48 HISTORY OF ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERT. 



a systematic search for the object, which Mr. Challis commenced on July 29. It now 

 appears that, on August 4th and 12th, he actually seized the planet, and recorded two 

 positions of it, but did not recognise it, through not comparing his observations, which a 

 pressure of occupation, and an impression that the discovery required a much more ex 

 tensive search, prevented. But for this, and the non-publication of the Cambridge mathe 

 matician's results at the time they were forwarded to Mr. Airy, the honourable position 

 of M. Leverrier would have been occupied by Mr. Adams, and that of M. Galle by 

 Mr. Challis. 



The progress of astronomical discovery which has now been briefly traced, reminds us 

 of the obligations we owe to those who have gone before us. How incumbent the duty 

 upon us, then, as we have largely benefited by our predecessors, that, as faithful stewards 

 of their gifts, we should hand them down to posterity with an increase of value ! How 

 grand, and yet how simple, those views of the universe, upon the evidence of which we 

 are now invited to gaze ! The Sun, a central orb, attended by a stately cortege of planets, 

 forming a system under the empire of law, a system not unique, but a general type of 

 others as countless as the members of the stellar host, whose front ranks alone come 

 within the range of tek'scopic vision ; systems, probably, not physically insulated, but 

 bound together by fine relationships, the nature of which; judging from the progress of 

 the past, it is not arrogant to presume, will yet be revealed to the understanding of man ! 

 These are not ingenious theories splendid conjectures hut established facts, and sober 

 anticipations based upon them. To live and learn is the high vocation of humanity, one 

 of the appointed ends which the great Artificer of existence contemplates in its continued 

 scries; the generations that are to come improving upon the acquirements of that which 

 now is. Nor can we fix any limit to the growth of knowledge in relation to the physical 

 universe, clear and insurmountable in the present state as are its bounds with respect to 

 the spiritual world. Who can descry a resting point in the wilderness of space ? discern 

 a barrier to the range of the creation ? Vast as are the regions that have been entered, 

 there are vaster amplitudes unapproached beyond them, towards which the mind may 

 advance in endless progression ; often indeed faltering in the pilgrimage beneath the 

 burden of those conceptions of space and magnitude which immensity suggests, but still 

 going onwards. 



