'Indeed, Mr. Stapleton, we have been very foolish; and if I had known before the kindness of your feelings to your old friend, our folly might have been spared. But she was determined not to marry me excepting at St. George's, Hanover Square; and so we were-banns proclaimed, and everything complete.'

Banns proclaimed when I was safe here! Oh, you monkey, you! but you are under age, thank hea

ven-'

'Yes; but as her mother gave her away, I believe the knot was very firmly tied; and whatever "Parson "may say, Tom Rivers is a very prosperous man, and besides his blessing, wishes nothing from his and his wife's uncle-'

'Well,' said Stapleton, that is fortunate, for you are not likely to get much. Here is a lady on my arm who this morning promised to share her lot with an old man, and who has made him, as I know she will make him, as happy as you pretend to be.' And without more ado, he took Amy in his arms and kissed her then and there.

The two Guardsmen stared at each other. Strange looked as black as night, but Tracy rung out a merry peal.

"Pon honour, a most affecting incident. Tom Rivers, I congratu late you. A deuced nice girl-if she will let me say so-and one whose humble servant I shall rejoice to be. Though, we did not hit it off. As to you, old fellow, and revered relative, may your shadow never be less-as it is not likely to be. I ought to owe you a grudge, but I cannot find it in my heart.

So I wish you all joy, and long life with it.'

'Caroline,' said Amy, 'I should have told you of this before; but I have had no secrets from this good man, excepting a name. I knew yesterday that I could give him a true heart, and he has it.'

'I told him,' said Amy afterwards, that my young love was dead; but many bright things may survive that funeral.'

Pray pardon my assumed boorishness,' said Rivers. 'I could not resist rhyming over a kind of phrase Dick Carter and I once heard from a Scotchman at Manchester. But none of your men remembered it except Dick himself.'

Tom Rivers, you have paid me back fairly. I always liked you, and I hope Caroline will make you happy. When did her mother come home?'

'A fortnight ago, uncle; and she wants very much to come and thank you for your kindness to her child.'

'I shall be charmed. Don't be down-hearted, Edgy. You will not be the worse for my happiness, although Tom Rivers has stolen a march on you.'

Exeunt the lovers. Manent the Guardsmen.

'H'm-' 'Humph-' 'An awful jolly sell to Charlie.'

'Ugh!'

me,

'And you were sweet on the little one! Sold too!' 'Stuff!'

'What a widow she will be! But don't look like a demon. We both have been fairly out-generalled by-PERFIDIOUS WOMAN.'

show the astronomer a minute

the extent and nature of the researches made by astronomers into the constitution of the heavens, are, for the most part, singularly inaccurate. Many suppose, for instance, that the astronomer knows the distances of at least those stars which are visible to the naked eye, and they hear with surprise that there are not six stars of the millions which astronomy really has to deal with whose distances can be regarded as even approximately determined. It is commonly supposed, again, that the whole surface of the celestial sphere has been so surveyed with powerful telescopes that astronomers know according to what laws the stars are distributed over the heavens. Few, indeed, even among those who may be called students of astronomy are aware how very far this idea is from the truth. We hear so often of the star-gaugings of the Herschels, and the results inferred from those star-gaugings are so confidently in sisted upon in our text-books of astronomy, that when the actual extent of the Herschelian gat.ges is mentioned, the student is apt, in his sense of surprise and disappointment, to undervalue the labours of the Herschels as unduly as he had before exaggerated their extent and importance. Yet another mistake is commonly made. The range of the telescopes employed by astronomers is compared with the range of unaided vision, and men are apt to suppose that the astronomer obtains the same insight into the constitution of the heavens as though his powers of vision were correspondingly increased. The fact is forgotten that the telescope can only

view;

that the information it is capable of supplying is in a sense piecemeal; and that the real lessons taught by the telescope, so far as the distribution of the heavenly bodies is concerned, can only be learned by combining together a number of large-scale views of separate portions of the heavens, into a single comparatively smallscale picture. It is not known that our materials for this work are for the most part incomplete, and that in those few instances where we

have complete materials little has been done to utilise them.

I propose in this paper to consider, briefly, the extent of the researches hitherto made into the subject of the constitution of the star-depths; and then to describe some of the conclusions which seem deducible from an inquiry I have recently instituted, with the object of presenting in a single picture the results of one of the noblest series of labours yet undertaken by astronomers: Argelander's complete survey of the northern heavens with a telescope showing stars down to the tenth magnitude. Setting aside surveys limited to small regions of the heavens, it may be said that the only observational labours yet directed to the solution of the noblest physical problem man can study, are the star-gaugings of the Herschels. These star-gaugings constitute in reality but a minute proportion of the work achieved by these great astronomers. Yet, we may justly say, with Struve, that not one of the feats undertaken by the Herschels surpassed in daring that of attempting to gauge the star-depths

with a telescope a foot and a half in aperture. If an astronomer devoted all his observing hours to such work, he would need, on a moderate computation, full 80 years to complete the survey of the heavens.' It is, therefore, with no thought of undervaluing the credit due to the Herschels for their star-gaugings, but solely because it is important that true ideas should be held on the subject, that I now refer to the relatively small extent of the heavens actually included in their

survey.

Sir William Herschel published, in 1785, the results of no less than 3,400 star-gauges. Each star-gauge gave the number of stars visible in the field of view of Herschel's telescope, this field being equal in extent to almost exactly one-fourth of the apparent dimensions of the moon's disc; and in the course of these surveys,-setting aside rough estimates on which Herschel himself laid no stress,—about 90,000 stars were counted.

At first sight we seem to have here a widely extended survey. The portion of the heavens actually gauged was equal to an extent which it would require 800 moons to cover; and thirty times as many stars as can be seen with the naked eye in the darkest and clearest night were actually counted. But when we leave the region of ordinary notions-whether as respects the moon's apparent size or the multitude of the stars-and enter into the real particulars, the startling nature of the disproportion between the extent of the heavens and the portion surveyed by Herschel is at once recognised. It is calculable that each field of view surveyed by Sir William Herschel amounted to but the 832,979th part

14

of the celestial sphere. So that, in fact, he had gauged but about the 250th part of the area of the heavens. To obtain a clear idea of the minuteness of this proportion, suppose for a moment that the whole surface of the heavens is represented by an ordinary chess-board; then the combined extent of all the gaugefields of Sir William Herschel would amount to barely the fourth part of one of the black or white squares of such a board.

But even this illustration affords but an imperfect idea of the actual and admitted incompleteness of Herschel's table of star-gauges. One must turn to the table itself, to recognise at once the limited area of the field Herschel surveyed, and the difficult conditions under which such surveys are conducted by the astronomer. The great object Herschel had in view was, the determination of the relative number of stars visible in different directions; and it was obviously essential to his purpose that the conditions under which the gauges were made should be as nearly constant as possible. Yet we find that he notes opposite hundreds of his gauge-fields, that the observation was marred either by haze, or moonlight, or twilight, or even by strong daylight, or by the light of the Aurora Borealis, or, lastly, by the low position of the gauged region.

As regards the number of stars counted by Sir William Herschel, we may recall to mind that, according to his computation, the Milky Way probably contains 18,000,000 stars visible in the 18-inch telescope he employed; while the indefatigable Struve considers that probably there are more than 20,000,000 such stars in the whole heavens. Thus we see that the 90,000 stars

VOL. V.-NO. XXV. NEW SERIES.

G

actually counted are relatively few, however large the number may seem by comparison with the number of stars visible to the nnaided eye.

As respects Sir John Herschel's labours in the same field, it is only necessary to note that they were less extensive than his father's; the number of gauges amounting to 2,300, and the number of stars actually counted amounting to about 70,000.

In all, the star-gauges of the Herschels extended over the 50th part of the heavens, and included 160,000 stars actually counted. Let me repeat that I am far from desiring to undervalue these labours. The very fact that, among all the hundreds of astronomers who have studied the heavens with powerful telescopes, not one has yet rivalled either of the Herschels in this work of star-gauging, shows how highly the labours of those great astronomers should be esteemed. But I hold it to be essential that just ideas should be entertained on subjects of this sort. It is as unwise as it is wrong in principle to describe in misleading terms the labours of our great men, or to forget as if due honour to their memory required such forgetfulness -to institute a searching comparison between the work they effected and what yet remains to be achieved. It is fortunate that men like the Herschels have ever been the last to encourage exaggerated estimates of their labours-insomuch that we find Sir William Herschel speaking of his star-gauging as intended only 'as an example to show the spirit of the method'-while Sir John Herschel again and again insisted on the necessity of fresh and more extended surveys than he and his father had been able to undertake.

The researches of the Herschels being the only observational labours directed by astronomers to the actual survey of the heavens with reference to the laws of stellar dis

tribution, we have only to consider the enquiries directed to the analysis of those observations, in order to ascertain the sum and substance of the information actually obtained respecting the constitution or architecture of the sidereal system. When we enquire who are the astronomers who have attempted the task of educing from the labours of the Herschels their true value, we find that we have only to add the name of William Struve to the names of the Herschels themselves, in order to complete the list of such enquirers. Of course, I am well aware that many others have discussed the works of the Herschels, and yet more have described the results to which the work has been held to point. But besides the elder Struve and the Herschels themselves, not one astronomer has subjected the observations of the latter to thorough investigation and analysis.

Now, there is one peculiarity in the several enquiries of the elder and younger Herschel, which deserves very careful consideration. Sir John Herschel unquestionably supposed, when discussing his own observations, that they confirmed the views of the elder Herschelthese views being those enunciated by Sir William Herschel in the famous paper of 1785, in which the star-gauges above referred to were first fully discussed. And, certainly, the statistical evidence obtained by Sir John Herschel corresponded very closely with that obtained by his father. But the remarkable point is, that Sir William Herschel had virtually abandoned the views of 1785, and that Sir John Herschel seems either not to have known, or to have forgotten the circumstance! This must appear incredible, I am aware, to most of my readers, if not to all; more especially as all the text-books of astronomy agree in describing the views of Herschel in 1785 as those which he maintained to the close of his career; or

rather, these books fail to mention that Sir William Herschel had in any respect modified his views. I feel that it will be a somewhat difficult task, under the circumstances, to establish the fact, that the theory of 1785 was actually abandoned by the elder Herschel; but yet the evidence on the point appears to me so convincing, when rightly apprehended, that I shall at least claim the careful attention of the reader, while I enunciate its leading features.

In the first place, in order to remove what must appear as a strong antecedent improbability in my view of the matter, let me remind the reader of the length of time which had elapsed between the death of the elder Herschel and the epoch when the younger Herschel undertook the supplementary series of star-gaugings in the southern heavens. The last of Sir William Herschel's papers on the general subject of the construction of the heavens appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1818, thirtythree years, let me note in passing, after the enunciation of the cloven disc theory of the sidereal system. Six years later, or in 1824, the elder Herschel died. Now, the stargaugings of the younger Herschel were not commenced until the year 1834, ten years after Sir William's death; nor have we any evidence that the younger Herschel's attention had been directed in a special manner to the subject of the starganges, either during the life of Sir William Herschel, or afterwards during the progress of Sir John Herschel's observations in England. The eight years devoted by the younger Herschel to preparation for his observations at the Cape, were employed in the study of double stars, in the examination of nebulæ, and in other work of like nature, not in the comparatively rough work

of star-gauging. At the Cape, even, star-gauging held a quite subordinate position in Herschel's labours. Here are the words in which he refers to the subject, in the noble work wherein he gives an account of his observations. After mentioning that his father's labours in 1785 had led to the theory, that the sidereal system forms a stratum bifurcated or spread out into two sheets;' he proceeds,—' It may easily be supposed that the opportunity of carrying out this great induction by observations made with the same telescope, similarly used in that part of the heavens inaccessible to its author, was not neglected. So soon as a knowledge of the regions where nebule might more especially be expected had been acquired, so as not to hazard too much by continually interrupting the sweep for the purpose of gauging, a system of star-gauges was set on foot, at first somewhat irregularly, but, after a very few sweeps, more systematically, so as to dot over the heavens, as it were, with a regular tesseration of gauged or counted fields, disposed at definite and equal intervals.' Then presently he mentions that many gauge points would needs escape observation, in consequence of the interference of the more important regular business of the sweep.' We find also that blanks were left where the heavens 'had been sufficiently swept over before the gauges commenced, or where, for other reasons, their registry was interrupted.'

So far as can be judged, then, the attention of Sir John Herschel was first specially directed to the subject of star-gauging at this epoch of 1834, ten years after his father's death, and half-a-century after the enunciation of the cloven disc theory of the sidereal system.1

For the sake of brevity, I will