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Show A PORTRAIT OF HERSCHEL. Now for the old astronomer himself. His simplicity, his kindness, his anecdotes, his readiness to explain - and make perfectly conspicuous, too - his own [unreadable word] conception of the universe are indescribably charming. He is seventy-six, but fresh and soat; and there he sat, nearest the door at his friend's house, alternately smiling at a joke or contentedly sitting without [unreadable world] or notice in the conversation. Any train of conversation be follows implicitly; anything you ask, he labors with a sort of boyish earnestness to explain. I was anxious to get from [unreadable word] as many particulars as I could aobut his interview with [unreadable word]. The latter it was reported, had astonished him by his [unreadable word] knowledge. "No," he said; "the First [unreadable word] did surprise us by hiw quickness and versatility on all subjects; but [unreadable words] he seemed to know little more than [unreadable word] well-educated gentleman, and of astronomy much less, for instance, than our own King. His general air," he said, "was something like affecting to know more than he did know." He was high, and tried to be great with [unreadable word] I suppose, without success; and "I remarked," said the astronomer, [unreadable words] is concluding the conversation on astronomy by observing how all three glorious views gore proofs of the Almighty Wisdom." I asked him if he thought the eyeloom of [unreadable word] to be quite certain, with regard to the [unreadable word] of the planetary system from the efforts of gravitation losing [unreadable words]? He said no, he thought by no means that the universe was so poured from the [unreadable word] of sudden losses of parls?. He was convinced that there had existed a planet between Mars and Jupiter, in our own system, of which the little asteroids, or [unreadable word] lately discovered are indubitably fragments, and "Remember," said he, "that though they have discovered only some of those parts, there will be [unreadable word] - perhaps 80,000 more -yet discovered." This planet he believed to have been lost by explosion. With great kindness and patience he referred me, in the course of my attempts to talk with him, to a theorem in Newton's "Principles of [unreadable word] Philosophy," in which the time that the light takes to travel from the sun is proved with a simplicity which requires but few steps in reasoning. So talking of some inconceivably direct bodies, he introduced the menus? Of this plain theorem, to remind me that the progress of light could be ever used in the one case as well as the other. Then, speaking of himself, he was with a modesty of manner which quite overcame me, when taken together with the greatness of the assertion: "I have looked farther into space than ever human being did before me. I have offered stars, of which the light I can be proved, most take two millions of years to reach this earth." I really and unresignedly felt at this moment as if I had been conversing with a supernatural intelligence. "Never more," said he, "if those distant bodies had deceased to exist two millions of years ago, we should still see them, and sunlight would travel after the body was gone." These were Herschel's words and if you had heard him speak them, you would not think he was apt to tell more than the truth. After leaving Herschel I felt elevated and [unreadable word[; and have in writing to you made only this memorandum of some of the most interesting moments of my life. - [Leter by the poet [unreadable word]. |