HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



A slight mistake in exceedingly small measnn 

 may cause serious errors in the calculated tim< 

 revolution. 



It should not be forgotten that the Kind's equerry 

 whom Miss Burney, in her gossip from Windsor Castle, I 

 calls Colonel Welbred, foretold that time would <lo 

 justice to Herschel, and turn the liiugh at liim against, 

 the laughers. And time has done him just i with a 

 most ungrudging hand. Eight years after his death, 

 it was asked by a leader of modern enli^htt -iinn -nt, 

 " What length of time must the cosmologist suppose] 

 necessary to reduce a gaseous nebula into a permanent 

 planetary system ? Experience shows pretty clearly 

 the inutility of such speculations." ... Of the moon's 

 "origin and internal structure we neither know, n>r 

 ever can know, anything whatever. And if such is 

 the result of our researches respecting a body \> 

 almost in our immediate vicinity, there is little reason 

 to hope that we shall be more successful with regard 

 to those whose distances are so great that the most 

 powerful telescopes are required to render them ev.-n 

 visible." 1 This was written in 1830 ; it was ill-nan n- <1 

 disparagement of a noble attempt to solve the mysi 

 of the universe, and to give practical proof of man's 

 kinship with God; it was wholly unscientific. In 

 1842 another greatly-extolled writer declared that in 

 that region of inquiry there did not exist any dis- 

 covered, or even, without doubt discoverable j>h'-- 

 nomenon. 2 The equerries of Windsor might be lau^ln -<1 

 at and forgiven ; the scepticism that prompted men of 

 science to bid their brethren fold their hands and do 

 nothing, was an unpardonable sin against truth. It 



1 Kdin. &*. li. 101. 8 Corate, Nineteenth Century (1897), 008. 



