DISPARAGEMENT OF HEUS~CHEL YoY 



His speculations concerning the structure of the 

 universe the progressive condensation of nebulae and 

 clusters of stars the nature of the sun and the 

 seasons of the planets occupying a large portion of 

 the goodly collection of sixty-seven Memoirs, which 

 he contributed to the Transactions of the Royal 

 Society are lively and amusing, but they are entirely 

 useless to astronomy, and have added nothing to the 

 mass of real knowledge." What an ungenerous, 

 narrow-minded, unjust criticism ! Most certainly the 

 man who, by patient effort and ingenious contrivance, 

 advances the boundaries of human knowledge, if he is 

 not a genius, deserves something better from his 

 fellows than thus to be lightly esteemed for long- 

 continued and successful labours. If Herschel had 

 done nothing but invent a sounding-line to fathom 

 the depths of space, and reveal worlds of light in 

 countless profusion, he would have deserved well of 

 humanity. The same criticism might have been 

 passed on Galileo, who, in a letter to a friend, was 

 proud to say that the Grand Duke " Ferdinand had 

 been amusing himself with making object-glasses, and 

 always carried one with him to work it wherever he 

 went." Herschel, like Galileo and the Grand Duke, 

 but on a vastly grander scale, was a grinder of mirrors 

 for telescopes that were the wonder or envy of the 

 world. And a distinguished man of science in our 

 own time wrote of Herschel: "The success of this 

 celebrated astronomer gave birth to a spirit of 

 observation and inquiry which was before unknown. 

 The heavens have been explored with the most un- 

 wearied assiduity, and this laudable zeal for the 

 advancement of astronomy has been crowned with 



