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It was, however, the precursor of a whole series of magnificent instruments, each outstripping the other in magnitude, until at last the culminating point was attained in 1845, by the construction of Lord Rosse's mammoth reflector of six feet in aperture. Newton's discovery of the composition of light led to an embittered controversy, which caused no little worry to the great Philosopher.

Lord Rosse's nebula appears far more wonderful in the photographs than in his drawings made with the aid of his giant reflecting telescope at Parsonstown, for the photographic plate records details that no telescope is capable of showing. Suppose we look at the photograph of this object as any person of common sense would look at any great and strange natural phenomenon.

If telescopes of a greater range should hereafter be constructed, there is every reason to believe that these also will be resolved to the eye into their component parts as stars; and in fact, if newspaper accounts may be credited, when Lord Rosse's new and magnificent telescope was first turned towards some of these spots, which had always preserved their nebulous appearance when examined by inferior instruments, it was immediately apparent, that they were composed of distinct stars.

There being at this period, 1669, a project for divorcing the king from the queen, it was considered Lord Rosse's suit, if successful, would facilitate a like bill in favour of his majesty. After many and stormy debates his lordship gained his case by a majority of two votes. It is worth noting that two of the lords spiritual, Dr. Cosin, Bishop of Durham, and Dr.

Sir William Herschel had determined the places of 2,500 nebulæ in the northern hemisphere; they were examined by his son, and drawings made of some of the most remarkable, but when these nebulæ were viewed through Lord Rosse's telescope, they presented a very different appearance, showing that the apparent form of the nebulæ depends upon the space-penetrating power of the telescope, a circumstance of vital importance in observing the changes which time may produce on these wonderful objects.

William Gowans, of this city, during the same year, brought out a very neat edition, in paper covers, illustrated with a view of the moon, as seen through Lord Rosse's grand telescope, in 1856. But this, too, has all been sold; and the most indefatigable book-collector might find it difficult to purchase a single copy at the present time.

Mr Cochran has invented one; and it is said that at the Earl of Rosse's first soirée as president of the Royal Society, a model of this timber-cutting machine was exhibited; that Prince Albert cut a miniature timber with it; and that he thus began an apprenticeship to the national art of ship-building.

In the reign of Charles the Second, in 1671, Sir Isaac Newton constructed his first reflecting telescope, a small ill-made instrument, nine inches only in length valuable as it was, a pigmy in power compared to Lord Rosse's six-feet reflector of sixty feet in length. Torricelli, the pupil of Galileo, invented the barometer.

A new era for the human intellect, upon a path that lies amongst its most aspiring, is promised, is inaugurated, by Lord Rosse's almost awful telescope. What is it then that Lord Rosse has accomplished?

It is not to be believed that such a creature as this, which is probably just sensitive to light and nothing more, should be able to form any conception of an eye and set itself to work to grow one, any more than it is believable that he who first observed the magnifying power of a dew-drop, or even he who first constructed a rude lens, should have had any idea in his mind of Lord Rosse's telescope with all its parts and appliances.