OF ARTS AND SCIENCES: JUNE 4, 1872. 469 



published writings having been first gathered and printed in an easily 

 accessible form as recently as 1866. We have to thank the German 

 and French translators for rescuing this treatise of Herschel on Light 

 from the bulky and unwieldy volumes of the Encyclopaedia, and print- 

 ing it in a separate and convenient form. Herschel wrote two volumes 

 for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia of Dr. Lardner. " The Preliminary Dis- 

 course on the Study of Natural Philosophy " brought him into no- 

 tice before a larger public as a writer and a philosopher. The objects 

 and the methods of science, the meaning of natural law, and, of course, 

 the analysis of phenomena and the process of generalization, the util- 

 ity, dignity, and pleasures of science, are elegantly stated and vividly 

 illustrated. This discourse was translated into German. The treatise 

 on Astronomy, first published in the Cyclopaedia in 1833 (and also 

 translated into German), was expanded in 1849 into the " Outlines of 

 Astronomy," which has run through ten editions. In this work, Her- 

 schel has handled skilfully the subject of planetary perturbations, 

 without the use of the higher mathematics, and has given to the gen- 

 eral reader imperfect glimpses of what must otherwise have been a 

 sealed book to him ; and everywhere the language is as grand as the 

 themes of which it treats. In 1859 the " Outlines " was translated into 

 Chinese. 



Herschel did not disdain the task of writing for the people as well as 

 for men of science. Three articles which he furnished to the Encyclo- 

 pedia Britannica, on Meteorology, on Physical Geography, and on the 

 Telescope, have been republished in separate volumes. After reaching 

 the advanced age of threescore years and ten, he delivered a few lec- 

 tures to a village audience, and then printed them, with other similar 

 productions, in " Good Words." In 1868, they were collected into asmall 

 volume, with the title " Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects." But 

 this must have been the amusement of his leisure hours, if it is possible 

 to suppose that a man who did constantly so much heavy work had any 

 leisure. How he refreshed himself after the midnight watches at the 

 observatory, or amid the sterner labors of his study, all may know who 

 will examine the volume issued in 1857 with the title, " Essays from the 

 Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, with Addresses and other Pieces." 

 These other pieces were poems, original or translated, while the Re- 

 views and Addresses were upon the loftiest themes in science and phi- 

 losophy, and abound in passages of magnificent diction, profound 

 thought, and sublime eloquence. 



