But Strauss, as a philosopher, is guilty of a singular contradiction. While, on the one hand, he recognises the eternal truth and grandeur of the imperishable elements of the Grecian and Roman spirit; on the other, he studiously confounds the eternal and imperishable spirit of Christianity with the perishable forms in which it appeared during the Middle Ages. That he should protest against the chimerical attempt to revive the dead that he should ridicule all efforts to bring back into the living Present the lifeless formularies of the Past, is worthy of his position and of his renown; but, is it possible, that the Christianity of our age only rises before him as identified with feudal institutions, and that he can see nothing in its spirit beyond the restoration of temporary formularies, only to die out with them? Julian, he says, is antipathetic to him, inasmuch as Julian wishes to arrest the march of the world's progress antipathetic as a Romanticist; but the spirit which Julian wished to revivethe harmonious manhood of Greece and the simple strength of Rome that has Strauss's hearty approbation. To our mind, nothing can be more unfair, than the covert insinuation which this passage is intended to convey: it is a compliment to classical antiquity at the expense of Christianity. We understand a preference for the antique spirit over that of the Middle Ages; but we do not understand the blindness which identifies the Middle Ages with Christianity.

There is something solemn and prophetic in the close of this pamphlet. Christian writers, he says, have disfigured the death scene of Julian. They have represented him as furious, blaspheming, despairing, and in his despair exclaiming Thou hast conquered, O Galilean! - Vevikηkas, Tariλais! This νενίκηκας, Γαλιλαῖς! phrase, though false as history, has a truth in it. It contains a prophecy to us a consoling prophecy-and it is this: Every Julian, i. e. every great and powerful man, who would attempt to resuscitate a state of society which has died, will infallibly be vanquished by the Galilean-for the Galilean is nothing less than the genius of the future!

We here conclude our humble task. All our readers are familiar at least with the name of Strauss. The parallel in question is a favourite idea, we are told, at present in Germany, where a miso-Berlinism has long prevailed. This jealousy has extended to the king: and the most popular caricature of the present troubled period represents Frederick William IV. straining his limbs in the Garden of Sans Souci, in order to tread in some imaginary footsteps of Frederick the Great. A parallel which personifies a tendency to reaction, by the character and history of Julian, may be worked out, we conceive,

by a German scholar, without any sense of injustice to the king. Strauss is evidently all in earnest; though a pamphlet of the kind in England would be probably taken for only a learned pastime, such as might have amused the erudite leisure of Arbuthnot, or exercised the lively pedantry of Dr. Parr.

ART. V.- Results of Astronomical Observations made during the years 1834, 1835, 1836, 1837, and 1838, at the Cape of Good Hope, being the Completion of the Survey of the whole Surface of the Heavens, commenced in 1825. By Sir JOHN F. W. HERSCHEL, Bart., K. H., &c. &c.

THE

HE work whose title we have placed at the head of this article forms the record of the completion of the greatest astronomical enterprise that was ever undertaken by the members of one family. It was begun about seventy years ago, by Sir William Herschel, the father, assisted by his sister Caroline* and his brother Alexander†, and continued by him,

This venerable lady died at Hanover at the beginning of the present year, in the ninety-eighth year of her age. She had acted as the recognised assistant of her brother for nearly half a century, and received a small salary in that capacity from George the Third. She wrote down all his observations, which he dictated from his stage, whilst engaged in sweeping the heavens with his twenty-feet or other telescopes; she attended him in all his night watches, which were generally continued up to the approach of daylight: she noted the clocks, reduced and arranged his journals, prepared the zone catalogues for his sweeps, and executed the whole of the laborious numerical calculations which were required for the reduction of his observations. When occasionally relieved from these duties, by the interruption of the observations, she was accustomed to sweep the heavens with a five-feet reflector, which her brother had constructed for her special use, in search of comets and other objects, and her labours were rewarded by the discovery of eight comets (five of which are recorded in the Philosophical Transactions), besides several remarkable nebulæ and clusters of stars. After her brother's death, in 1822, she retired to her native city, where she continued to enjoy, in a green old age, the respect and regard of her friends and relatives, the just honours paid her by the king and royal family, the homage rendered to her name and services by men of science and astronomers who, from time to time, visited her in her retirement, and, above all, the satisfaction of witnessing, in the person of her nephew, the assiduous prosecution of those researches which were so intimately associated in her mind with all her tenderest recollections.

† He was a practical mechanic of no ordinary skill and ingenuity,

with little or no interruption, almost down to the close of a very long life; for we find that one of the most considerable of his Memoirs was published in the Philosophical Transactions' for 1818, when in the eightieth year of his age. In 1825 it was resumed by his son, chiefly, as we believe, from a profound sentiment of respect for his father's memory, who devoted eight years to a review of his observations, and to a systematic survey of those portions of the heavens which are visible in our latitudes: the further examination of the southern heavens, and the reduction and discussion of the vast series of observations which is contained in the work before us, have continued to occupy his almost undivided attention up to the present time.

The second survey of the northern hemisphere was completed in 1833, and its results are contained in an elaborate catalogue of 2306 nebulæ and clusters of stars, which is given in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for that year, and also in six catalogues of double stars, which are to be found in different volumes of the Memoirs of the Astronomical Society.' Of the first class of objects only 525 were new, and those generally inconsiderable in size or of the last degree of faintness: for we find amongst them only one very conspicuous nebula, and a very small number of those of the brighter kind, which had not previously appeared in the catalogues of his father. No more striking proof could be afforded of the searching and comprehensive character of the scrutiny of the heavens which had been made by that incomparable observer. In the observation of double stars, indeed, we find many astronomers of great merit, who have followed in the footsteps of the Herschels, though M. Struve, the distinguished director of the Imperial Observatory of Pulkowa, is probably the only one of their number whom we should venture to elevate to the dignity of a rival; but in the observation of nebule they have had neither competitors nor followers: it is a department of astronomy which has hitherto been entirely their own.

Our knowledge, however, of stellar astronomy, and of the construction of the heavens, (to use a phrase which Sir W. Herschel introduced,) was necessarily incomplete and unsatisfactory, as long as the southern hemisphere was not as carefully surveyed as the northern. Many objects of great interest, which are visible to observers in both hemispheres, are seen much more advantageously in one of them than in the other. The Milky Way, the subject of so many speculations, was required

and eminently useful to his brother in the framing and mounting of his telescopes.

to be examined throughout much of its southern course, which is either altogether invisible, or imperfectly seen in our latitudes, particularly those portions of it in the neighbourhood of the constellations Centaurus and of the Southern Cross, where the Coal Sack, a pear-shaped oval, as well as other spaces, almost destitute of stars and presenting a striking contrast of darkness to the crowded and brilliant regions around them, had long attracted the attention of southern voyagers and observers. The Magellanic Clouds offer to the naked eye appearances, occupying a considerable space in the heavens, similar to some parts of the Milky Way, but in no way connected with it, which have no parallel in our hemisphere. It was an inquiry of great interest, also, to ascertain whether the distribution of stars, as ascertained by the process of gauging or otherwise, followed generally the same law to the south of the Galactic circle as it did on the north. To trace, in fact, all the points, whether of parallelism or of discrepancy, which present themselves in the character and arrangement of the nebulæ and stars of the two hemispheres.

As far also as this department of astronomical science was concerned, the southern hemisphere was almost entirely a virgin field of observation. Lacaille, the well-known author of the Cœlum Stelliferum Australe,' had laboured in it long before telescopes had attained the power of penetrating deeply into space. Observatories, indeed, of the first order had been established at the Cape of Good Hope, Paramatta, and the East Indies, and some of them had been directed by astronomers of great eminence and industry; but their instruments were adapted generally to meridional observations only, and not fitted for such as this class of researches required; and though M. Dunlop had applied a reflecting telescope of nine feet focal length and of nine inches aperture, to observe the more remarkable of the southern nebulæ and clusters of stars, and had published in the 'Philosophical Transactions' for 1826 a catalogue embracing as many as 629 of those objects, yet the representations which he has given of some of the more conspicuous of them have been found to be, for the most part, either incorrect or inadequate ; whilst the descriptions of others were so imperfect, or their positions so erroneous, that Sir J. Herschel, after the most. careful research and examination, was unable to identify more than one third of their number.

It was with a view of partially filling up this great blank in our knowledge, not so much of the mere superficial phænomena of the Southern Hemisphere, such as a well-arranged catalogue of

stars, like that of Brisbane*, would partially supply, as of those profounder regions of the celestial spaces which the most powerful telescopes alone can reveal to us, that Sir J. Herschel resolved to transfer his astronomical establishment to the Cape of Good Hope. He sailed on this mission on the 13th November, 1833, in a private ship, (having declined, as we believe, a passage, offered to him by the Admiralty, in a ship of war,) and reached his destination early in the month of January following. After some delay, he selected, as the site of his observatory, a very convenient residence, named Feldhausen, about six miles distant from Cape Town; well sheltered from dust, a peculiar nuisance of the soil and climate of that neighbourhood, and protected, as far as an exuberant growth of oak and fir timber could afford it, from the wind also. It was sufficiently distant from the great Table Mountain, which rises to an elevation of more than 4000 feet, to be out of the reach of the clouds which form copiously over and around its summit; and being situated on the south-east side of it, from which the prevalent winds blow with great violence during the finer and clearer months, they were found to leave the mass of air to the windward of the mountain in comparative tranquillity, whilst they rush like a vast cataract down its mural precipices on the leeward, filling Cape Town and its neighbourhood with dust and uproar. A similar phænomenon is presented by a lofty cathedral, when it breaks the course of a violent wind: the air on the side immediately exposed to it is left in a state of comparative repose, whilst it rushes like a torrent over the ridge of the roof, and expends all its fury upon that side which is apparently least exposed to it.

The erection of the dome, and other structures necessary for the reception and use of his instruments and apparatus, was urged on with all practicable expedition as soon as he was in possession of the property which he had selected for his residence. The sweeps of the heavens, with the twentyfeet reflector, were begun within two months of his arrival at the Cape, and on the 2d of May the seven-feet equatorial was completely mounted, and made its coup d'essai in the micrometrical measurement of the magnificent double star a Centauri, which is only second in brilliance to Sirius and

α

* Compiled by M. Rumker, from observations made by him at Sir Thomas Brisbane's observatory at Paramatta. This establishment has since been transferred to the public by its liberal and noble-minded founder, and an observer, with a competent salary, appointed to superintend it but the observations, if made, have never been published.