James Sime

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If Herschel had done nothing more for science than build this great telescope he would have amply earned the high eulogium graven on his tombstone at Upton, "The barriers of the heavens he broke through, penetrating as well as exploring their more remote spaces." Nothing to compare with it had been seen before. It was a wonder that the gravest man of science regarded with deepest admiration, and children at school looked on with awe in the pictures of it seen on the pages of books they read. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Looking at these singular companions of the planet across a gulf eight or nine hundred millions of miles wide, it is not surprising that an astronomer prays for "light, more light," to resolve this puzzle of the bright and the dark. It is only an outline of the ring, at the best, that we can expect to obtain from the most careful drawings. But what Herschel did not suspect or imagine about the ring, it would be natural for him to confound with, other features that took a greater hold of his fancy. ”

“ It was a huge mistake to cramp the genius of the novelist or the astronomer by the formalities and triflings of a Court. It did little or no harm to the latter; it did irreparable wrong to the former. People who have lived in a crowd all their lives, to whom indeed it is the breath of life, cannot understand that it may be poison to genius.
Sir Joseph Banks also was dead. A year after his death a German visitor to this country gives a pleasing picture of an uncommon triumvirate of rank and science. ”

“ If our sun be a variable star diffusing heat in greater or less degrees at different times, or if it be a star growing old and burning out, the credit of the idea as well as of "lost" stars in the ocean of infinitude may justly be claimed, in our day at least, for this poetic and musical observer of the heavens. To shed a ray of light on this question of sunshine Herschel sought, but sought in vain, for temperatures in ages that were past. ”

“ Sometimes his telescope resolved them into brilliant star-dust, scattered like shining jewels on the dark background of the heavens: and sometimes not. That they are at immense, at inconceivable distances from the solar system and from each other, is evident. How far, it would be rash to say. But Herschel's enthusiasm overleaped all boundaries of prudent reticence. Some of them may be "600 times the distance of Sirius from us"; other clusters "cannot well be supposed to be at less than six or eight thousand times that distance." ”

“ Mankind, in this respect alone, stands on a loftier platform now than half a century ago. Oneness of plan, manifested in this widespread oneness of working, implies oneness of the worker. A lofty moral truth has resulted from the labours and speculations of which leaders of scientific truth in Europe formerly saw only the inutility. The Maker, Governor, and Upholder of all these worlds and universes is one and the same. Who He is, what is His central seat of power no telescope, no glass prism can reveal. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The result of this policy of indifference was plain to all who could see. "In England, whole branches of Continental discovery are unstudied, and, indeed, almost unknown, even by name. It is in vain to conceal the melancholy truth. We are fast dropping behind. In mathematics we have long since drawn the rein, and given over a hopeless race. In chemistry the case is not much better." These were the words of Sir John Herschel in 1830, fifteen years after the great war was ended, and could no longer be pleaded as a reason for our isolation and ignorance. ”

“ The music of the spheres has passed into our language and our thoughts at the present day. But it would have been the greatest wonder of all could Cicero have foreseen that, more than nineteen centuries after his day, the true music of the spheres and the truest means of hearing it sung would be discovered by the genius, the almost unaided genius, of "a philosopher without the rules," a musician in the town of Bath, then a haunt of savages or wild beasts. ”

“ Whether an encounter or a battle, it was fatal to the reputation of the Duke, and the English officers he had with him; and it was fatal to Hanover, which from first to last paid more than two millions sterling to the victors. Above all, it was fatal to William Herschel's soldiering; for years also it was fatal to his prospects in life, and to his peace of mind as well as his sister's; but, at last, it was the beginning of his endless fame. We can almost sympathise with a deserter from such a general, especially when he fled to his own King for protection, not to the enemies of his country. ”

“ We cannot see distance; it is an acquirement gained by experience from the sense of touch, and gained so insensibly that we think we see distance in front of us, height or depth, it may be, while, in fact, we only see length and breadth. An observer, seeing two stars so close that, to the naked eye, they seem only one, may consider them both at the same distance. A little reflection, however, soon convinces him that the one star, though shining at a vast distance from the other, may be so placed in a line drawn from our eye to the latter as to be nearly or altogether eclipsed by it. ”

“ A glass prism has done what the telescope could not do, revealed double stars where they were not known to exist, shown their rates of motion to or from us, and where an unseen ball is a companion to a living and a lighted sun, told us what they are made of, and enabled us to weigh them as if they were in the scales of a balance. ”

“ He looked upon star-clusters and nebulæ as building stones used by the Creator in constructing the universe; to catalogue, to watch, and to measure these building stones was a long step taken in ascertaining the plan on which the Almighty Architect proceeded. Herschel was laughed at, most unfairly laughed at, as a "lively and amusing" dreamer; science has proved that he was a noble pioneer of modern discoveries, which inspire mankind with awe. ”

“ The man among them, who was destined to write his name on the heavens and to live when triflers and fops were all forgotten, attended their church meetings as an organist, their concerts as a conductor, and their drawing-rooms as a teacher of music to them or their children. They had not discovered that, by the irony of fate, a genius, head and shoulders above them all, was toiling for bread one half of the year, and slaving for fame or the welfare of mankind for the other half. ”

“ The fondness and the friendship must have been commonplace, when, twelve years later. Dr. Burney did not know that Dr. Herschel had been married for ten years, and was the father of a son six years of age. But the young lady's admiration knows no abatement. Nine months after, it rises to, "Dr. Herschel is a delightful man; so unassuming with his great knowledge, so willing to dispense it to the ignorant, and so cheerful and easy in his general manners that, were he no genius, it would be impossible not to remark him as a pleasing and sensible man." ”

“ He had none to help him but a younger sister, who was unwillingly dragged from the concert-room and the theatre to less congenial pursuits, and for some time a younger brother, who was believed to play the violon-cello divinely, and who certainly could apply himself with credit to mechanical pursuits. With untiring energy he worked out this ancient music of the spheres, till the world was astonished at his success, learning confessed her debts to his genius, and a new era dawned in the history of science. ”

“ Everywhere men were sowing the seeds of a harvest of progress and blessing, mixed and disfigured with many a root of bitterness. But among the purest and freest from vice of all the harvests reaped from the seedbed then tilled and sown, was that of William Herschel in his laborious study of the stars. ”

“ To know that the parallax of a fixed star had been found by Bessel to be the 31/100 of a second! To know that it was a double star! To know, besides, that the smaller of the two companion stars revolved round the larger in an orbit fifty times the diameter of the earth's orbit round the sun, or two and a half times that of Uranus! and to know also that the pair of stars were 670,000 times as distant from us as is the sun! To her these discoveries were a delightful commentary on her brother's words—" In this case, millions of years are perhaps but moments." ”

“ 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. ”

“ A sun of enormous size and brightness revolving round another sun as big or as bright, but it may be of a different colour, might be and really was regarded as the dream of a poet, imagining things that mathematics, with inexorable logic, gave no countenance to. But imagination sometimes realises truth long before the facts of science make it known. ”

“ The comet was very small, and had nothing grand or striking in its appearance; but it is the first lady's comet, and I was very desirous to see it. Mr. Herschel then shewed me some of his new discovered universes, with all the good humour with which he would have taken the same trouble for a brother or a sister astronomer; there is no possibility of admiring his genius more than his gentleness. ”

“ When Herschel discovered the planet Uranus he had received no favour and no bounty from King or people. Nor did the King extend his patronage to him till fifteen months had elapsed. Galileo was in receipt of a handsome allowance from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, when he discovered the satellites of Jupiter, and called them the Medicean Stars. It was not only pardonable to do this; it was most natural. But science refused to endorse the flattery: and scientific men, especially on the Continent, were equally unwilling to accept the name proposed by Herschel for the newly discovered planet. ”

“ The announcement of the discovery sent a flutter of excitement through all the observatories of Europe, which went on increasing when it was found that they could not agree on what or who the stranger was. Almost from its first appearance English astronomers believed it to be a planet that had long been wanted to account for difficulties in their art. The French astronomers held to their faith in a comet moving round the sun in an orbit nearly circular. Herschel, praised everywhere as an observer "of great ardour and ingenuity," stood aside from the friendly strife. ”

“ It was the age of didactic poems. Darwin's Botanic Garden had been a success, and parts of it were so written that they deserved and won the applause of intelligent readers. Probably Dr. Burney imagined that astronomy, which was then filling the world with wonder, was an equally good field for a great poem. He certainly believed that it was a book he was competent to write: but, while he was convinced of his ability to ascend to the heights of Parnassus, he had doubts of his knowledge of the science. To solve these doubts an interview with Herschel was necessary. ”

“ But he was nearer to realising infinitude of space and eternity of time—if the phrase be allowable—than any man ever was before him. He marks an era in the progress of human thought and experience, for his words leave on the mind of a reader an awful impression of unspeakable vastness in space and time, of multitudinous arrangements for working out with singular ease and success some vast whole, and of undiscovered purposes in the designs of a Being to whose nature ours is of kin, though we feel ourselves to be but nothings, or less than nothings, in His presence. ”