GAUGING THE HEAVENS 141 



of their construction." He admits, however, that, in 

 course of time, "many things must have been sug- 

 gested by the great variety in the order, the size, 

 and the compression of the stars as they presented 

 themselves to his view." As the number of stars he 

 counted increased, the brightness of the Milky Way 

 increased; as the number diminished, its apparent 

 brightness to the naked eye diminished also. The law 

 of gravitation he felt certain existed among that vast 

 multitude of suns and systems, just as it exists in 

 pulling a stone to the ground. At first this was 

 mere suspicion. More than twenty years elapsed 

 before he could say it was an established fact. 



He continued his review of the heavens, or his 

 gauging of the stars. The results were so marvellous 

 that all the world men of science, the common 

 people, even children at school wondered. Some- 

 times he saw, in a small celestial space, as many 

 as 250, or 340, or 424, or 588 stars; at other times 

 he counted only 3 or 4, 5 or 6. The star-wealth 

 of some of these regions was so vast that in one 

 only 5 in breadth a very small part of the whole 

 vault of the heavens there were about 330,000 

 shining suns or stars ! The Chancellor of the 

 University of Halle, who visited Herschel shortly 

 before his death, evidently got from the astronomer 

 himself that he had " often known more than 50,000 

 pass before his sight within an hour," and he records 

 his own wonder, and the wonder of men generally, 

 while these discoveries were still fresh in their minds, 

 that "after the invention of his instruments, I. H. 

 Schroeter, the celebrated astronomer of Lilienthal, 

 might well compute the fixed stars in the southern 



