VENUS is the next planet in the order of the system, and distinguished by her _superior brilliancy_, as the Sun’s light is twice as great to this planet as to the Earth; from this cause she is sometimes visible to the naked eye in full day-light. She is about 70 millions of miles from the Sun, or about twice the distance of Mercury; and like him, but much longer and more conspicuously, appears under the different phases of the Moon. These, as we have said, are proofs that both planets borrow their light from the Sun. The orbits of these planets (as well as those of the rest of the system) are inclined to the orbit of the Earth. Hence when Venus and Mercury are found in the nodes of their orbits between the Earth and Sun, they are transferred upon the Sun’s face like small round black spots, and which in fact are partial Eclipses of the Sun; these are called the TRANSITS of Mercury, or Venus.
Venus is a little larger than the Earth, or 9360 miles diameter; and moves round the Sun in 224½ of our days, at the rate of 80,955 miles every hour. From faint spots seen upon her surface, Mr. Shroeter apprehends she revolves on her axis in 23 hours, 21 minutes; that her surface is irregular like that of the Moon, and some of her mountains four miles high. The atmosphere of Venus has been calculated to be 50 miles high: and the Sun would appear to the inhabitants of this planet twice as large as to us. When Venus is to the west of the Sun, she is a morning star; when to the east of him, an evening star: her orbit or track is included by the Earth’s, and as both move the same way, she appears to be on one side of the Sun longer than the 224½ days she is in going round him. The axis of Venus is said by some astronomers to incline 75 degrees to the axis of her orbit: and therefore her seasons vary very fast, the Sun passing over more of her from pole to pole in one day, than over the Earth in a quarter of a year. Hence the heated places of this planet have time to cool: which suggest to our ideas that provision has been made for inhabitants, that they might not suffer by their vicinity to the Sun; this circumstance also gives her two winters and two summers at her equator, and indicates her inhabited. The discovery lately made by Mr. Shroeter, of a light faintly extended beyond the bounds of direct solar illumination, when she has her falcated appearance like the Moon near to her change, strengthens this probability: as these are signs of twilight, and of an atmosphere. This astronomer has also observed her to have considerable mountains; another character of a globe suited for habitation.