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