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The first and most conspicuous specimen of this class was met with in April, 1845; it is situated in Canes Venatici, close to the tail of the Great Bear, and wore, in Sir J. Herschel's instruments, the aspect of a split ring encompassing a bright nucleus, thus presenting, as he supposed, a complete analogue to the system of the Milky Way.
It may, perhaps, be thought that, noting this, I should withdraw the objection raised above against Sir J. Herschel's idea that the star in Cassiopeia may return to view once in 156 years, instead of once in 312 years.
They had no money to buy his discharge, and so, not to call the transaction by any other than its true name, William Herschel was forced to run away from the army. We must not judge too harshly of this desertion, for the times were hard, and the lives of men in Herschel's position were valued at very little by the constituted authorities.
The career of Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve illustrates the maxim that science differentiates as it develops. He was, while much besides, a specialist in double stars. His earliest recorded use of the telescope was to verify Herschel's conclusion as to the revolving movement of Castor, and he never varied from the predilection which this first observation at once indicated and determined.
In all probability they were then for the first time seen; for although Professor Holden made out a plausible case in favour of the fitful visibility to Herschel of each of them in turn, Lassell's argument that the glare of the planet in Herschel's great specula must have rendered almost impossible the perception of objects so minute and so close to its disc, appears tolerably decisive to the contrary.
Herschel's later view, which held that some at least of the nebulae are composed of a "shining fluid," in process of condensation to form stars, was generally accepted for almost half a century. But in 1844, when Lord Rosse's great six-foot reflector the largest telescope ever yet constructed was turned on the nebulae, it made this hypothesis seem very doubtful.
However, the operation of re-silvering a glass has now become such a simple one that the advantage this indicates is not relatively so great as might at first be supposed. Some years elapsed after Herschel's attention had been first directed to astronomy, before he reaped the reward of his exertions in the possession of a telescope which would adequately reveal some of the glories of the heavens.
Sir John Herschel's views as to the nature of nebulæ were considerably modified by Lord Rosse's success in "resolving" with his great reflectors a crowd of these objects into stars.
Bulman at Leeds, for whom he afterwards generously provided a place as clerk to the Octagon Chapel at Bath. Indeed, it is a very pleasing trait in William Herschel's character that to the end he was constantly engaged in finding places for his early friends, as well as for the less energetic or less fortunate members of his own family.
"In short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, that the whole story of a correspondence with Germany, a university of Nobody-knows-where, a Professor of Things in General, a Counsellor Grasshopper, a Flower-Goddess Blumine, and so forth, has about as much foundation in truth as the late entertaining account of Sir John Herschel's discoveries in the moon.
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