\s- 149 



a long awful alienee, exclaim, ' Hier iat wahrhaftig 



1 1 1 niincl ! ' l and, aa I aaid before, stopping 



afterwards at the aame spot, bat leaving it unsatisfied" 



Tho nephew attended to her wUhea, rwmmagtd Scorpio 



telescope, md many blank spacea 



tho smallest star. . . . Then come on the 



ilar clusters, then more blank fields, then suddenly 

 the Milky Way cornea on in large milky nebulous 

 irregular patches and banks." 



.or Mill -, than the star-island, to * 



we belong, " innot well be leas but are prob- 



mtich larger," Herachel at one time believed he 

 aaw in the white clouds, which flout in tho depths 

 of space, unseen by the naked eye. Sometime 

 telescope resolved them into brilliant star-dust, scat- 

 tered like shining jewels on tho dark background of 

 the heavens : and sometimes not That they are at im- 

 mense, at inconceivable distances from the solar system 

 and from each other, is evident How far, it \\ 

 be rash to say. But Herschel's enthusiasm over- 

 leaped all boundaries of prudent reticence, Some of 

 thrni may be "600 times the distance of Sirius from 

 us"; other clusters "cannot well be supposed to be 

 at lees than six or eight thousand times that distance." 

 Light, the swiftest messenger we know, light, which 

 can journey round the earth eight times in a second, 

 would take .-. ^and years to bring us a message 



the nearest of these clusters, or more than eighty 

 thousand years from the more remote, If his views 



correct, a messenger of wing so swift, and of foot 

 so tireless, may well be regarded aa an angel of the 

 Alnighftr 



' I fert Indwd i. * hole in the Ha 



