amusement, which, besides interrupting, are too likely to enervate the mind; and if he is ever fortunate enough to entertain, it must be by gratifying the love of truth, and satisfying the thirst after knowledge."