ADAM CONTEMPLATING THE SETTING SUN • Title-page. STATUE OF NEWTON, IN THE ANTE-CHAPEL, TRINITY COL- 46 COPERNICUS 49 (From a picture in the possession of the Royal Society, presented by Dr. Wolf of (Inventor of the reflector telescope, from an original y. the possession of Mr. (From the original picture by Vanderbank, in the possession of the Royal Society.) BIRTH-PLACE OF NEWTON, WOOLTHORPE, LINCOLNSHIRE GREENWICH OBSERVATORY 75 105 MR. J. R. HIND. (From a Daguerreotype by Claudet.) 134 HALLEY'S COMET, AS SEEN BY SIR JOHN F. HERSCHELL, OCTOBER 29TH, 1835 155 HALLEY'S COMET, AS SEEN BY STRUVE, OCTOBER 12TH, 1835 159 SIR J. F. HERSCHEL, BART., F.R.S. (From a portrait by H. W. Pickersgill.) 157 159 M. OTHO STRUVE. (From a Daguerreotype by Claudet.) 211 LORD ORRERY. (Print-room, British Museum.) 244 THE NEBULE: PLATE I.-THE CRAB NEBULA. II. THE GREAT NEBULA IN ORION IV. THE RING NEBULA IN THE CONSTELLATION THE ORBS OF HEAVEN. INTRODUCTORY. AN EXPOSITION OF THE PROBLEM WHICHI THE HEAVENS HE subject to which your attention is invited, claims no specific connection with the every day struggle of human life. Far away from the earth on which we dwell, in the blue ocean of space, thousands of bright orbs, in clusterings and configurations of exceeding beauty, invite the upward gaze of man, and tempt him to the examination of the wonderful sphere by which he is surrounded. The starry heavens do not display their glittering constellations in the glare of day, while the rush and turmoil of business incapacitate man for the enjoyment of their solemn grandeur. It is in the stillness of the midnight hour, when all nature is hushed in repose, when the hum of the world's on-going is no longer heard, that the planets roll and shine, and the bright stars, drooping through the deep heavens, speak to the willing spirit that would learn their mysterious being. Often have I swept backward in imagination six thousacu years, and stood beside our Great Ancestor, as he gazed for the first time upon the going down of the sun. What strange sensations must have swept through his bewildered mind, as he watched the last departing ray of the sinking orb, unconscious whether he should ever behold its return. Wrapt in a maze of thought, strange and startling, his eye long lingers about the point at which the sun had slowly faded from his view. A mysterious darkness, hitherto unexperienced, creeps over the face of nature. The beautiful scenes of earth, which, through the swift hours of the first wonderful day of his existence, had so charmed his senses, are slowly fading one by one from his dimmed vision. A gloom, deeper than that which covers earth, steals across the mind of earth's solitary inhabitant. He raises his inquiring gaze towards heaven, and lo! a silver crescent of light, clear and beautiful, hanging in the western sky, meets his astonished eye. The young moon charms his untutored vision, and leads him upward to her bright attendants, which are now stealing, one by one, from out the deep blue sky. The solitary gazer bows, and wonders, and adores. The hours glide by; the silver moon is gone; the stars are rising, slowly ascending the heights of heaven, and solemnly sweeping downward in the stillness of the night. The first grand revolution to mortal vision is nearly completed. A faint streak of rosy light is seen in the east; it brightens: the stars fade; the planets are extinguished the eye is fixed in mute astonishment on the growing splendour, till the first rays of the returning sun dart their radiance on the young earth and its solitary inhabitant. To him "the evening and the morning were the first day." : The curiosity excited on this first solemn night, the consciousness that in the heavens God had declared his glory, the eager desire to comprehend the mysteries that dwell in these bright orbs, have clung to the descendants of him who first watched and wondered, through the long lapse of six thousand years. In this boundless field of investigation, human genius has won its most signal victories. Generation after generation has rolled away, age after age has swept silently by, but each has swelled by its contribution the stream of discovery. One barrier after another has given way to the force of intellect; mysterious movements have been unravelled; mighty laws have been revealed; ponderous orbs have been weighed, their reciprocal influences computed, their complex wanderings made clear; until the mind, majestic in its strength, has mounted step by step up the rocky height of its self-built pyramid, from whose starcrowned summit it looks out upon the grandeur of the universe, self-clothed with the prescience of a God. With resistless energy it rolls back the tide of time, and lives in the configuration of rolling worlds a thousand years ago; or, more wonderful, it sweeps away the dark curtain from the future, and beholds those celestial scenes which shall greet the vision of generations when a thousand years shall have rolled away, breaking their noiseless waves on the dim shores of eternity. To trace the efforts of the human mind in this long and ardent struggle; to reveal its hopes and fears, its long years of patient |