Astronomy, that long, white, luminous track, which seems to encompass the heavens like a swath, scarf, or girdle; and which is easily perceivable in a clear night, especially when the moon does not appear. The Greeks call it Γαλαξίας, Galaxy, of Γάλα, γαλακτός, Milk; on account of its colour and appearance; the Latins, for the same reasons, call it via lactea; and we, the milky way. It passes between Sagittarius and Gemini, and divides the sphere into two parts; it is unequally broad; and in some parts is single, in others double.
The ancient poets, and even philosophers, speak of the Galaxy as the road or way by which the heroes went to heaven.
Aristotle makes it a kind of meteor, formed of a crowd of vapours, drawn into that part by certain large stars disposed in the regions of the heavens answering hereto.
Others, finding that the Galaxy was seen all over the globe, that it always corresponded to the same fixed stars, and that it transcended the height of the highest planets, set aside Aristotle's opinion, and placed the Galaxy in the firmament, or region of the fixed stars, and concluded it to be nothing but an assemblage of an infinite number of minute stars.
Since the invention of the telescope, this opinion has been abundantly confirmed. By directing a good telescope to any part of the milky way; where before we only saw a confused whiteness, we now descry an innumerable multitude of little stars, so remote, that a naked eye confounds them. See Astronomy, No. 211.
Galba, Sergius Sulpicius, a Roman emperor, born the 24th of December, five years before the Christian era. He was gradually raised to the greatest offices of the state, and exercised his power in the provinces with the greatest equity and unremitting diligence. He dedicated the greatest part of his time to solitary pursuits, chiefly to avoid the sufferings of Nero. His disapprobation of the emperor's oppressive command in the provinces was the cause of new disturbances. Nero ordered him to be put to death; but he escaped from the hands of the executioner, and was publicly saluted emperor. When he was seated on the throne, he suffered himself to be governed by favourites, who exposed the goods of the citizens to sale to gratify their avarice. Exemptions were sold at a high price; and the crime of murder was blotted out, and impunity purchased, with a large sum of money. Such irregularities in the emperor's ministers greatly displeased the people; and when Galba refused to pay the soldiers the money which he had promised them when he was raised to the throne, they assassinated him in the 73rd year of his age, and the eighth month of his reign. The virtues which had shone so bright in Galba when a private man, totally disappeared when he ascended the throne; and he who showed himself the most impartial judge, forgot the duties of an emperor and of a father of his people.