WHAT FILLS THE STAR-DEPTHS. 
273 
have been a misfortune if the unequalled observing qualities of 
either the elder or the younger Herschel had been misapplied 
for a single hour ; but the possibility that the labours of both 
these astronomers should have been devoted year after year to 
a process which (if my views are just) was practically useless, 
is painful indeed to reflect upon. It is true that the labours of 
the Herschels have been so numerous and so widely extended, 
that even the recognition of their star-gaugings as of little real 
utility would leave the great mass of useful results credited to 
them almost unaffected ; but it would remain none the less a 
misfortune that labours, which in the case of other men would 
have worthily filled a lifetime, should have been misdirected. 
And yet, when one considers the matter apart from pre- 
conceived notions, how inconceivably small the chance appears 
that these laws of distribution believed in by Sir William 
Herschel actually prevail within the sidereal depths. How 
amazing that to his clear perceptions the idea should ever have 
seemed probable that the celestial spaces are occupied only by 
orbs resembling our sun. For, be it distinctly noted, that his 
belief in the existence of gaseous nebulae, and orbs in various 
stages of development, belongs to the later part of his career 
as an observer. Undoubtedly the whole system of star-gauging 
was founded upon the belief that the sidereal system consists 
of stars, varying greatly perhaps in size, but still not so greatly 
but that the least of them would be visible in Herschel’s great 
telescope, as far as the very limits of the sidereal system, and 
that these stars are distributed with a certain general uni- 
formity throughout space. 
It is well to observe how fatally any error in this funda- 
mental hypothesis affects the significance of any system of star- 
gauging. We turn a telescope in a given direction, and we 
see, perhaps, but four or five faint stars. According to the 
Herschelian hypothesis, the limits of the sidereal system are 
near to us in that direction, because the stars seen are so few, 
and those stars being necessarily within those limits, and faint, 
belong probably to the lower orders of real magnitude. But 
what if that hypothesis be erroneous — if there may exist in this 
or that direction vast blank spaces a thousandfold larger, perhaps, 
than the whole sphere of the visible stars in extent? Then, 
perchance, these four or five faint stars may lie farther from us 
than the farthest belonging to some of the richer star-fields ; 
they may form a group of orbs which individually surpass Sirius 
or Canopus in magnificence, and are separated from each other 
by distances exceeding many thousandfold those which sepa- 
rate our sun from neighbouring luminaries. But, yet again, 
suppose that in any * direction our telescope reveal crowded 
star-fields, orbs of all orders of apparent brightness, “ strewn as 
VOL. IX. — NO. XXXVI. T 
