"ONE'S IMAGINATION CRACKS" 151 



little earth is on the same scale and partakes of the 

 same procedure as this profusion in creating worlds. 

 Unity of design to the remotest bounds of nature is a 

 conclusion that plainly results from Herschel's dis- 

 coveries. 



The worst objection taken to the writings of this 

 midnight watcher was the strange English he some- 

 times used. "Stupendous as Mr. Herschel's investi- 

 gations are," Horace Walpole wrote to a friend, " and 

 admirable as are his talents, his expression of 'OUT 

 retired comer of the universe' seems a little improper. 

 When a little emmet, standing on its anthill, could get 

 a peep into infinity, how could he think he saw a retired 

 corner in it ? ... If there are twenty millions of 

 worlds, why not as many, and as many, and as many 

 more ? Oh, one's imagination cracks ! " 1 "To the in- 

 habitants of the nebulae of the present catalogue," 

 Herschel wrote, "our sidereal system must appear 

 either as a small nebulous patch ; an extended streak 

 of milky light ; a large resolvable nebula ; a very com- 

 pressed cluster of minute stars hardly discernible ; or 

 as an immense collection of large scattered stars of 

 various sizes." Well may we repeat in sobriety and 

 humility what the poet, in contempt and fun, uttered 

 about the same time, 



"Oh wad some Power the giftie gie us 

 To see oorsels as ithers see us." 



The last two papers which Herschel wrote on The 

 Construction of the Heavens were given to the world 

 about four years before his death. They show the same 

 grasp of details, the same enthusiasm in working out 



1 Letters, vi. 461, 258. 



