CAMPBELL'S VISIT TO HERSCHEL 209 



it is not likely that Napoleon, who wrote to Laplace 

 about his great works, and was on intimate terms with 

 the greatest minds of France, would descend to parade 

 knowledge he did not possess, or indulge in a hypocrisy 

 that was altogether out of place. Even his biographer 

 writes, "The impression left upon Campbell's mind 

 by this conversation appears to have been a little 

 too strong." 



Far more pleasant is the view given by Campbell of 

 the astronomer himself. "I spent all Sunday with 

 him and his family," he says. " His simplicity, his 

 kindness, his anecdotes, his readiness to explain and 

 make perfectly perspicuous too his own sublime con- 

 ceptions of the universe are indescribably charming. 

 He is seventy-six, but fresh and stout ; and there 

 he sat, nearest the door, at his friend's house, alter- 

 nately smiling at a joke, or contentedly sitting 

 without share or notice in the conversation. Any 

 train of conversation he follows implicitly ; anything 

 you ask he labours with a sort of boyish earnestness 

 to explain a great, simple, good old man." The 

 impression made on Campbell's mind is summed up 

 in these words : " I really and unfeignedly felt as 

 if I had been conversing with a supernatural intelli- 

 gence. . . . After leaving Herschel I felt elevated and 

 overcome; and have in writing to you made only 

 this memorandum of some of the most interesting 

 moments of my life." 



A German writer, who paid a visit to Herschel at 

 Slough a few years afterwards, has left an equally 

 pleasant picture of the astronomer-sage. 



"While we were standing by this machine (the 

 great telescope), which we more admired than com- 

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