228 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



The work of observing, measuring, and recording these 

 worlds of wonder, and sometimes of surpassing beauty 

 even when seen in the magic mirror of a reflector, was 

 enormous : but this indefatigable worker, with his like- 

 minded sister-helper, seemed never to weary in his 

 marvellous efforts to lift the curtain that hid Creation's 

 glories from man. What these glories seemed (to him) 

 to mean was unfolded in 1811 in a memoir, which 

 anticipated by many years the doctrine of evolution 

 taught by Darwin, and which showed the progress, 

 slow it might be, " for, in this case, millions of years 

 are perhaps but moments," but sure, of a vast body 

 of gas condensing into a sun or suns with a train of 

 planets around. 1 



When Herschel entered upon this inquiry he believed 

 that these nebulae, or whitish clouds or milky ways are 

 clusters of stars, too far off to be resolved into separate 

 points of light, but blended so together as to assume 

 the appearance of a little cloud in the depths of space. 

 " Longer experience and a better acquaintance " with 

 them induced him to change his mind. Vast masses 

 of gas, in which a few stars were sometimes seen, or 

 through which they shone from a greater distance, 

 were believed by him to exist in space, besides those 

 which an increase of telescopic power could resolve, 

 as the phrase was, into stars. 2 It was the idea of a 

 far-seeing mind, feeling its way to truth, and, in our 



1 " The reason for not having a more circumstantial account of such 

 a number of objects, is that they crowded upon me at the time of 

 sweeping in such quick succession that of sixty-one I could but just 

 secure the place in the heavens, and of the remaining three hundred 

 and sixty-three, I had only time to add the relative size" (Phil. 

 Trans, for 1811, p. 290). 



2 Phil. Trans, for 1811, p. 270. 



