James Sime

“ Astronomy has made vast strides in knowledge of the stars since Herschel's death. Other magicians, imbued with his spirit, and wielding a more wonderful rod of power than his 40-feet reflector, have arisen to walk in his footsteps, and to tread the paths of discovery, which more or less dimly he saw and walked in—double stars; treble systems; eclipses of suns; youthful stars; dark or dying worlds; star charts; photographic plates, and vast volumes of gas, lighted or dark. More even than in his days have the barren heavens proved to be a land of wonders to curious man. ”

“ A music master and a director of concerts they could understand and appreciate as an inferior creature; but a man who pottered about reflectors and refractors, and looked at the moon from a back garden or a street, when the rest of the world had gone to bed, was beyond their comprehension, or probably came in for their pity. And yet it was on a street, and late at night, that the genius of Herschel was discovered by an inhabitant of Bath, a perfect stranger to him and his scientific pursuits. So curious is the romance of the discovery that it is best told in Herschel's own words. ”

“ Faust, as Goethe presents him, is a man of magnificent intellect, endowed originally with the purest and loftiest aspirations of humanity. When the drama opens, he has devoted many a year to study; but, sitting alone in his Gothic chamber at midnight, he feels sadly and bitterly that his labour has been in vain. Dry, abstract knowledge he has in abundance, but it does not satisfy him; it seems to him but a mockery of the knowledge for which he has always yearned. He pants for something infinitely grander than his books can tell him of. ”

“ To make selfish joy, as Faust had done, the supreme object of existence—that way lie perpetual evil and misery; to sacrifice self, to bring the will into harmony with ideal law, in all things to think and act in a spirit of love and brotherhood, as Faust, after fierce struggle, learns to do—in that, and in that alone, can man find a life truly fitted to his nature and capable of satisfying his deepest, inmost wants. ”

“ Most certainly the man who, by patient effort and ingenious contrivance, advances the boundaries of human knowledge, if he is not a genius, deserves something better from his fellows than thus to be lightly esteemed for long-continued and successful labours. If Herschel had done nothing but invent a sounding-line to fathom the depths of space, and reveal worlds of light in countless profusion, he would have deserved well of humanity. ”

“ And thus closes the wonderful story of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, the story of the fairy prince of science coming to the sleeping princess of the heavens to awake her and all her company from the sleep of ages on the one hand, and, on the other, the story of the despised household drudge, Cinderella, taking a place, a deserved place, among the laurelled benefactors of humanity. Future ages are certain to witness many histories of men and women, of fairy princes and ragged Cinderellas, uniting perseverance to genius, prosaic detail to lofty imaginings. ”

“ Faust has turned from all the highest influences to which his spirit in its inmost depths responds. In a mood of despair he has abandoned his ideals, and is seeking through the world for some rapture that will satisfy his cravings. So far, he is a type of humanity in one aspect of its life. But—Goethe seems to have asked himself—why should not Faust be a type of humanity in a larger, greater sense? If it is the destiny of evil to be conquered and to pass away, might not Faust become the representative of this sublime world-process? ”

“ It is within such vast spaces that Herschel imagined this world-making process to be going on. Man's imagination quails in his attempt to grasp the space required for such a workshop, the tools employed, or the time taken to condense "nebulous matter" into dazzling suns or dark companions.
We are so much accustomed to feast our eyes on drawings of a few magnificent and singularly shaped nebulæ, that thought is apt to overlook the vast numbers of them scattered over the heavens in all stages of size or progress. Herschel did not fall into this mistake. ”

“ Calm, gentle, self-possessed, she conceals a burning passion that in the end consumes her life; yet she is of so ethereal a nature that she seems to glide through the world as one who in no way belongs to it. A more truly poetic conception never took form in a romance; and Mignon alone, even if “Wilhelm Meister” had contained no other element of interest, would have sufficed to make the book immortal. ”

“ It was all moonshine, apparently a reflection of light from our earth, when sixteen times the amount of light showered on us at full moon is then thrown by us on her! But a hole through the middle of the moon, perhaps twenty miles round! There is no air that we know of on the half of the moon that we see, and there is no water. There are ample traces of volcanic fires that once lighted her surface, but they are all long gone out, and have left nothing behind for us but insoluble problems and mysterious wonders—a world of craters, lava, precipices, and cinders. ”

“ In his autobiography Goethe gives a matchless description of his relation to this lovely girl. It is impossible to trust the details of the picture, some of which are known to be inaccurate; but there is no reason to doubt that in its main outlines it reproduces faithfully what actually happened. At any rate it is certain that he loved Frederika with all his heart; not as he had loved Gretchen and Annette, for their influence had never gone far below the surface; but with a love full of romance, with a passion that glowed and flamed with ever-increasing intensity. ”

“ Herschel at all," cried Colonel Manners; "he is all system, and so they are all; and if they can but make out their systems they don't care a pin for anything else. As to Herschel, I liked him well enough till he came to his volcanoes in the moon, and then I gave him up: I saw he was just like the rest. How should he know anything of the matter? There's no such thing as pretending to measure at such a distance as that." The company sat silent while this outburst of lava, which was at once both right and absurdly wrong, was coursing along the table. ”

“ There is a striking fitness between her vigorous, handsome form and her frank and wholesome character; and we feel that of such stuff the women are made who keep a nation’s life sound and pure. Hermann, who has not, like Dorothea, been disciplined by hard experience, is less independent, but he has qualities which, when he is fully matured, will give his character the firmness of outline possessed by that of the wife he has won. Already he has courage to be true to his own choice, and he awakens our sympathy by the depth and ardour of his love. ”

“ The transit of large stars, unless where none of the 6th or 7th magnitude could be had, has generally been declined in my sweeps, even with the 20-feet telescope. And I remember, that after a considerable sweep with the 40-feet instrument, the appearance of Sirius announced itself, at a great distance, like the dawn of the morning, and came on by degrees, increasing in brightness, till this brilliant star at last entered the field of view of the telescope, with all the splendour of the rising sun, and forced me to take the eye from that beautiful sight. ”

“ In taking reality as the basis of ideal structures, Goethe severed from it associations which were only of temporary or accidental interest. He brought it into new relations, touched it with the transforming power of the imagination, and gave to individual facts universal significance. Hence the greatest of his works are as fresh to-day as when he wrote them; and they could lose their living power only if human nature itself were radically changed.
As a critic of literature, he had the sanity of judgment and the intuitive insight which mark all poets of the highest genius. ”

“ The plan as well as the labour of thus estimating "the contents of the heavens," and lifting man's mind to a higher level than it ever attained before, were altogether his own, unless we add that his devoted sister Caroline shared the labour and, it must be added, the dangers of the work. What a vista of eternity and infinitude was unfolded by the musician of Bath! It seemed as if he had built a bridge for thought to span the gulf which separates the finite from the infinite, the temporal from the eternal, in this incredible profusion of suns and systems, of inconceivable spaces and times. ”

“ So he went to Jacobi’s room, and sitting at the open window, looking out on the moonlit Rhine, they enjoyed an hour of unalloyed happiness in the free communion of mind with mind and heart with heart. Goethe had never before given to a friend so deep a love, and the attraction was mutual. Jacobi, who was a man of high intellectual power and fine character, knew well the real nature of the treasure he had won in winning Goethe’s friendship. One of the most absorbing subjects of discussion between them was the philosophy of Spinoza, with which Jacobi also had been making himself familiar. ”

“ Pond's conversation has been, therefore, eagerly sought by me,—and he is most affably communicative.
"We have just been gazing on Jupiter and his moons, through a glass that makes Jove appear as large as the sun's disk, and his satellites like ordinary stars! The moon appears through it as large as a church. His opinion of her ladyship is that she is not inhabited—there being no atmosphere—and the whole region, probably, only ice and snow. Strange enough that a body, which creates such lively crotchets in so many human brains, should itself be cold and lifeless." ”

“ In his study of modern art it was to the painters and sculptors whose technical skill was used in the service of high imaginative ideas that he instinctively turned; and no writer of his day sought more earnestly to show how little can be achieved in art if it is divorced from serious and noble thought. He felt, too, as only a few of the world’s intellectual guides have yet felt, how great is the place which properly belongs to art as one of the influences capable of giving dignity and refinement both to individual and to social life. ”

“ The dependence of a weaker nature on a stronger was not the bond that united brother and sister in a lifelong devotion to science and to each other. There was something more noble. They were the two members of the family in whom genius and perseverance united to overcome difficulties. None of the others possessed equal genius; none of them were gifted with the same perseverance. What these two undertook they did with intense affection for each other, and with a determination not to be baffled, where others could not be blamed had they submitted to defeat. ”