Around it gravitate eight planets, struck off from its own mass in the first days of creation.

These are, in proceeding from the nearest to the most distant, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Between Mars and Jupiter circulate regularly other smaller bodies, the wandering _debris_, perhaps, of a star broken up into thousands of pieces, of which the telescope has discovered eighty-two at present.

Some of these asteroids are so small that they could be walked round in a single day by going at a gymnastic pace.
Of these attendant bodies which the sun maintains in their elliptical orbit by the great law of gravitation, some possess satellites of their own.

Uranus has eight, Saturn eight, Jupiter four, Neptune three perhaps, and the Earth one; this latter, one of the least important of the solar world, is called the Moon, and it is that one that the enterprising genius of the Americans means to conquer.
The Queen of Night, from her relative proximity and the spectacle rapidly renewed of her different phases, at first divided the attention of the inhabitants of the earth with the sun; but the sun tires the eyesight, and the splendour of its light forces its admirers to lower their eyes.
The blonde Phoebe, more humane, graciously allows herself to be seen in her modest grace; she is gentle to the eye, not ambitious, and yet she sometimes eclipses her brother the radiant Apollo, without ever being eclipsed by him.