His speculations concerning the structure of the universe—the progressive condensation of nebulæ and clusters of stars—the nature of the sun and the seasons of the planets—occupying a large portion of the goodly collection of sixty-seven Memoirs, which he contributed to the Transactions of the Royal Society—are lively and amusing, but they are entirely useless to astronomy, and have added nothing to the mass of real knowledge." What an ungenerous, narrow-minded, unjust criticism! 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. The same criticism might have been passed on Galileo, who, in a letter to a friend, was proud to say that the Grand Duke "Ferdinand had been amusing himself with making object-glasses, and always carried one with him to work it wherever he went." Herschel, like Galileo and the Grand Duke, but on a vastly grander scale, was a grinder of mirrors for telescopes that were the wonder or envy of the world. And a distinguished man of science in our own time wrote of Herschel: "The success of this celebrated astronomer gave birth to a spirit of observation and inquiry which was before unknown. The heavens have been explored with the most unwearied assiduity, and this laudable zeal for the advancement of astronomy has been crowned with
