The Via Lactea, or "Milky Way," had long been supposed to consist of a nebulous, vague, luminous matter, but Herschel showed that it was really made up of stars and systems of stars.
After struggling for some thirty minutes against his rapidly increasing weakness, the great astronomer, bowed by his burden of years and labours, was forced to retire to his bed, with little hope that he would ever rise from it again. For ten days and nights his wife and sister watched by his side in painful suspense, until, on the 25th of August, the end came. Peacefully closed a life which had passed in a peace and quietness not often vouchsafed to man.
Herschel, says a brother astronomer, will never cease to occupy an eminent place in the small group of our contemporary men of genius, while his name will descend to the most distant posterity. The variety and the magnificence of his labours vie with their extent. The more they are studied, the more they are admired. For it is with great men as it is with great movements in the Arts and in national history,—we cannot understand them without observing them from different points of view.
What a brilliant roll of achievements is recalled to the mind by the name of William Herschel! The discovery of Uranus, and of its satellites; of the fifth and sixth satellites of Saturn; of the many spots at the poles of Mars; of the rotation of Saturn's ring; of the belts of Saturn; of the rotation of Jupiter's satellites; of the daily period of Saturn and Venus; and of the motions of binary sidereal systems,—added to his investigations into nebulae, the Milky Way, and double, triple, and multiple stars;—all this we owe to his patient, his persevering, his daring genius! He may almost be styled the Father of Modern Astronomy.
CHAPTER IV.
