Tracing the wonders of the sky,
Beholds new constellations rise,
New systems crown the argent skies;
Views with new lustre round the glowing pole,
Wide his stupendous orb the Georgian Planet roll.”
On the 11th January, 1787, Dr. Herschell discovered the second and fourth satellites which attend his own planet the Georgium Sidus; and in the following years, previously to 1791, he observed four others revolving round the same body. Though this celebrated astronomer was the first who discovered the Georgium Sidus to be one of the planets of the solar system, yet no doubt can be entertained of its having been before observed and considered as a fixed star. Flamsteed in 1690, Mayer in 1756, and Monnier in 1769, determined the places of three stars which cannot now be found. And M. La Place, according to his theory of Jupiter and Saturn, has found that the Georgium Sidus was exactly in those three points at those very times. These truly singular occurrences leave no doubt of the identity of these three stars with the new planet. The lines which Mallet applied to Saturn are now, with a little alteration, more applicable to the Georgium Sidus, or Herschell planet.
“Last, outmost Herschell walks his frontier round,
The boundary of worlds; with his pale moons,
Faint-glimmering through the darkness night has thrown,
Deep-dy’d and dead, o’er this chill globe forlorn: