SYSTEM OF THE HEAVENS AS REVEALED BY LORD ROSSE'S TELESCOPES.

[Footnote: Thoughts on Some Important Points relating to the System of

the World. By J. P. Nichol, LL.D., Professor of Astronomy in the

University of Glasgow. William Tait, Edinburgh. 1846.]

Some years ago, some person or other, [in fact I believe it was myself,]

published a paper from the German of Kant, on a very interesting

question, viz., the age of our own little Earth. Those who have never

seen that paper, a class of unfortunate people whom I suspect to form

_rather_ the majority in our present perverse generation, will be likely

to misconceive its object. Kant's purpose was, not to ascertain how many

years the Earth had lived: a million of years, more or less, made very

little difference to _him_. What he wished to settle was no such barren

conundrum. For, had there even been any means of coercing the Earth into

an honest answer, on such a delicate point, which the Sicilian canon,

Recupero, fancied that there was; [Footnote: _Recupero_. See Brydone's

Travels, some sixty or seventy years ago. The canon, being a beneficed

clergyman in the Papal church, was naturally an infidel. He wished

exceedingly to refute Moses: and he fancied that he really had done so

by means of some collusive assistance from the layers of lava on Mount

Etna. But there survives, at this day, very little to remind us of the

canon, except an unpleasant guffaw that rises, at times, in solitary

valleys of Etna.] but which, in my own opinion, there neither is, nor

ought to be,--(since a man deserves to be cudgelled who could put such

improper questions to a _lady_ planet,)--still what would it amount

to? What good would it do us to have a certificate of our dear little

mother's birth and baptism? Other people--people in Jupiter, or

the Uranians--may amuse themselves with her pretended foibles or

infirmities: it is quite safe to do so at _their_ distance; and, in

a female planet like Venus, it might be natural, (though, strictly

speaking, not quite correct,) to scatter abroad malicious insinuations,

as though our excellent little mamma had begun to wear false hair, or

had lost some of her front teeth. But all this, we men of sense know

to be gammon. Our mother Tellus, beyond all doubt, is a lovely little

thing. I am satisfied that she is very much admired throughout the Solar

System: and, in clear seasons, when she is seen to advantage, with her

bonny wee pet of a Moon tripping round her like a lamb, I should be

thankful to any gentleman who will mention where he has happened to

observe--either he or his telescope--will he only have the goodness

to say, in what part of the heavens he has discovered a more elegant

turn-out. I wish to make no personal reflections. I name no names. Only

this I say, that, though some people have the gift of seeing things that

other people never could see, and though some other people, or other

some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, so that,

generally, their geese count for swans, yet, after all, swans or geese,

it would be a pleasure to me, and really a curiosity, to see the planet

that could fancy herself entitled to sneeze at our Earth. And then, if

she (viz., our Earth,) keeps but one Moon, even _that_ (you know) is

an advantage as regards some people that keep none. There are people,

pretty well known to you and me, that can't make it convenient to keep

even one Moon. And so I come to my moral; which is this, that, to all

appearance, it is mere justice; but, supposing it were not, still it is

_our_ duty, (as children of the Earth,) right or wrong, to stand up for

our bonny young mamma, if she _is_ young; or for our dear old mother, if

she _is_ old; whether young or old, to take her part against all comers;

and to argue through thick and thin, which (sober or not) I always

attempt to do, that she is the most respectable member of the Copernican

System.

Meantime, what Kant understood by being old, is something that still

remains to be explained. If one stumbled, in the steppes of Tartary,

on the grave of a Megalonyx, and, after long study, had deciphered from

some pre-Adamite heiro-pothooks, the following epitaph:--'_Hic jacet_

a Megalonyx, or _Hic jacet_ a Mammoth, (as the case might be,) who

departed this life, to the grief of his numerous acquaintance in the

seventeen thousandth year of his age,'--of course, one would be sorry

for him; because it must be disagreeable at _any_ age to be torn away

from life, and from all one's little megalonychal comforts; that's not

pleasant, you know, even if one _is_ seventeen thousand years old. But

it would make all the difference possible in your grief, whether the

record indicated a premature death, that he had been cut off, in fact,

whilst just stepping into life, or had kicked the bucket when full

of honors, and been followed to the grave by a train of weeping

grandchildren. He had died 'in his teens,' that's past denying. But

still we must know to what stage of life in a man, had corresponded

seventeen thousand years in a Mammoth. Now exactly this was what Kant

desired to know about our planet. Let her have lived any number of

years that you suggest, (shall we say if you please, that she is in her

billionth year?) still that tells us nothing about the _period_ of life,

the _stage_, which she may be supposed to have reached. Is she a child,

in fact, or is she an adult? And, _if_ an adult, and that you gave a

ball to the Solar System, is she that kind of person, that you would

introduce to a waltzing partner, some fiery young gentlemen like Mars,

or would you rather suggest to her the sort of partnership which takes

place at a whist-table? On this, as on so many other questions, Kant was

perfectly sensible that people, of the finest understandings, may and

do take the most opposite views. Some think that our planet is in that

stage of her life, which corresponds to the playful period of twelve

or thirteen in a spirited girl. Such a girl, were it not that she is

checked by a sweet natural sense of feminine grace, you might call a

romp; but not a hoyden, observe; no horse-play; oh, no, nothing of that

sort. And these people fancy that earthquakes, volcanoes, and all such

little _escapades_ will be over, they will, in lawyer's phrase, 'cease

and determine,' as soon as our Earth reaches the age of maidenly

bashfulness. Poor thing! It's quite natural, you know, in a healthy

growing girl. A little overflow of vivacity, a _pirouette_ more or less,

what harm should _that_ do to any of us? Nobody takes more delight than

I in the fawn-like sportiveness of an innocent girl, at this period of

life: even a shade of _espièglerie_ does not annoy me. But still my own

impressions incline me rather to represent the Earth as a fine noble

young woman, full of the pride which is so becoming to her sex, and well

able to take her own part, in case that, at any solitary point of

the heavens, she should come across one of those vulgar fussy Comets,

disposed to be rude and take improper liberties. These Comets, by the

way, are public nuisances, very much like the mounted messengers of

butchers in great cities, who are always at full gallop, and moving upon

such an infinity of angles to human shinbones, that the final purpose of

such boys (one of whom lately had the audacity nearly to ride down the

Duke of Wellington) seems to be--not the translation of mutton, which

would certainly find its way into human mouths even if riding boys were

not,--but the improved geometry of transcendental curves. They ought to

be numbered, ought these boys, and to wear badges--X 10, &c. And exactly

the same evil, asking therefore by implication for exactly the same

remedy, affects the Comets. A respectable planet is known everywhere,

and responsible for any mischief that he does. But if a cry should

arise, 'Stop that wretch, who was rude to the Earth: who is he?' twenty

voices will answer, perhaps, 'It's Encke's Comet; he is always doing

mischief;' well, what can you say? it _may_ be Encke's, it may be some

other man's Comet; there are so many abroad and on so many roads, that

you might as well ask upon a night of fog, such fog as may be opened

with an oyster knife, whose cab that was (whose, viz., out of 27,000 in

London) that floored you into the kennel.

These are constructive ideas upon the Earth's stage of evolution, which

Kant was aware of, and which will always find toleration, even where

they do not find patronage. But others there are, a class whom I

perfectly abominate, that place our Earth in the category of decaying

women, nay of decayed women, going, going, and all but gone. 'Hair like

arctic snows, failure of vital heat, palsy that shakes the head as in

the porcelain toys on our mantel-pieces, asthma that shakes the whole

fabric--these they absolutely fancy themselves to _see_. They absolutely

_hear_ the tellurian lungs wheezing, panting, crying, 'Bellows to mend!'

periodically as the Earth approaches her aphelion.

But suddenly at this point a demur arises upon the total question.

Kant's very problem explodes, bursts, as poison in Venetian wine-glass

of old shivered the glass into fragments. For is there, after all, any

stationary meaning in the question? Perhaps in reality the Earth is both

young and old. Young? If she is not young at present, perhaps she _will_

be so in future. Old? if she is not old at this moment, perhaps she

_has_ been old, and has a fair chance of becoming so again. In fact,

she is a Phoenix that is known to have secret processes for rebuilding

herself out of her own ashes. Little doubt there is but she has

seen many a birthday, many a funeral night, and many a morning of

resurrection. Where now the mightiest of oceans rolls in pacific beauty,

once were anchored continents and boundless forests. Where the south

pole now shuts her frozen gates inhospitably against the intrusions

of flesh, once were probably accumulated the ribs of empires; man's

imperial forehead, woman's roseate lips, gleamed upon ten thousand

hills; and there were innumerable contributions to antarctic journals

almost as good (but not quite) as our own. Even within our domestic

limits, even where little England, in her south-eastern quarter now

devolves so quietly to the sea her sweet pastoral rivulets, once

came roaring down, in pomp of waters, a regal Ganges [Footnote:

_'Ganges:'_--Dr. Nichol calls it by this name for the purpose of

expressing its grandeur; and certainly in breadth, in diffusion at all

times, but especially in the rainy season, the Ganges is the cock of

the walk in our British orient. Else, as regards the body of water

discharged, the absolute payments made into the sea's exchequer, and the

majesty of column riding downwards from the Himalaya, I believe that,

since Sir Alexander Burnes's measurements, the Indus ranks foremost by

a long chalk.], that drained some hyperbolical continent, some Quinbus

Flestrin of Asiatic proportions, long since gone to the dogs. All things

pass away. Generations wax old as does a garment: but eternally God

says:--'Come again, ye children of men.' Wildernesses of fruit, and

worlds of flowers, are annually gathered in solitary South America to

ancestral graves: yet still the Pomona of Earth, yet still the Flora of

Earth, does not become superannuated, but blossoms in everlasting youth.

Not otherwise by secular periods, known to us geologically as facts,

though obscure as durations, _Tellus_ herself, the planet, as a whole,

is for ever working by golden balances of change and compensation,

of ruin and restoration. She recasts her glorious habitations in

decomposing them; she lies down for death, which perhaps a thousand

times she has suffered; she rises for a new birth, which perhaps for

the thousandth time has glorified her disc. Hers is the wedding garment,

hers is the shroud, that eternally is being woven in the loom. And God

imposes upon her the awful necessity of working for ever at her

own grave, yet of listening for ever to his far-off trumpet of

_palingenesis_.

If this account of the matter be just, and were it not treasonable

to insinuate the possibility of an error against so great a swell as

Immanuel Kant, one would be inclined to fancy that Mr. Kant had

really been dozing a little on this occasion; or, agreeably to his own

illustration elsewhere, that he had realized the pleasant picture of one

learned doctor trying to milk a he-goat, whilst another doctor, equally

learned, holds the milk-pail below. [Footnote: Kant applied this

illustration to the case where one worshipful scholar proposes some

impossible problem, (as the squaring of the circle, or the perpetual

motion,) which another worshipful scholar sits down to solve. The

reference was of course to Virgil's line,--'Atque idem jungat vulpes, et

_mulgeat hircos_.'] And there is apparently this two-edged embarrassment

pressing upon the case--that, if our dear excellent mother the Earth

could be persuaded to tell us her exact age in Julian years, still

_that_ would leave us all as much in the dark as ever: since, if the

answer were, 'Why, children, at my next birth-day I shall count a matter

of some million centuries,' we should still be at a loss to _value_ her

age: would it mean that she was a mere chicken, or that she was 'getting

up in years?' On the other hand, if (declining to state any odious

circumstantialities,) she were to reply,--'No matter, children, for my

precise years, which are disagreeable remembrances; I confess generally

to being a lady of a certain age,'--here, in the inverse order,

given the _valuation_ of the age, we should yet be at a loss for the

_absolute_ years numerically: would a 'certain age,' mean that 'mamma'

was a million, be the same more or less, or perhaps not much above

seventy thousand?

Every way, you see, reader, there are difficulties. But two things

used to strike me, as unaccountably overlooked by Kant; who, to say the

truth, was profound--yet at no time very agile--in the character of his

understanding. First, what age now might we take our brother and

sister planets to be? For _that_ determination as to a point in _their_

constitution, will do something to illustrate our own. We are as good

as they, I hope, any day: perhaps in a growl, one might modestly

insinuate--_better_. It's not at all likely that there can be any

great disproportion of age amongst children of the same household: and

therefore, since Kant always countenanced the idea that Jupiter had

not quite finished the upholstery of his extensive premises, as a

comfortable residence for a man, Jupiter having, in fact, a fine family

of mammoths, but no family at all of 'humans,' (as brother Jonathan

calls them,) Kant was bound, _ex analogo_, to hold that any little

precedency in the trade of living, on the part of our own mother Earth,

could not count for much in the long run. At Newmarket, or Doncaster,

the start is seldom mathematically true: trifling advantages will

survive all human trials after abstract equity; and the logic of this

case argues, that any few thousands of years by which Tellus may have

got ahead of Jupiter, such as the having finished her Roman Empire,

finished her Crusades, and finished her French Revolution, virtually

amounts to little or nothing; indicates no higher proportion to the

total scale upon which she has to run, than the few tickings of a watch

by which one horse at the start for the Leger is in advance of another.

When checked in our chronology by each other, it transpires that, in

effect, we are but executing the nice manoeuvre of a start; and that the

small matter of six thousand years, by which we may have advanced

our own position beyond some of our planetary rivals, is but the

outstretched neck of an uneasy horse at Doncaster. This is _one_ of the

data overlooked by Kant; and the less excusably overlooked, because

it was his own peculiar doctrine,--that uncle Jupiter ought to be

considered a greenhorn. Jupiter may be a younger brother of our mamma;

but, if he is a brother at all, he cannot be so very wide of our own

chronology; and therefore the first _datum_ overlooked by Kant was--the

analogy of our whole planetary system. A second datum, as it always

occurred to myself, might reasonably enough be derived from the

intellectual vigor of us men. If our mother could, with any show of

reason, be considered an old decayed lady, snoring stentorously in

her arm-chair, there would naturally be some _aroma_ of phthisis, or

apoplexy, beginning to form about _us_, that are her children. But _is_

there? If ever Dr. Johnson said a true word, it was when he replied to

the Scottish judge Burnett, so well known to the world as Lord Monboddo.

The judge, a learned man, but obstinate as a mule in certain prejudices,

had said plaintively, querulously, piteously,--'Ah, Doctor, we are poor

creatures, we men of the eighteenth century, by comparison with our

forefathers!' 'Oh, no, my Lord,' said Johnson, 'we are quite as strong

as our ancestors, and a great deal wiser.' Yes; our kick is, at least,

as dangerous, and our logic does three times as much execution. This

would be a complex topic to treat effectively; and I wish merely to

indicate the opening which it offers for a most decisive order of

arguments in such a controversy. If the Earth were on her last legs, we

her children could not be very strong or healthy. Whereas, if there were

less pedantry amongst us, less malice, less falsehood, and less darkness

of prejudice, easy it would be to show, that in almost every mode of

intellectual power, we are more than a match for the most conceited

of elder generations, and that in some modes we have energies or arts

absolutely and exclusively our own. Amongst a thousand indications of

strength and budding youth, I will mention two:--Is it likely, is

it plausible, that our Earth should just begin to find out effective

methods of traversing land and sea, when she had a summons to leave

both? Is it not, on the contrary, a clear presumption that the great

career of earthly nations is but on the point of opening, that life

is but just beginning to kindle, when the great obstacles to effectual

locomotion, and therefore to extensive human intercourse, are first of

all beginning to give way? Secondly, I ask peremptorily,--Does it

stand with good sense, is it reasonable that Earth is waning, science

drooping, man looking downward, precisely in that epoch when, first of

all, man's eye is arming itself for looking effectively into the mighty

depths of space? A new era for the human intellect, upon a path that

lies amongst its most aspiring, is promised, is inaugurated, by Lord

Rosse's almost awful telescope.

What is it then that Lord Rosse has accomplished? If a man were aiming

at dazzling by effects of rhetoric, he might reply: He has accomplished

that which once the condition of the telescope not only refused its

permission to hope for, but expressly bade man to despair of. What is it

that Lord Rosse has revealed? Answer: he has revealed more by far than

he found. The theatre to which he has introduced us, is _immeasurably_

beyond the old one which he found. To say that he found, in the visible

universe, a little wooden theatre of Thespis, a _tréteau_ or shed of

vagrants, and that he presented us, at a price of toil and of _anxiety_

that cannot be measured, with a Roman colosseum,--_that_ is to say

nothing. It is to undertake the measurement of the tropics with the

pocket-tape of an upholsterer. Columbus, when he introduced the Old

World to the New, after all that can be said in his praise, did in

fact only introduce the majority to the minority; but Lord Rosse has

introduced the minority to the majority. There are two worlds, one

called Ante-Rosse, and the other Post-Rosse; and, if it should come to

voting, the latter would shockingly outvote the other. Augustus Cæsar

made it his boast when dying, that he had found the city of Rome built

of brick, and that he left it built of marble: _lateritiam invenit,

marmoream reliquit_. Lord Rosse may say, even if to-day he should die,

'I found God's universe represented for human convenience, even after

all the sublime discoveries of Herschel, upon a globe or spherical chart

having a radius of one hundred and fifty feet; and I left it sketched

upon a similar chart, keeping exactly the same scale of proportions, but

now elongating its radius into one thousand feet.' The reader of course

understands that this expression, founded on absolute calculations of

Dr. Nichol, is simply meant to exhibit the _relative_ dimensions of the

_mundus Ante-Rosseanus_ and the _mundus Post-Rosseanus;_ for as to

the _absolute_ dimensions, when stated in miles, leagues or any units

familiar to the human experience, they are too stunning and confounding.

If, again, they are stated in larger units, as for instance diameters of

the earth's orbit, the unit itself that should facilitate the grasping

of the result, and which really _is_ more manageable numerically,

becomes itself elusive of the mental grasp: it comes in as an

interpreter; and (as in some other cases) the interpreter is hardest to

be understood of the two. If, finally, TIME be assumed as the exponent

of the dreadful magnitudes, time combining itself with motion, as in the

flight of cannon-balls or the flight of swallows, the sublimity

becomes greater; but horror seizes upon the reflecting intellect, and

incredulity upon the irreflective. Even a railroad generation, that

_should_ have faith in the miracles of velocity, lifts up its hands with

an '_Incredulus odi_!' we know that Dr. Nichol speaks the truth; but he

_seems_ to speak falsehood. And the ignorant by-stander prays that the

doctor may have grace given him and time for repentance; whilst his

more liberal companion reproves his want of charity, observing that

travellers into far countries have always had a license for lying, as

a sort of tax or fine levied for remunerating their own risks; and

that great astronomers, as necessarily far travellers into space, are

entitled to a double per centage of the same Munchausen privilege.

Great is the mystery of Space, greater is the mystery of Time; either

mystery grows upon man, as man himself grows; and either seems to be a

function of the godlike which is in man. In reality the depths and the

heights which are in man, the depths by which he searches, the heights

by which he aspires, are but projected and made objective externally in

the three dimensions of space which are outside of him. He trembles at

the abyss into which his bodily eyes look down, or look up; not knowing

that abyss to be, not always consciously suspecting it to be, but by an

instinct written in his prophetic heart feeling it to be, boding it to

be, fearing it to be, and sometimes hoping it to be, the mirror to a

mightier abyss that will one day be expanded in himself. Even as to

the sense of space, which is the lesser mystery than time, I know not

whether the reader has remarked that it is one which swells upon man

with the expansion of his mind, and that it is probably peculiar to the

mind of man. An infant of a year old, or oftentimes even older, takes no

notice of a sound, however loud, which is a quarter of a mile removed,

or even in a distant chamber. And brutes, even of the most enlarged

capacities, seem not to have any commerce with distance: distance is

probably not revealed to them except by a _presence_, viz., by some

shadow of their own animality, which, if perceived at all, is perceived

as a thing _present_ to their organs. An animal desire, or a deep

animal hostility, may render sensible a distance which else would not be

sensible; but not render it sensible _as_ a distance. Hence perhaps is

explained, and not out of any self-oblivion from higher enthusiasm, a

fact that often has occurred, of deer, or hares, or foxes, and the

pack of hounds in pursuit, chaser and chased, all going headlong over a

precipice together. Depth or height does not readily manifest itself to

_them_; so that any _strong_ motive is sufficient to overpower the sense

of it. Man only has a natural function for expanding on an illimitable

sensorium, the illimitable growths of space. Man, coming to the

precipice, reads his danger; the brute perishes: man is saved; and the

horse is saved by his rider.

But, if this sounds in the ear of some a doubtful refinement, the doubt

applies only to the lowest degrees of space. For the highest, it is

certain that brutes have no perception. To man is as much reserved

the prerogative of perceiving space in its higher extensions, as of

geometrically constructing the relations of space. And the brute is no

more capable of apprehending abysses through his eye, than he can build

upwards or can analyze downwards the ærial synthesis of Geometry. Such,

therefore, as is space for the grandeur of man's perceptions, such as is

space for the benefit of man's towering mathematic speculations, such is

the nature of our debt to Lord Rosse--as being the philosopher who has

most pushed back the frontiers of our conquests upon this _exclusive_

inheritance of man. We have all heard of a king that, sitting on the

sea-shore, bade the waves, as they began to lave his feet, upon their

allegiance to retire. _That_ was said not vainly or presumptuously,

but in reproof of sycophantic courtiers. Now, however, we see in good

earnest another man, wielding another kind of sceptre, and sitting upon

the shores of infinity, that says to the ice which had frozen up our

progress,--'Melt thou before my breath!' that says to the rebellious

_nebulæ_,--'Submit, and burst into blazing worlds!' that says to the

gates of darkness,--'Roll back, ye barriers, and no longer hide from us

the infinities of God!'

'Come, and I will show you what is beautiful.'

From the days of infancy still lingers in my ears this opening of

a prose hymn by a lady, then very celebrated, viz., the late Mrs.

Barbauld. The hymn began by enticing some solitary infant into some

silent garden, I believe, or some forest lawn; and the opening words

were, 'Come, and I will show you what is beautiful!' Well, and what

beside? There is nothing beside; oh, disappointed and therefore enraged

reader; positively this is the sum-total of what I can recall from the

wreck of years; and certainly it is not much. Even of Sappho, though

time has made mere ducks and drakes of her lyrics, we have rather more

spared to us than this. And yet this trifle, simple as you think it,

this shred of a fragment, if the reader will believe me, still

echoes with luxurious sweetness in my ears, from some unaccountable

hide-and-seek of fugitive childish memories; just as a marine shell,

if applied steadily to the ear, awakens (according to the fine image

of Landor [Footnote: 'Of Landor,' viz., in his 'Gebir;' but also of

Wordsworth in 'The Excursion.' And I must tell the reader, that a

contest raged at one time as to the _original property_ in this image,

not much less keen than that between Neptune and Minerva, for the

chancellorship of Athens.]) the great vision of the sea; places the

listener

'In the sun's palace-porch,

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.'

Now, on some moonless night, in some fitting condition of the

atmosphere, if Lord Rosse would permit the reader and myself to walk

into the front drawing-room of his telescope, then, in Mrs. Barbauld's

words, slightly varied, I might say to him,--Come, and I will show you

what is sublime! In fact, what I am going to lay before him, from Dr.

Nichol's work, is, or at least _would_ be, (when translated into Hebrew

grandeur by the mighty telescope,) a step above even that object which

some four-and-twenty years ago in the British Museum struck me as simply

the sublimest sight which in this sight-seeing world I had seen. It was

the Memnon's head, then recently brought from Egypt. I looked at it, as

the reader must suppose, in order to understand the depth which I have

here ascribed to the impression, not as a human but as a symbolic

head; and what it symbolized to me were: 1. The peace which passeth all

understanding. 2. The eternity which baffles and confounds all faculty

of computation; the eternity which _had_ been, the eternity which _was_

to be. 3. The diffusive love, not such as rises and falls upon waves of

life and mortality, not such as sinks and swells by undulations of time,

but a procession--an emanation from some mystery of endless dawn. You

durst not call it a smile that radiated from the lips; the radiation was

too awful to clothe itself in adumbrations or memorials of flesh.

In _that mode_ of sublimity, perhaps, I still adhere to my first

opinion, that nothing so great was ever beheld. The atmosphere for

_this_, for the Memnon, was the breathlessness which belongs to a

saintly trance; the holy thing seemed to live by silence. But there _is_

a picture, the pendant of the Memnon, there _is_ a dreadful cartoon,

from the gallery which has begun to open upon Lord Rosse's telescope,

where the appropriate atmosphere for investing it must be drawn from

another silence, from the frost and from the eternities of death. It

is the famous _nebula_ in the constellation of Orion; famous for the

unexampled defiance with which it resisted all approaches from the most

potent of former telescopes; famous for its frightful magnitude and for

the frightful depth to which it is sunk in the abysses of the heavenly

wilderness; famous just now for the submission with which it has begun

to render up its secrets to the all-conquering telescope; and famous

in all time coming for the horror of the regal phantasma which it has

perfected to eyes of flesh. Had Milton's 'incestuous mother,' with her

fleshless son, and with the warrior angel, his father, that led the

rebellions of heaven, been suddenly unmasked by Lord Rosse's instrument,

in these dreadful distances before which, simply as expressions of

resistance, the mind of man shudders and recoils, there would have been

nothing more appalling in the exposure; in fact, it would have been

essentially the same exposure: the same expression of power in the

detestable phantom, the same rebellion in the attitude, the same pomp of

malice in the features to a universe seasoned for its assaults.

The reader must look to Dr. Nichol's book, at page 51, for the picture

of this abominable apparition. But then, in order to see what _I_ see,

the obedient reader must do what I tell him to do. Let him therefore

view the wretch upside down. If he neglects that simple direction, of

course I don't answer for anything that follows: without any fault of

mine, my description will be unintelligible. This inversion being made,

the following is the dreadful creature that will then reveal itself.

_Description of the Nebula in Orion, as forced to show out by Lord

Rosse._--You see a head thrown back, and raising its face, (or eyes, if

eyes it had,) in the very anguish of hatred, to some unknown heavens.

What _should_ be its skull wears what _might_ be an Assyrian tiara, only

ending behind in a floating train. This head rests upon a beautifully

developed neck and throat. All power being given to the awful enemy, he

is beautiful where he pleases, in order to point and envenom his ghostly

ugliness. The mouth, in that stage of the apocalypse which Sir John

Herschel was able to arrest in his eighteen-inch mirror, is amply

developed. Brutalities unspeakable sit upon the upper lip, which is

confluent with a snout; for separate nostrils there are none. Were it

not for this one defect of nostrils; and, even in spite of this defect,

(since, in so mysterious a mixture of the angelic and the brutal, we may

suppose the sense of odor to work by some compensatory organ,) one is

reminded by the phantom's attitude of a passage, ever memorable, in

Milton: that passage, I mean, where Death first becomes aware, soon

after the original trespass, of his own future empire over man. The

'meagre shadow' even smiles (for the first time and the last) on

apprehending his own abominable bliss, by apprehending from afar the

savor 'of mortal change on earth.'

----'Such a scent,' (he says,) 'I draw

Of carnage, prey innumerable.'

As illustrating the attitude of the phantom in Orion, let the reader

allow me to quote the tremendous passage:--

'So saying, with delight he snuff'd the smell

Of mortal change on earth. As when a flock

Of ravenous fowl, though many a league remote,

Against the day of battle, to a field,

Where armies lie encamp'd, come flying, lured

With scent of living carcasses design'd

For death, the following day, in bloody fight;

So scented the grim feature,

[Footnote: 'So scented the grim feature,' [_feature_ is the old word for

_form or outline that is shadowy_; and also for form (shadowy or not)

which abstracts from the _matter_.] By the way, I have never seen it

noticed, that Milton was indebted for the hint of this immortal passage

to a superb line-and-a-half, in Lucan's Pharsalia.]

and upturn'd

His nostril wide into the murky air,

Sagacious of his quarry from so far.'

But the lower lip, which is drawn inwards with the curve of a conch

shell,--oh what a convolute of cruelty and revenge is _there_!

Cruelty!--to whom? Revenge!--for what? Ask not, whisper not. Look

upwards to other mysteries. In the very region of his temples, driving

itself downwards into his cruel brain, and breaking the continuity of

his diadem, is a horrid chasm, a ravine, a shaft, that many centuries

would not traverse; and it is serrated on its posterior wall with a

harrow that perhaps is partly hidden. From the anterior wall of this

chasm rise, in vertical directions, two processes; one perpendicular,

and rigid as a horn, the other streaming forward before some portentous

breath. What these could be, seemed doubtful; but now, when further

examinations by Sir John Herschel, at the Cape of Good Hope, have filled

up the scattered outline with a rich umbrageous growth, one is inclined

to regard them as the plumes of a sultan. Dressed he is, therefore, as

well as armed. And finally comes Lord Rosse, that glorifies him with

the jewellery [Footnote: _The jewellery of Stars_. And one thing is

very remarkable, viz., that not only the stars justify this name of

jewellery, as usual, by the life of their splendor, but also, in this

case, by their arrangement. No jeweller could have set, or disposed with

more art, the magnificent quadrille of stars which is placed immediately

below the upright plume. There is also another, a truncated quadrille,

wanting only the left hand star (or you might call it a bisected

lozenge) placed on the diadem, but obliquely placed as regards the curve

of that diadem. Two or three other arrangements are striking, though

not equally so, both from their regularity and from their repeating each

other, as the forms in a kaleidoscope.] of stars: he is now a vision 'to

dream of, not to tell:' he is ready for the worship of those that

are tormented in sleep: and the stages of his solemn uncovering by

astronomy, first by Sir W. Herschel, secondly, by his son, and finally

by Lord Rosse, is like the reversing of some heavenly doom, like

the raising of the seals that had been sealed by the angel, in the

Revelations. But the reader naturally asks, How does all this concern

Lord Rosse's telescope on the one side, or general astronomy on the

other? This _nebula_, he will say, seems a bad kind of fellow by your

account; and of course it will not break my heart to hear, that he has

had the conceit taken out of him. But in what way can _that_ affect the

pretensions of this new instrument; or, if it did, how can the character

of the instrument affect the general condition of a science? Besides, is

not the science a growth from very ancient times? With great respect for

the Earl of Rosse, is it conceivable that he, or any man, by one hour's

working the tackle of his new instrument, can have carried any stunning

revolutionary effect into the heart of a section so ancient in our

mathematical physics? But the reader is to consider, that the ruins made

by Lord Rosse, are in _sidereal_ astronomy, which is almost wholly a

growth of modern times; and the particular part of it demolished by the

new telescope, is almost exclusively the creation of the two Herschels,

father and son. Laplace, it is true, adopted their views; and he

transferred them to the particular service of our own planetary system.

But he gave to them no new sanction, except what arises from showing

that they would account for the appearances, as they present themselves

to our experience at this day. That was a _negative_ confirmation; by

which I mean, that, had their views failed in the hands of Laplace,

then they were proved to be false; but, _not_ failing, they were not

therefore proved to be true. It was like proving a gun; if the charge is

insufficient, or if, in trying the strength of cast iron, timber, ropes,

&c., the strain is not up to the rigor of the demand, you go away with

perhaps a favorable impression as to the promises of the article; it has

stood a moderate trial; it has stood all the trial that offered, which

is always something; but you are still obliged to feel that, when the

ultimate test is applied, smash may go the whole concern. Lord Rosse

applied an ultimate test; and smash went the whole concern. Really I

must have laughed, though all the world had been angry, when the shrieks

and yells of expiring systems began to reverberate all the way from the

belt of Orion; and positively at the very first broadside delivered from

this huge four-decker of a telescope.

But what was it then that went to wreck? That is a thing more easy to

ask than to answer. At least, for my own part, I complain that some

vagueness hangs over all the accounts of the nebular hypothesis.

However, in this place a brief sketch will suffice.

Herschel the elder, having greatly improved the telescope, began to

observe with special attention a class of remarkable phenomena in the

starry world hitherto unstudied, viz.: milky spots in various stages of

diffusion. The nature of these appearances soon cleared itself up thus

far, that generally they were found to be starry worlds, separated from

ours by inconceivable distances, and in that way concealing at first

their real nature. The whitish gleam was the mask conferred by the

enormity of their remotion. This being so, it might have been supposed

that, as was the faintness of these cloudy spots or _nebulæ_, such was

the distance. But _that_ did not follow: for in the treasury of nature

it turned out that there were other resources for modifying the powers

of distance, for muffling and unmuffling the voice of stars. Suppose

a world at the distance _x_, which distance is so great as to make the

manifestation of that world weak, milky, nebular. Now let the secret

power that wields these awful orbs, push this world back to a double

distance! _that_ should naturally make it paler and more dilute than

ever: and yet by _compression_, by deeper centralization, this effect

shall be defeated; by forcing into far closer neighborhood the stars

which compose this world, again it shall gleam out brighter when at 2_x_

than when at _x_. At this point of compression, let the great moulding

power a second time push it back; and a second time it will grow faint.

But once more let this world be tortured into closer compression, again

let the screw be put upon it, and once again it shall shake off the

oppression of distance as the dew-drops are shaken from a lion's mane.

And thus in fact the mysterious architect plays at hide-and-seek with

his worlds. 'I will hide it,' he says, 'and it shall be found again by

man; I will withdraw it into distances that shall seem fabulous, and

again it shall apparel itself in glorious light; a third time I will

plunge it into aboriginal darkness, and upon the vision of man a third

time it shall rise with a new epiphany.'

But, says the objector, there is no such world; there is no world that

has thus been driven back, and depressed from one deep to a lower

deep. Granted: but the same effect, an illustration of the same law,

is produced equally, whether you take four worlds, all of the same

magnitude, and plunge them _simultaneously_ into four different abysses,

sinking by graduated distances one below another, or take one world and

plunge it to the same distances _successively_. So in Geology, when men

talk of substances in different stages, or of transitional states, they

do not mean that they have watched the same individual _stratum_ or

_phenomenon_, exhibiting states removed from each other by depths of

many thousand years; how could they? but they have seen one stage in

the case A, another stage in the case B. They take, for instance, three

objects, the same (to use the technical language of logic) generically,

though numerically different, under separate circumstances, or in

different stages of advance. They are one object for logic, they are

three for human convenience. So again it might seem impossible to give

the history of a rose tree from infancy to age: how could the same rose

tree, at the same time, be young and old? Yet by taking the different

developments of its flowers, even as they hang on the same tree, from

the earliest bud to the full-blown rose, you may in effect pursue this

vegetable growth through all its stages: you have before you the bony

blushing little rose-bud, and the respectable 'mediæval' full-blown

rose.

This point settled, let it now be remarked, that Herschel's resources

enabled him to unmask many of these _nebulæ_: stars they were, and stars

he forced them to own themselves. Why should any decent world wear

an _alias_? There was nothing, you know, to be ashamed of in being an

honest cluster of stars. Indeed, they seemed to be sensible of this

themselves, and they now yielded to the force of Herschel's arguments so

far as to show themselves in the new character of _nebulæ_ spangled with

stars; these are the _stellar nebulæ_; quite as much as you could expect

in so short a time: Rome was not built in a day: and one must have

some respect to stellar feelings. It was noticed, however, that where a

bright haze, and not a weak milk-and-water haze, had revealed itself

to the telescope, this, arising from a case of _compression_, (as

previously explained,) required very little increase of telescopic power

to force him into a fuller confession. He made a clean breast of it.

But at length came a dreadful anomaly. A 'nebula' in the constellation

_Andromeda_ turned restive: another in _Orion_, I grieve to say it,

still more so. I confine myself to the latter. A very low power sufficed

to bring him to a slight confession, which in fact amounted to nothing;

the very highest would not persuade him to show a star. 'Just one,'

said some coaxing person; 'we'll be satisfied with only one.' But no:

he would _not_. He was hardened, 'he wouldn't _split_.' And Herschel

was thus led, after waiting as long as flesh and blood _could_ wait,

to infer two classes of _nebulæ_; one that were stars; and another

that were _not_ stars, nor ever were meant to be stars. Yet _that_ was

premature: he found at last, that, though not raised to the peerage of

stars, finally they would be so: they were the matter of stars; and by

gradual condensation would become suns, whose atmosphere, by a similar

process of condensing, would become planets, capable of brilliant

literati and philosophers, in several volumes octavo. So stood the case

for a long time; it was settled to the satisfaction of Europe that there

were two classes of _nebulæ_, one that _were_ worlds, one that were

_not_, but only the pabulum of future worlds. Silence arose. A voice was

heard, 'Let there be Lord Rosse!' and immediately his telescope walked

into Orion; destroyed the supposed matter of stars; but, in return,

created immeasurable worlds.

As a hint for apprehending the delicacy and difficulty of the process in

sidereal astronomy, let the inexperienced reader figure to himself these

separate cases of perplexity: 1st, A perplexity where the dilemma arises

from the collision between magnitude and distance:--is the size less, or

the distance greater? 2dly, Where the dilemma arises between motions, a

motion in ourselves doubtfully confounded with a motion in some external

body; or, 3dly, Where it arises between possible positions of an object:

is it a real proximity that we see between two stars, or simply an

apparent proximity from lying in the same visual line, though in far

other depths of space? As regards the first dilemma, we may suppose two

laws, A and B, absolutely in contradiction, laid down at starting: A,

that all fixed stars are precisely at the same _distance_; in this case

every difference in the apparent magnitude will indicate a corresponding

difference in the real magnitude, and will measure that difference. B,

that all the fixed stars are precisely of the same _magnitude_; in which

case, every variety in the size will indicate a corresponding difference

in the distance, and will measure that difference. Nor could we imagine

any exception to these inferences from A or from B, whichever of the two

were assumed, unless through optical laws that might not equally affect

objects under different circumstances; I mean, for instance, that might

suffer a disturbance as applied under hypoth. B, to different depths in

space, or under hypoth. A, to different arrangements of structure in the

star. But thirdly, it is certain, that neither A nor B is the abiding

law: and next it becomes an object by science and by instruments to

distinguish more readily and more certainly between the cases where

the distance has degraded the size, and the cases where the size being

_really_ less, has caused an exaggeration of the distance: or again,

where the size being really less, yet co-operating with a distance

really greater, may degrade the estimate, (though travelling in a right

direction,) below the truth; or again where the size being really less,

yet counteracted by a distance also less, may equally disturb the truth

of human measurements, and so on.

A second large order of equivocating appearances will arise,--not as to

magnitude, but as to motion. If it could be a safe assumption, that

the system to which our planet is attached were absolutely fixed and

motionless, except as regards its own _internal_ relations of movement,

then every change outside of us, every motion that the registers of

astronomy had established, would be objective and not subjective. It

would be safe to pronounce at once that it was a motion in the object

contemplated, _not_ in the subject contemplating. Or, reversely, if it

were safe to assume as a universal law, that no motion was possible in

the starry heavens, then every change of relations in space, between

ourselves and them, would indicate and would measure a progress, or

regress, on the part of our solar system, in certain known directions.

But now, because it is not safe to rest in either assumption, the range

of possibilities for which science has to provide, is enlarged; the

immediate difficulties are multiplied; but with the result (as in the

former case) of reversionally expanding the powers, and consequently the

facilities, lodged both in the science and in the arts ministerial

to the science. Thus, in the constellation _Cygnus_, there is a star

gradually changing its relation to our system, whose distance from

ourselves (as Dr. Nichol tells us) is ascertained to be about six

hundred and seventy thousand times our own distance from the sun: that

is, neglecting minute accuracy, about six hundred and seventy thousand

stages of one hundred million miles each. This point being known, it

falls within the _arts_ of astronomy to translate this apparent angular

motion into miles; and presuming this change of relation to be not in

the star, but really in ourselves, we may deduce the velocity of our

course, we may enter into our _log_ daily the rate at which our whole

solar system is running. Bessel, it seems, the eminent astronomer who

died lately, computed this velocity to be such (viz., three times that

of our own earth in its proper orbit) as would carry us to the star in

forty-one thousand years. But, in the mean time, the astronomer is to

hold in reserve some small share of his attention, some trifle of a

side-glance, now and then, to the possibility of an error, after all, in

the main assumption: he must watch the indications, if any such should

arise, that not ourselves, but the star in _Cygnus_, is the real party

concerned, in drifting at this shocking rate, with no prospect of coming

to an anchorage. [Footnote: It is worth adding at this point, whilst the

reader remembers without effort the numbers, viz., forty-one thousand

years, for the time, (the space being our own distance from the sun

repeated six hundred and seventy thousand times,) what would be the

time required for reaching, in the _body_, that distance to which Lord

Rosse's six feet mirror has so recently extended our _vision_. The time

would be, as Dr. Nichol computes, about two hundred and fifty millions

of years, supposing that our rate of travelling was about three times

that of our earth in its orbit. Now, as the velocity is assumed to

be the same in both cases, the ratio between the distance (already so

tremendous) of Bessel's 61 _Cygni_, and that of Lord Rosse's farthest

frontier, is as forty-one thousand to two hundred and fifty millions.

This is a simple rule-of-three problem for a child. And the answer to

it will, perhaps, convey the simplest expression of the superhuman power

lodged in the new telescope:--as is the ratio of forty-one thousand to

two hundred and fifty million, so is the ratio of our own distance from

the sun multiplied by six hundred and seventy thousand, to the outermost

limit of Lord Rosse's sidereal vision.]

Another class, and a frequent one, of equivocal phenomena, phenomena

that are reconcilable indifferently with either of two assumptions,

though less plausibly reconciled with the one than with the other,

concerns the position of stars that seem connected with each other by

systematic relations, and which yet _may_ lie in very different depths

of space, being brought into seeming connection only by the human eye.

There have been, and there are, cases where two stars dissemble an

interconnection which they really _have_, and other cases where they

simulate an interconnection which they have not. All these cases of

simulation and dissimulation torment the astronomer by multiplying his

perplexities, and deepening the difficulty of escaping them. He cannot

get at the truth: in many cases, magnitude and distance are in collusion

with each other to deceive him: motion subjective is in collusion with

motion objective; duplex systems are in collusion with fraudulent stars,

having no real partnership whatever, but mimicking such a partnership by

means of the limitations or errors affecting the human eye, where it can

apply no other sense to aid or to correct itself. So that the business

of astronomy, in these days, is no sinecure, as the reader perceives.

And by another evidence, it is continually becoming less of a sinecure.

Formerly, one or two men,--Tycho, suppose, or, in a later age, Cassini

and Horrox, and Bradley, had observatories: one man, suppose, observed

the stars for all Christendom; and the rest of Europe observed _him_.

But now, up and down Europe, from the deep blue of Italian skies to the

cold frosty atmospheres of St. Petersburg and Glasgow, the stars are

conscious of being watched everywhere; and if all astronomers do not

publish their observations, all use them in their speculations. New and

brilliantly appointed observatories are rising in every latitude, or

risen; and none, by the way, of these new-born observatories, is

more interesting from the circumstances of its position, or more

_picturesque_ to a higher organ than the eye--viz., to the human

heart--than the New Observatory raised by the university of

Glasgow.[Footnote: It has been reported, ever since the autumn of 1845,

and the report is now, (August, 1846,) gathering strength, that some

railway potentate, having taken a fancy for the ancient college of

Glasgow, as a bauble to hang about his wife's neck, (no accounting for

tastes,) has offered, (or _will_ offer,) such a price, that the good

old academic lady in this her moss-grown antiquity, seriously thinks

of taking him at his word, packing up her traps, and being off. When a

spirit of galavanting comes across an aged lady, it is always difficult

to know where it will stop: so, in fact, you know, she may choose to

steam for Texas. But the present impression is, that she will

settle down by the side of what you may call her married or settled

daughter--the Observatory; which one would be glad to have confirmed,

as indicating that no purpose of pleasure-seeking had been working in

elderly minds, but the instinct of religious rest and aspiration. The

Observatory would thus remind one of those early Christian anchorites,

and self-exiled visionaries, that being led by almost a necessity of

nature to take up their residence in deserts, sometimes drew after

themselves the whole of their own neighborhood.]

The New Observatory of Glasgow is now, I believe, finished; and the

only fact connected with its history that was painful, as embodying and

recording that Vandal alienation from science, literature, and all their

interests, which has ever marked our too haughty and Caliph-Omar-like

British government, lay in the circumstance that the glasses of the

apparatus, the whole mounting of the establishment, in so far as it

was a scientific establishment, and even the workmen for putting up

the machinery, were imported from Bavaria. We, that once bade the world

stand aside when the question arose about glasses, or the graduation of

instruments, were now literally obliged to stand cap in hand, bowing to

Mr. Somebody, successor of Frauenhofer or Frauendevil, in Munich!

Who caused _that_, we should all be glad to know, if not the wicked

Treasury, that killed the hen that laid the golden eggs by taxing her

until her spine broke? It is to be hoped that, at this moment, and

specifically for this offence, some scores of Exchequer men, chancellors

and other rubbish, are in purgatory, and perhaps working, with

shirt-sleeves tucked up, in purgatorial glass-houses, with very small

allowances of beer, to defray the cost of perspiration. But why trouble

a festal remembrance with commemorations of crimes or criminals?

What makes the Glasgow Observatory so peculiarly interesting, is its

position, connected with and overlooking so vast a city, having more

than three hundred thousand inhabitants, (in spite of an American

sceptic,) nearly all children of toil; and a city, too, which, from the

necessities of its circumstances, draws so deeply upon that fountain of

misery and guilt which some ordinance, as ancient as 'our father Jacob,'

with his patriarchal well for Samaria, has bequeathed to manufacturing

towns,--to Ninevehs, to Babylons, to Tyres. How tarnished with eternal

canopies of smoke, and of sorrow; how dark with agitations of many

orders, is the mighty town below! How serene, how quiet, how lifted

above the confusion and the roar, how liberated from the strifes of

earth, is the solemn Observatory that crowns the grounds above! And

duly, at night, just when the toil of over-wrought Glasgow is mercifully

relaxing, then comes the summons to the laboring astronomer. _He_ speaks

not of the night, but of the day and the flaunting day-light, as the

hours 'in which no man can work.' And the least reflecting of men

must be impressed by the idea, that at wide intervals, but intervals

scattered over Europe, whilst 'all that mighty heart' is, by sleep,

resting from its labors, secret eyes are lifted up to heaven in

astronomical watch-towers; eyes that keep watch and ward over spaces

that make us dizzy to remember, eyes that register the promises of

comets, and disentangle the labyrinths of worlds.

Another feature of interest, connected with the Glasgow Observatory, is

personal, and founded on the intellectual characteristics of the present

professor, Dr. Nichol; in the deep meditative style of his mind seeking

for rest, yet placed in conflict for ever with the tumultuous necessity

in _him_ for travelling along the line of revolutionary thought, and

following it loyally, wearied or not, to its natural home.

In a sonnet of Milton, one of three connected with his own blindness,

he distinguishes between two classes of servants that minister to

the purposes of God. '_His_ state,' says he, meaning God's state, the

arrangement of his regular service, 'is kingly;' that is to say, it

resembles the mode of service established in the courts of kings;

and, in this, it resembles that service, that there are two classes of

ministers attending on his pleasure. For, as in the trains of kings

are some that run without resting, night or day, to carry the royal

messages, and also others--great lords in waiting--that move not from

the royal gates; so of the divine retinues, some are for action only,

some for contemplation. 'Thousands' there are that

----'at his bidding speed,

And post o'er land and ocean without rest.'

Others, on the contrary, motionless as statues, that share not in the

agitations of their times, that tremble not in sympathy with the

storms around them, but that listen--that watch--that wait--for secret

indications to be fulfilled, or secret signs to be deciphered. And,

of this latter class, he adds-that they, not less than the others, are

accepted by God; or, as it is so exquisitely expressed in the closing

line,

'_They_ also serve, that only stand and wait.'

Something analogous to this one may see in the distributions of

literature and science. Many popularize and diffuse: some reap and

gather on their own account. Many translate, into languages fit for the

multitude, messages which they receive from human voices: some listen,

like Kubla Khan, far down in caverns or hanging over subterranean

rivers, for secret whispers that mingle and confuse themselves with the

general uproar of torrents, but which can be detected and kept apart

by the obstinate prophetic ear, which spells into words and ominous

sentences the distracted syllables of ærial voices. Dr. Nichol is one

of those who pass to and fro between these classes; and has the rare

function of keeping open their vital communications. As a popularizing

astronomer, he has done more for the benefit of his great science than

all the rest of Europe combined: and now, when he notices, without

murmur, the fact that his office of popular teacher is almost taken out

of his hands, (so many are they who have trained of late for the duty,)

that change has, in fact, been accomplished through knowledge, through

explanations, through suggestions, dispersed and prompted by himself.

For my own part, as one belonging to the laity, and not to the _clerus_,

in the science of astronomy, I could scarcely have presumed to report

minutely, or to sit in the character of dissector upon the separate

details of Dr. Nichol's works, either this, or those which have preceded

it, had there even been room left disposable for such a task. But in

this view it is sufficient to have made the general acknowledgment which

already _has_ been made, that Dr. Nichol's works, and his oral lectures

upon astronomy, are to be considered as the _fundus_ of the knowledge on

that science now working in this generation. More important it is, and

more in reconciliation with the tenor of my own ordinary studies, to

notice the philosophic spirit in which Dr. Nichol's works are framed;

the breadth of his views, the eternal tendency of his steps in advance,

or (if advance on that quarter, or at that point, happens to

be absolutely walled out for the present,) the vigor of the

_reconnoissances_ by which he examines the hostile intrenchments.

Another feature challenges notice. In reading astronomical works, there

arises (from old experience of what is usually most faulty) a wish

either for the naked severities of science, with a total abstinence from

all display of enthusiasm; or else, if the cravings of human sensibility

are to be met and gratified, that it shall be by an enthusiasm

unaffected and grand as its subject. Of that kind is the enthusiasm

of Dr. Nichol. The grandeurs of astronomy are such to him who has a

capacity for being grandly moved. They are none at all to him who has

not. To the mean they become meannesses. Space, for example, has no

grandeur to him who has no space in the theatre of his own brain. I know

writers who report the marvels of velocity, &c., in such a way that

they become insults to yourself. It is obvious that in _their_ way of

insisting on our earth's speed in her annual orbit, they do not seek

to exalt _her_, but to mortify _you_. And, besides, these fellows are

answerable for provoking people into fibs:--for I remember one day, that

reading a statement of this nature, about how many things the Earth

had done that we could never hope to do, and about the number of cannon

balls, harnessed as a _tandem_, which the Earth would fly past, without

leaving time to say, _How are you off for soap?_ in vexation of heart I

could not help exclaiming--'That's nothing: I've done a great deal more

myself;' though, when one turns it in one's mind, you know there must be

some inaccuracy _there_. How different is Dr. Nichol's enthusiasm from

this hypocritical and vulgar wonderment! It shows itself not merely in

reflecting the grandeurs of his theme, and by the sure test of detecting

and allying itself with all the indirect grandeurs that arrange

themselves from any distance, upon or about that centre, but by the

manifest promptness with which Dr. Nichol's enthusiasm awakens itself

upon _every_ road that leads to things elevating for man; or to things

promising for knowledge; or to things which, like dubious theories

or imperfect attempts at systematizing, though neutral as regards

knowledge, minister to what is greater than knowledge, viz., to

intellectual _power_, to the augmented power of handling your materials,

though with no more materials than before. In his geological and

cosmological inquiries, in his casual speculations, the same quality of

intellect betrays itself; the intellect that labors in sympathy with the

laboring _nisus_ of these gladiatorial times; that works (and sees the

necessity of working) the apparatus of many sciences towards a composite

result; the intellect that retires in one direction only to make head in

another; and that already is prefiguring the route beyond the barriers,

whilst yet the gates are locked.

There was a man in the last century, and an eminent man too, who used

to say, that whereas people in general pretended to admire astronomy as

being essentially sublime, he for _his_ part looked upon all that sort

of thing as a swindle; and, on the contrary, he regarded the solar

system as decidedly vulgar; because the planets were all of them so

infernally punctual, they kept time with such horrible precision,

that they forced him, whether he would or no, to think of nothing but

post-office clocks, mail-coaches, and book-keepers. Regularity may be

beautiful, but it excludes the sublime. What he wished for was something

like Lloyd's list.

_Comets_--due 3; arrived 1. _Mercury_, when last seen, appeared to be

distressed; but made no signals. _Pallas_ and _Vesta_, not heard of for

some time; supposed to have foundered. _Moon_, spoken last night through

a heavy bank of clouds; out sixteen days: all right.

Now this poor man's misfortune was, to have lived in the days of mere

planetary astronomy. At present, when our own little system, with all

its grandeurs, has dwindled by comparison to a subordinate province, if

any man is bold enough to say so, a poor shivering unit amongst myriads

that are brighter, we ought no longer to talk of astronomy, but of

_the astronomies_. There is the planetary, the cometary, the sidereal,

perhaps also others; as, for instance, even yet the nebular; because,

though Lord Rosse has smitten it with the son of Amram's rod, has

made it open, and cloven a path through it, yet other and more fearful

_nebulæ_ may loom in sight, (if further improvements should be effected

in the telescope,) that may puzzle even Lord Rosse. And when he tells

his _famulus_--'Fire a shot at that strange fellow, and make him show

his colors,' possibly the mighty stranger may disdain the summons. That

would be vexatious: we should all be incensed at _that_. But no matter.

What's a _nebula_, what's a world, more or less? In the spiritual

heavens are many mansions: in the starry heavens, that are now unfolding

and preparing to unfold before us, are many vacant areas upon which the

astronomer may pitch his secret pavilion. He may dedicate himself to the

service of the _Double Suns_; he has my license to devote his whole time

to the quadruple system of suns in _Lyra_. Swammerdam spent his life in

a ditch watching frogs and tadpoles; why may not an astronomer give

nine lives, if he had them, to the watching of that awful appearance

in _Hercules_, which pretends to some rights over our own unoffending

system? Why may he not mount guard with public approbation, for the

next fifty years, upon the zodiacal light, the interplanetary ether,

and other rarities, which the professional body of astronomers would

naturally keep (if they could) for their own private enjoyment? There

is no want of variety now, nor in fact of irregularity: for the most

exquisite clock-work, which from enormous distance _seems_ to go

wrong, virtually for us _does_ go wrong; so that our friend of the last

century, who complained of the solar system, would not need to do so any

longer. There are anomalies enough to keep him cheerful. There are now

even things to alarm us; for anything in the starry worlds that look

suspicious, anything that ought _not_ to be there, is, for all purposes

of frightening us, as good as a ghost.

But of all the novelties that excite my own interest in the expanding

astronomy of recent times, the most delightful and promising are

those charming little pyrotechnic planetoids,[Footnote: _'Pyrotechnic

Planetoids:'_--The reader will understand me as alluding to the periodic

shooting stars. It is now well known, that as, upon our own poor little

earthly ocean, we fall in with certain phenomena as we approach certain

latitudes; so also upon the great ocean navigated by our Earth, we

fall in with prodigious showers of these meteors at periods no longer

uncertain, but fixed as jail-deliveries. 'These remarkable showers of

meteors,' says Dr. Nichol, 'observed at different periods in August and

November, seem to demonstrate the fact, that, at these periods, we have

come in contact with two streams of such planetoids then intersecting

the earth's orbit.' If they intermit, it is only because they are

shifting their nodes, or points of intersection.] that variegate our

annual course. It always struck me as most disgusting, that, in going

round the sun, we must be passing continually over old roads, and yet

we had no means of establishing an acquaintance with them: they might

as well be new for every trip. Those chambers of ether, through which we

are tearing along night and day, (for _our_ train stops at no stations,)

doubtless, if we could put some mark upon them, must be old fellows

perfectly liable to recognition. I suppose, _they_ never have notice to

quit. And yet, for want of such a mark, though all our lives flying past

them and through them, we can never challenge them as known. The same

thing happens in the desert: one monotonous iteration of sand, sand,

sand, unless where some miserable fountain stagnates, forbids all

approach to familiarity: nothing is circumstantiated or differenced:

travel it for three generations, and you are no nearer to identification

of its parts: so that it amounts to travelling through an abstract idea.

For the desert, really I suspect the thing is hopeless: but, as regards

our planetary orbit, matters are mending: for the last six or seven

years I have heard of these fiery showers, but indeed I cannot say how

much earlier they were first noticed,[Footnote: Somewhere I have seen it

remarked, that if, on a public road, you meet a party of four women,

it is at least fifty to one that they are all laughing; whereas, if you

meet an equal party of my own unhappy sex, you may wager safely that

they are talking gravely, and that one of them is uttering the word

_money_. Hence it must be, viz, because our sisters are too much

occupied with the playful things of this earth, and our brothers with

its gravities, that neither party sufficiently watches the skies. And

_that_ accounts for a fact which often has struck myself, viz., that, in

cities, on bright moonless nights, when some brilliant skirmishings of

the Aurora are exhibiting, or even a luminous arch, which is a broad

ribbon of snowy light that spans the skies, positively unless I myself

say to people--'Eyes upwards!' not one in a hundred, male or female, but

fails to see the show, though it may be seen _gratis_, simply because

their eyes are too uniformly reading the earth. This downward direction

of the eyes, however, must have been worse in former ages: because else

it never _could_ have happened that, until Queen Anne's days, nobody

ever hinted in a book that there _was_ such a thing, or _could_ be such

a thing, as the Aurora Borealis; and in fact Halley had the credit of

discovering it.] as celebrating two annual festivals--one in August, one

in November. You are a little too late, reader, for seeing this year's

summer festival; but that's no reason why you should not engage a good

seat for the November meeting; which, if I recollect, is about the

9th, or the Lord Mayor's day, and on the whole better worth seeing.

For anything _we_ know, this may be a great day in the earth's earlier

history; she may have put forth her original rose on this day, or tried

her hand at a primitive specimen of wheat; or she may, in fact, have

survived some gunpowder plot about this time; so that the meteoric

appearance may be a kind congratulating _feu-de-joye_, on the

anniversary of the happy event. What it is that the 'cosmogony man' in

the 'Vicar of Wakefield' would have thought of such novelties, whether

he would have favored us with his usual opinion upon such topics, viz.,

that _anarchon ara kai ateleutaion to pan_, or have sported a new

one exclusively for this occasion, may be doubtful. What it is that

astronomers think, who are a kind of 'cosmogony men,' the reader may

learn from Dr. Nichol, Note B, (p. 139, 140.)

In taking leave of a book and a subject so well fitted to draw out

the highest mode of that grandeur, which _can_ connect itself with

the external, (a grandeur capable of drawing down a spiritual being to

earth, but not of raising an earthly being to heaven,) I would wish to

contribute my own brief word of homage to this grandeur by recalling

from a fading remembrance of twenty-five years back a short _bravura_

of John Paul Richter. I call it a _bravura_, as being intentionally a

passage of display and elaborate execution; and in this sense I may

call it partly 'my own,' that at twenty-five years' distance, (after one

single reading,) it would not have been possible for any man to report

a passage of this length without greatly disturbing [Footnote:

_'Disturbing;'_--neither perhaps should I much have sought to avoid

alterations if the original had been lying before me: for it takes the

shape of a dream; and this most brilliant of all German writers wanted

in that field the severe simplicity, that horror of the _too much_,

belonging to Grecian architecture, which is essential to the perfection

of a dream considered as a work of art. He was too elaborate, to

realize the grandeur of the shadowy.] the texture of the composition:

by altering, one makes it partly one's own; but it is right to mention,

that the sublime turn at the end belongs entirely to John Paul.

'God called up from dreams a man into the vestibule of heaven,

saying,--"Come thou hither, and see the glory of my house." And to the

servants that stood around his throne he said,--"Take him, and undress

him from his robes of flesh: cleanse his vision, and put a new breath

into his nostrils: only touch not with any change his human heart--the

heart that weeps and trembles." It was done; and, with a mighty angel

for his guide, the man stood ready for his infinite voyage; and from the

terraces of heaven, without sound or farewell, at once they wheeled away

into endless space. Sometimes with the solemn flight of angel wing they

fled through Zaarrahs of darkness, through wildernesses of death, that

divided the worlds of life: sometimes they swept over frontiers, that

were quickening under prophetic motions from God. Then, from a distance

that is counted only in heaven, light dawned for a time through a sleepy

film: by unutterable pace the light swept to _them_, they by unutterable

pace to the light: in a moment the rushing of planets was upon them: in

a moment the blazing of suns was around them. Then came eternities of

twilight, that revealed, but were not revealed. To the right hand and

to the left towered mighty constellations, that by self-repetitions and

answers from afar, that by counter-positions, built up triumphal gates,

whose architraves, whose archways--horizontal, upright--rested, rose--at

altitudes, by spans--that seemed ghostly from infinitude. Without

measure were the architraves, past number were the archways, beyond

memory the gates. Within were stairs that scaled the eternities above,

that descended to the eternities below: above was below, below was

above, to the man stripped of gravitating body: depth was swallowed up

in height insurmountable, height was swallowed up in depth unfathomable.

Suddenly as thus they rode from infinite to infinite, suddenly as thus

they tilted over abysmal worlds, a mighty cry arose--that systems

more mysterious, that worlds more billowy,--other heights, and other

depths,--were coming, were nearing, were at hand. Then the man sighed,

and stopped, shuddered and wept. His over-laden heart uttered itself in

tears; and he said,--"Angel, I will go no farther. For the spirit of man

aches with this infinity. Insufferable is the glory of God. Let me lie

down in the grave from the persecutions of the infinite; for end, I

see, there is none." And from all the listening stars that shone around

issued a choral voice, "The man speaks truly: end there is none, that

ever yet we heard of." "End is there none?" the angel solemnly demanded:

"Is there indeed no end? And is this the sorrow that kills you?" But no

voice answered, that he might answer himself. Then the angel threw up

his glorious hands to the heaven of heavens; saying, "End is there none

to the universe of God? Lo! also there is no Beginning."'

NOTE.--On throwing his eyes hastily over the preceding paper, the writer

becomes afraid that some readers may give such an interpretation to a

few playful expressions upon the age of our earth, &c., as to class him

with those who use geology, cosmology, &c., for purposes of attack,

or insinuation against the Scriptures. Upon this point, therefore, he

wishes to make a firm explanation of his own opinions, which, (whether

right or wrong,) will liberate him, once and for all, from any such

jealousy.

It is sometimes said, that the revealer of a true religion, does

not come amongst men for the sake of teaching truths in science, or

correcting errors in science. Most justly is this said: but often in

terms far too feeble. For generally these terms are such as to

imply, that, although no function of his mission, it was yet open to

him--although not pressing with the force of an obligation upon the

revealer, it was yet at his discretion--if not to correct other

men's errors, yet at least in his own person to speak with scientific

precision. I contend that it was _not_. I contend, that to have uttered

the truths of astronomy, of geology, &c., at the era of new-born

Christianity, was not only _below_ the purposes of a religion, but would

have been _against_ them. Even upon errors of a far more important class

than any errors in science can ever be,--superstitions, for instance,

that degraded the very idea of God; prejudices and false usages, that

laid waste human happiness, (such as slavery and many hundreds of other

abuses that might be mentioned,) the rule evidently acted upon by

the Founder of Christianity was this--Given the purification of the

fountain, once assumed that the fountains of truth are cleansed, all

these derivative currents of evil will cleanse themselves. And the only

exceptions, which I remember, to this rule, are two cases in which, from

the personal appeal made to his decision, Christ would have made himself

a party to wretched delusions, if he had not condescended to expose

their folly. But, as a general rule, the branches of error were

disregarded, and the roots only attacked. If, then, so lofty a station

was taken with regard even to such errors as had moral and spiritual

relations, how much more with regard to the comparative trifles, (as

in the ultimate relations of human nature they are,) of merely human

science! But, for my part, I go further, and assert, that upon three

reasons it was impossible for any messenger from God, (or offering

himself in that character,) for a moment to have descended into the

communication of truth merely scientific, or economic, or worldly.

And the reasons are these: _First_, Because it would have degraded his

mission, by lowering it to the base level of a collision with human

curiosity, or with petty and transitory interests. _Secondly_, Because

it would have ruined his mission; would utterly have prostrated the free

agency and the proper agency of that mission. He that, in those days,

should have proclaimed the true theory of the Solar System and the

heavenly forces, would have been shut up at once--as a lunatic likely

to become dangerous. But suppose him to have escaped _that_; still, as

a divine teacher, he has no liberty of caprice. He must stand to the

promises of his own acts. Uttering the first truth of a science, he

is pledged to the second: taking the main step, he is committed to all

which follow. He is thrown at once upon the endless controversies which

science in every stage provokes, and in none more than in the

earliest. Or, if he retires as from a scene of contest that he had not

anticipated, he retires as one confessing a human precipitance and

a human oversight, weaknesses, venial in others, but fatal to the

pretensions of a divine teacher. Starting besides from such pretensions,

he could not (as others might) have the privilege of selecting

arbitrarily or partially. If upon one science, then upon all,--if upon

science, then upon, art,--if upon art and science, then upon _every_

branch of social economy, upon _every_ organ of civilization, his

reformations and advances are equally due; due as to all, if due as to

any. To move in one direction, is constructively to undertake for all.

Without power to retreat, he has thus thrown the intellectual interests

of his followers into a channel utterly alien to the purposes of a

spiritual mission.

Thus far he has simply failed: but next comes a worse result; an evil,

not negative but positive. Because, _thirdly_, to apply the light of a

revelation for the benefit of a merely human science, which is virtually

done by so applying the illumination of an _inspired_ teacher, is--to

assault capitally the scheme of God's discipline and training for man.

To improve by _heavenly_ means, if but in one solitary science--to

lighten, if but in one solitary section, the condition of difficulty

which had been designed for the strengthening and training of human

faculties, is _pro tanto_ to disturb--to cancel--to contradict a

previous purpose of God, made known by silent indications from the

beginning of the world. Wherefore did God give to man the powers for

contending with scientific difficulties? Wherefore did he lay a secret

train of continual occasions, that should rise, by intervals, through

thousands of generations, for provoking and developing those activities

in man's intellect, if, after all, he is to send a messenger of his own,

more than human, to intercept and strangle all these great purposes?

When, therefore, the persecutors of Galileo, alleged that Jupiter, for

instance, could not move in the way alleged, because then the Bible

would have proclaimed it,--as they thus threw back upon God the burthen

of discovery, which he had thrown upon Galileo, why did they not,

by following out their own logic, throw upon the Bible the duty of

discovering the telescope, or discovering the satellites of Jupiter?

And, as no such discoveries were there, why did they not, by parity of

logic, and for mere consistency, deny the telescope as a fact, deny the

Jovian planets as facts? But this it is to mistake the very meaning and

purposes of a revelation. A revelation is not made for the purpose of

showing to idle men that which they may show to themselves, by faculties

already given to them, if only they will exert those faculties, but for

the purpose of showing _that_ which the moral darkness of man will

not, without supernatural light, allow him to perceive. With disdain,

therefore, must every considerate person regard the notion,--that God

could wilfully interfere with his own plans, by accrediting ambassadors

to reveal astronomy, or any other science, which he has commanded men

to cultivate _without_ revelation, by endowing them with all the natural

powers for doing so.

Even as regards astronomy, a science so nearly allying itself to

religion by the loftiness and by the purity of its contemplations,

Scripture is nowhere the _parent_ of any doctrine, nor so much as the

silent sanctioner of any doctrine. Scripture cannot become the author

of falsehood,--though it were as to a trifle, cannot become a party to

falsehood. And it is made impossible for Scripture to teach falsely, by

the simple fact that Scripture, on such subjects, will not condescend to

teach at all. The Bible adopts the erroneous language of men, (which at

any rate it must do, in order to make itself understood,) not by way

of sanctioning a theory, but by way of using a fact. The Bible _uses_

(postulates) the phenomena of day and night, of summer and winter, and

expresses them, in relation to their causes, as _men_ express them, men,

even, that are scientific astronomers. But the results, which are all

that concern Scripture, are equally true, whether accounted for by one

hypothesis which is philosophically just, or by another which is popular

and erring.

Now, on the other hand, in geology and cosmology, the case is still

stronger. _Here_ there is no opening for a compliance even with popular

language. _Here_, where there is no such stream of apparent phenomena

running counter (as in astronomy) to the real phenomena, neither is

there any popular language opposed to the scientific. The whole are

abstruse speculations, even as regards their objects, not dreamed of as

possibilities, either in their true aspects or their false aspects,

till modern times. The Scriptures, therefore, nowhere allude to such

sciences, either under the shape of histories, applied to processes

current and in movement, or under the shape of theories applied to

processes past and accomplished. The Mosaic cosmogony, indeed, gives the

succession of natural births; and that succession will doubtless be more

and more confirmed and illustrated as geology advances. But as to the

time, the duration, of this cosmogony, it is the idlest of notions that

the Scriptures either have or could have condescended to human curiosity

upon so awful a prologue to the drama of this world. Genesis would no

more have indulged so mean a passion with respect to the mysterious

inauguration of the world, than the Apocalypse with respect to its

mysterious close. 'Yet the six _days_ of Moses!' Days! But is any man

so little versed in biblical language as not to know that (except in the

merely historical parts of the Jewish records) every section of time

has a secret and separate acceptation in the Scriptures? Does an _æon_,

though a Grecian word, bear scripturally [either in Daniel or in Saint

John] any sense known to Grecian ears? Do the seventy _weeks_ of the

prophet mean weeks in the sense of human calendars? Already the Psalms,

(xc) already St. Peter, (2d Epist.) warn us of a peculiar sense

attached to the word _day_ in divine ears? And who of the innumerable

interpreters understands the twelve hundred and odd days in Daniel,

or his two thousand and odd days, to mean, by possibility, periods of

twenty-four hours? Surely the theme of Moses was as mystical, and

as much entitled to the benefit of mystical language, as that of the

prophets.

The sum of the matter is this:--God, by a Hebrew prophet, is sublimely

described as _the Revealer_; and, in variation of his own expression,

the same prophet describes him as the Being 'that knoweth the darkness.'

Under no idea can the relations of God to man be more grandly expressed.

But of what is he the revealer? Not surely of those things which he has

enabled man to reveal for himself, and which he has commanded him so

to reveal, but of those things which, were it not through special

light from heaven, must eternally remain sealed up in the inaccessible

darkness. On this principle we should all laugh at a revealed cookery.

But essentially the same ridicule applies to a revealed astronomy, or a

revealed geology. As a fact, there _is_ no such astronomy or geology: as

a possibility, by the _a priori_ argument which I have used, (viz., that

a revelation on such fields, would contradict _other_ machineries of

providence,) there _can_ be no such astronomy or geology. Consequently

there _can_ be none such in the Bible. Consequently there _is_ none.

Consequently there can be no schism or feud upon _these_ subjects

between the Bible and the philosophies outside. Geology is a field left

open, with the amplest permission from above, to the widest and wildest

speculations of man.