constitution of the Milky Way, on the Universe as a whole,--ideas which
almost by themselves constitute the actual history of the formation of
the worlds,--and we cannot but have a deep reverence for that powerful
genius that scarcely ever erred, notwithstanding the ardour of its
imagination."

The ordinary spectator, looking upon the face of the heavens through a
telescope, had, prior to Herschel's time, felt his curiosity excited by
the appearance here and there of filmy patches, vague in structure and
irregular in shape, which, from their resemblance to clouds, received
the name of _nebulae_. What these were, no astronomer had succeeded in
defining. It was left for Herschel, with his rare powers of patient and
discriminating observation, assisted by the more powerful instruments
which his ingenuity succeeded in constructing, to discern in them
innumerable groups of worlds, in various stages of formation! A new
light was thrown upon the history of the Universe. Man was able to
assist, as it were, at the process of creation, and to watch the
development of a mass of incoherent matter into a perfect star. This
alone was a discovery which might well have immortalised the name of
Herschel.

But we owe to him the elements of our knowledge of the Sun's physical
constitution. He swept aside the erroneous theories and conjectures
which had previously prevailed, and guided the astronomical inquirer
into the right path. He convinced himself, by long and patient
researches, that the luminous envelope of the great "orb of day" was
neither a liquid nor an elastic fluid; that it was in certain respects
analogous to the clouds which wreathe our mountain-summits and fertilize
our plains; that it floated in the solar atmosphere. Thence he came to
the conclusion that the Sun has two atmospheres, endowed with motions