THE HERSCHELS AND THE STAR-DEPTHS. 3 



he may be said to have rendered a certainty. No man 

 can apply the powers of telescopes larger than any 

 before constructed, to scrutinize, as he did, every por- 

 tion of the celestial depths, without being rewarded 

 before long by some such discovery : and it was well, 

 in many respects, that Sir W. Herschel was thus 

 rewarded, because the recognition which his labours 

 thenceforth received, undoubtedly facilitated the prose- 

 cution of his researches. But those labours had another 

 and a nobler end than the mere discovery of unknown 

 planets. He never prosecuted them for a single hour 

 without discovering multitudes of unknown orbs far 

 mightier than the massive bulk of Uranus. These dis- 

 coveries passed unrecorded, save numerically, so many 

 were they ; but they tended to the solution of the 

 noblest problem which men have yet attempted to 

 master. That the true end of Sir W. Herschel's labours 

 was the mastery of this problem, must be obvious to 

 any one who will be at the pains to examine those 

 volumes of the Philosophical Transactions in which 

 his researches are recorded ; but he has also plainly 

 told us his purpose in continually applying more and 

 more powerful telescopes to the survey of the celestial 

 depths. 'A knowledge of the construction of the 

 heavens,' he wrote in 1811, 'has always been the 

 ultimate object of my observations.' 



I do not propose here to enter into the details of the 

 various processes of inquiry in which the active mind of 

 Sir W. Herschel led him to engage while he was at- 

 tempting to solve the secret of the star depths. I 



B 2 



