STAR-ISLANDS OR WORLD-SYSTEMS 233 



have followed in hi- footsteps with a better equipment 



idtrumenU, if not with a richer endowment of 

 r genius. (> >ll have looked upoi 



iig quest an an attempt to reach the foot of th- 



rainbow ladder, or to master the aecret of the philo 



aopher'a stone. His papers remain a wonderful monu- 



I... -MI >f ,-:_', -in- ,im research and marvellous discovery, 



i.a-iiiinj- an'l reasoned conclusions. 



uii'l clusters of stars Herschel callc<l 

 milky ways, <liH'Tvnt from th. -r. at Mi! .\ 



h our solar system is imbedded, li- : ; . ; t 

 an- in no respect connected with ..m- milky 

 way, but are star-islands or world-systems, perhaps 

 only in process of formation, at immense distances from 

 our Mm. outlying provinces of creation, as it were, in 

 the vast ocean of ether, or constructions only begun in 

 the realms of space. He is supposed to have fallen 

 from this opinion in his later years, and to have 

 imagined that all these milky ways and star-clusters 

 were connected v Hi- latest papers give no 



it ion of this change of view. He appears indeed 

 only to have changed his view in so far as to 

 regarded our milky way as the greatest of all the 

 milky ways, visible in our telescopes : but on this point 

 he was scarcely justified in speaking, as the distance of 

 the nearest nebula not only was and continues to be 

 unknown, but the means of determining the distances 

 ' >f these white clouds have not yet been discovered 1 1 

 is thought that the great nebula in Orion, if not th. 

 nearest to us, is among the nearest Herachel main- 

 tained this. He had some grounds also for believing 



changes had taken plac in th-- pnMti-.ns .f th.- 

 n< l.ulons matt r <h; -seven years he 



