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His wife was a widow lady of scientific tastes like his own, and she was possessed of considerable means, which enabled him henceforth to lay aside all anxiety on the score of money. They had but one child, a son, afterwards Sir John Herschel, almost as great an astronomer as his father had been before him.
Associated with the early history of the instrument is a chapter of astronomical history which may not only instruct and amuse the public, but relieve the embarrassment of some astronomer of a future generation who, reading the published records, will wonder what became of an important discovery.
It was something beyond fear, and he would not have been otherwhere for any reward. All his mind remained poised, expectant, as the astronomer waits for the new star which his calculations have predicted to enter the field of his telescope. He caught the sound of another horse coming, far different even to his unpracticed ear from the beat of hoofs which announced the coming of Buck Daniels.
All present felt its power, and every eye was fixed upon the enchanter, who was swaying a multitude as though their emotions had been his slaves, and his music the voice that bade them live or die. "Ah!" whispered the astronomer, "you made a mistake of a part of speech. The man has not instruments, but AN instrument."
We may add that verse itself is perfected, in the hands of men of poetic genius, in proportion to the severity of this mechanical regulation. Where Pope or Racine had one rule of metre, Victor Hugo has twenty, and he observes them as rigorously as an algebraist or an astronomer observes the rules of calculation or demonstration.
We should not have to tell of the persecution of a Bruno or of a Galileo for teaching this doctrine in the seventeenth century of an era which did not begin till two hundred years after the death of Aristarchus. But, as we know, the teaching of the astronomer of Samos did not win its way.
The "seas," or, more correctly, plains, excited our travellers' curiosity to a very high degree, and they set themselves at once to examine their nature. The astronomer who first gave names to those "seas" in all probability was a Frenchman. Hevelius, however, respected them, even Riccioli did not disturb them, and so they have come down to us.
It is a small quarto of 8-3/4 x 6-1/2 inches, bound in old mottled leather, and consisting of 251 leaves of paper, written on both sides in the Irish character, apparently in the reign of James VI. It bears the following inscription in Sir Walter's hand: "The kind donor of this book is the Right Rev. Bishop of Cloyne, famed for his skill in science, and especially as an astronomer." Dr.
M. Von Kielchen procured me for this purpose a convenient country-house, situated on the romantic little bay of Botafogo, of which I took possession on the following day, accompanied by our astronomer, M. Preus; leaving the care of the ship to my officers.
So she went on in a rattling, giddy kind of way, for she was excited by the strange scene in which she found herself, and quite astonished the young astronomer with her vivacity. But Swedenborg's firm belief that the fancies engendered in his mind were scientific realities is very different from the conscious play of fancy in the passage just quoted.
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