CHAPTER XCVI.
A MUSICIAN'S WISH EXCITED BY HERSCHEL'S TELESCOPE. SYMPATHY BETWEEN PETER HOPKINS AND HIS PUPIL. INDIFFERENTISM USEFUL IN ORDINARY POLITICS, BUT DANGEROUS IN RELIGION.
Noi intendiamo parlare alle cose che utili sono alla umana vita, quanto per nostro intendimento si potrà in questa parte comprendere; e sopra quelle particelle che detto avemo di comporre.
BUSONE DA GUBBIO.
When Miller talked of his friend Herschel's good fortune, and of his astronomical discoveries, and of his sister, Miss Caroline Herschel, who, while in his absence she could get possession of his twenty-feet reflector, amused herself with sweeping the sky, and searching for comets in the neighbourhood of the sun, the warm-hearted and musical-minded man used to wish that the science of acoustics had been advanced in the same degree as that of optics, and that his old friend, when he gave up music as a profession, had still retained it as a pursuit; for, had he constructed auditory tubes of proportionate power and magnitude to his great telescope, “who knows,” said Miller, “but we might have been enabled to hear the music of the spheres!” Pythagoras used to listen to that music, when he retired into the depths of his own being; and, according to his disciples, to him alone of all mortals has it been audible. But philosophers in modern times have thought that the existence of this music is more than an enthusiast's dream, a poet's fiction, or an impostor's fable. They say it may be inferred as probable from some of Newton's discoveries; and as a consequence of that principle of harmony which in some parts of the system of nature is so clearly shown, and in others so mysteriously indicated.
As for the Doctor, when Miller talked to him of Miss Herschel's performances in sky-sweeping and comet-hunting, it reminded him of the nursery song, and he quoted the lines,
Old woman, old woman whither so high?
I'm going to sweep cobwebs off the sky,
And I shall be back again by and bye: