GENERAL MOVEMENT OF THE STARS. 166 



sought for a single Sun, which should be to the universe what our Sun 

 is to the planets, and not having found it, they were tempted to re- 

 nounce the idea of a general organization of the stars, and no longer 

 to recognize anything but partial systems. 



"If, while leaving unimpaired the validity and comprehensiveness 

 of Newton's great law of universal gravitation, I have succeeded in 

 proving that the organization of our stellar system has a substantial 

 existence, wholly different from that of the systems which are subor- 

 dinate to it, and in determining the most probable central point of 

 the grand whole, my aim will havfe been attained, and the principal 

 task which I had proposed to fulfil during life, will have been ac- 

 complished. ; ' 



We cannot terminate this notice without rendering a just homage to 

 the perseverance with which M. Masdler has conducted his researches, 

 and to the important progress which, in any event, will have been 

 achieved in the determination of the proper movement of the stars by 

 virtue of his labors. It is now a long time that philosophers and 

 scientists have been occupying themselves with the constitution of 

 the universe. The first part of the interesting memoir published 

 in French, in 1847, by the celebrated astronomer, W. Struve, di- 

 rector of the Russian observatory of Pulkova, under the title of 

 Etudes cV Astronomie Stellaire, comprises among others a summary 

 and very curious exposition of the ideas, always ingenious and in part 

 conformable to truth, which have been successively promulgated 

 on this subject by Kepler, Huygens, Wright, Kant, Lambert, 

 Mitchell, and Sir W. Herschel. But before this last, these ideas 

 were most frequently rather speculative than founded on investiga- 

 tions and positive observations. It is Herschel, then, who has 

 opened the most direct and surest route, by the help of his powerful 

 telescopes; and M. Ma^dler is beyond doubt one of the astronomers 

 who has followed him with most ardor and success, while profiting by 

 the labors of his predecessors, and above all by the precise determi- 

 nations of the positions of stars recently obtained. 



There remain, doubtless, many points still uncertain in the results 

 obtained by the latter, and time only can confirm in a definite manner 

 the solution which he has given of this important problem. But as 

 the author has in general sustained himself by observations as exact 

 and numerous as circumstances permitted, giving them in all their 

 details, without making an arbitrary choice among them, and without 

 dissembling the weak points of his system, but with the sole desire of 

 arriving at the truth, and with the conviction of having attained it, 

 it would seem that we ought to be disposed to admit the validity of 

 his principal deductions, corroborated as they now are. The case of 

 the determination of the general movement of the stars by M. Midler 

 will, perhaps, prove analogous to that of the first determination of the 

 movement of the Sun in space by Sir W. Herschel; that is to "say, 

 that having been a long time contested or neglected, it will be finally 

 confirmed and generally admitted, and will constitute a fair title of 

 honor for the skilful and bold astronomer who will have been the 

 first to prove its reality. 



