Mars

Abstract

THE characteristic appearance of this planetary body, long familiar to astronomers, has of late become generally known. Remarkable neither for situation, magnitude, brilliancy, retinue or complexity of arrangement, inferior in each of these respects to some, and in many of them to several of the members of the solar family, one circumstance alone invests it with a peculiar interest—its resemblance to ourselves. Such a resemblance obviously does not exist in the mightier and more nobly attended external planets: the banded skies of two and the strong atmospheric absorption of the two others revealed by the spectroscope, sufficiently show that they belong to classes mutually indeed dissimilar, but each differing, and perhaps widely, from our own. With the swift and fiery Mercury we can have as little sympathy; and though Venus would offer a more promising analogy, the configuration of her beautiful surface is not well seen or readily interpreted. Mars therefore remains; and while, fortunately for astronomers, he occupies such a position that his features are fairly accessible, they bear an aspect so comparatively intelligible that, whatever may be the case as to our other fellow-subjects in the solar monarchy, we are ready to claim that globe as a close relation of our own, inferior indeed in magnitude and importance, if importance is indicated by an attendant, but arranged in a corresponding manner by the Great Creator as the seat of life and intelligence.