Excerpt from Dreams of My Solitude on the Mysteries of the Heavens: Treating, Amongst Other Subjects, Upon the Causes of Motion; The Government of Comets, and the Important Part Assigned to These as Heralds of Life to the Worlds; And Lastly, the Natural Operations Which Have Created, and Are Still Creating, the Universe

The views now first put together and published in this book are the fruit of meditations begun forty years ago, when the author, having emigrated to the southern hemisphere, was led by the nature of his pursuits to settle in the Australian Bush. Here he lived and spent the vigour of his days, isolated from the society of men with whom he could hold profitable intercourse, and all tidings, by means of literature, of what the rest of the world were about; and being thrown back in moody pensiveness upon him self and his own unaided powers of study and observation, he was drawn to commune silently with the starry hosts above, there so bright-eyed and fascinating, and to speculate thoughtfully on the powers that framed them, the laws that govern them, and the hand that guides their harmonious, yet mysterious, march. Here, as in leisure hours he brooded, thought after thought, by some to him inexplicable process, arose in his mind at intervals, and gradu ally took dark and uncertain shape in his dim conception, until each, as it threw light on the others, limned itself in clearer out.