SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM HERSCHEL. 123 



pear siugle, but if examiued ATith high iiiaguifying- powers are found to 

 consist of two individuals placed almost close together, and v/bicb, when 

 carefully watched, are (many of them) found to revolve in regular 

 elliptic orbits about each other, and, so far as we have yet been able to 

 ascertain, to obey the same laws which r<.»gulate the planetary move- 

 ments. There is nothing calculated to give a grander idea of the scale 

 on which the sidereal heavens are constructed than these beautiful sys- 

 tems. When we see such magnificeut bodies united in pairs, undoubt- 

 edly by the same bond of mutual gravitation which holds together our 

 own system, and sweeping over their enormous orbits in periods com- 

 prehending many centuries, we admit at once that they must be accom- 

 plishing ends in creation which will remain forever unknown to man ; 

 and that we have here attained a point in science where the human 

 intellect is compelled to acknowledge its weakness, and to feel tlmt no 

 onception the wildest imagination can form will bear the least com- 

 parison with the intrinsic greatness of the subject." 



Eloquently and nobly said; and yet not more eloquent and nol)[e 

 are the thoughts themselves, or the language that clothes the thoughts, 

 in the passages we have quoted, than are others to be found on almost 

 every page of the volume. 



In the other volume alluded to, "The outlines of astronomy," a work 

 clustered witli brilliant thoughts thick as the stars which stud the mid- 

 night heavens, he writes : 



<■' There is no science which, more than astronomy, draw/, more largely 

 on that intellectual liberality which is ready to adopt whatever is 

 demonstrated, or concede whatever is rendered highly probable, how- 

 ever new and uncommon the points of view may be in which objects the 

 most familiar may thereby become placed. Almost all its conclusions 

 stand in open and striking contradiction with those of superficial and vul- 

 gar observations, and with what appears to every one, until he has under- 

 stood and weighed the proofs to the contrary, the most positive evidence 

 of his senses. Thus the earth on which he stands, and which has served 

 for ages as the unshaken foundation of the firmest structures, either of art 

 or of nature, is divested by the astronomer of its attribute of fixity, and 

 conceived by him as turning swiftly on its center, and at the same time 

 moving onwards through space with great rapidity. The sun and the 

 moon, which appear to untaught eyes round bodies of no very consid- 

 erable size, become enlarged in his imagination into vast globes ; the 

 one approaching in magnitude to earth itself, the other immensely sur- 

 passing it. The planets, which appear only as stars somewhat brighter 

 than the rest, are to him spacious, elaborate, and habitable worlds, sev- 

 eral of them much greater, and far more curiously furnished, than the 

 earth he inhabits, as there are also others less so j and the stars themselves, 

 properly so-called, which, to ordinary apprehension, present only lucid 

 sparks or brilliant atoms, are to him suns of various and transcendent 

 glory, effulgent centers of life and light to myriads of unseen worlds. 



