should make one or the other of these opinions most probable." This man could think, could reason and observe: he had also unusual powers of imagination: but he was only beginning his travels through the infinitudes of space and time.
Three papers for the Royal Society in the course of ten months! The musician of Bath puts himself at once on a level with the first men of science in the kingdom. He is modest, but he has in him the confidence of true genius. In his retirement he had been collecting facts from the heavens for six or seven years. A chance of speaking out what he saw and had gathered together was presented to him. He seized it with all eagerness, and was making his voice heard. In these papers he has been speaking to the Royal Society, of which he was not even a member. When he speaks next, about three months after, it is not as the musician of Bath, but as a member of the Royal Society; and he speaks to the whole world and to all time. This paper, which was read on April 26, 1781, and is headed "Account of a Comet," was really the beginning of modern astronomy. It fills only ten pages of the Transactions.
He had been engaged for some time in an attempt, not altogether novel, but certainly demanding great labour, to find out the distance of the fixed stars. His thoughts and plans were high, for though more than a century has passed since then, the distances of not more than twenty or thirty out of many millions can be said to be known, or perhaps safely guessed. While thus engaged, rummaging among the stars, "on Tuesday, 13th March, between ten and eleven in the evening, he perceived a star, in
