Page:Hector Macpherson - Herschel (1919).djvu/60

54 view that "not only our sun, but all the stars we can see with the eye are deeply immersed in the Milky Way and form a component part of it". Nevertheless, in the paper of 1818, he held that some of the nebulae, not obviously composed of true nebulous matter, which he called "ambiguous objects" are "clusters of stars in disguise, on account of their being so deeply immersed in space that none of the gauging powers of our telescopes have hitherto been able to reach them". Obviously, he still clung to the view that some of these dim, misty objects were "island universes".

The paper of 1818 was the last which Herschel wrote on the construction of the heavens. He failed in the object of his search, but countless others have failed since his day, and at the present time astronomers are still groping after the solution of the great problem. Herschel did not labour in vain: his papers on the structure of the universe form the foundation of all subsequent research. In the eloquent words of the late Miss Clerke: "One cannot reflect without amazement that the special life-task set himself by this struggling musician—originally a penniless deserter from the Hanoverian Guard—was nothing less than to search out the construction of the heavens. He did not accomplish it, for that was impossible; but he never relinquished it, and, in grappling with it, laid deep and sure the foundations of sidereal science."