T8 CELESTIAL PHENOMENA. 



and, perhaps, still progressive, agglomeration of matter. 

 Before we pass from the most general considerations to those 

 which are less so, it is especially desirable to notice this 

 diversity, not merely as a possibility, but as actually existing. 



The purely speculative conceptions of Wright, Kant, 

 and Lambert, concerning the general arrangement of the 

 fabric of the universe, and the distribution of matter in 

 space, have been confirmed by Sir William Herschel in 

 the surer path of observation and measurement. This 

 great man, in whom the inspiration of genius was combined 

 with a spirit of cautious investigation, was the first to 

 sound the depths of the celestial spaces, in order to deter- 

 mine the limits and form of the starry stratum of which we 

 form a part ; the first to enter on the inquiry of the rela- 

 tions of position and distance between our own region of 

 the heavens and remote nebulae. William Herschel (as the 

 inscription on his monument at Upton finely says), broke 

 through the inclosures of the heavens (ccelorum perrupit 

 claustra) ; like Columbus, he penetrated into an unknown 

 ocean, and first beheld coasts and groups of islands, whose 

 true position remains to be determined by succeeding ages. 



Considerations respecting the different intensity of light 

 in stars, and their relative numbers in equal telescopic fields, 

 have led to the assumption of unequal distances and distribu- 

 tion in space of the strata in which they may be conceived to 

 exist. Such assumptions, in so far as we may attempt to trace 

 by them the limits of separate portions of the fabric of the 

 universe, cannot, indeed, offer the same degree of mathema- 

 tical certainty as is attained in all that regards our solar 

 system, or the revolution of the double stars with unequal 

 velocity around a common centre of gravity, or the apparent 



