"This method of viewing the heavens seems to throw them into a new kind of light. They are now seen to resemble a luxuriant garden which contains the greatest variety of productions in different flourishing beds, and one advantage we may at least reap from it is, that we can, as it were, extend the image of our experience to an immense duration. For is it not almost the same thing whether we live successively to witness the germination, blooming, foliage, fecundity, fading, withering and corruption of a plant, or whether a vast number of specimens selected from every stage through which the planet passes in the course of its existence be brought at once to our view?"
This is a finely-expressed and profound thought, and the mind which originated it must indeed win our admiration and respect.
Surely the house in King Street, Bath, and the association with it, may well consecrate it as a shrine which all who appreciate true and honest labour, and brave struggles with difficulties, should visit. The discovery of the planet Uranus in that house was a grand achievement. The light thrown on the mysteries of double stars, and of the perpetual motion and marvellous evolutions of the milky way was scarcely a less memorable step towards the better understanding of the star-depths which mortals may well scan with bated breath, so infinite is the infinite! But it almost seems to me that pilgrims to the house where the great astronomer and musician lived and worked, may do well to think most of the faithful performance of duty, the unflinching perseverance, the courageous struggle with untold difficulties which was carried on by William and Caroline Herschel while the Bath season was at its height, and the butterflies of fashion and the votaries of pleasure danced and chattered, and sang and made merry in the assemblies, where a hundred years ago so many people whose names are now forgotten, flocked in the pursuit of health and amusement! There will always be these contrasts sharply defined. The bees and the butterflies go forth together over the same flowery pastures. There are countless hidden workers, unknown to fame, who yet do their part--if a humble part, in life--in the place appointed them by God. But there are some who by force of an indomitable will and the highest gifts of intellect and culture leave behind them a name which to all time shall be honoured, and Bath may think herself favoured that in the long list of distinguished men and women who have frequented that fair city and Queen of the West, she may write in letters of gold the names of William Herschel and his sister Caroline.