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236 imaginings rest on a more solid foundation than theories, at their birth, can usually boast of.

In pursuit of his favourite study—the plan of the Creator in constructing the Temple of the Heavens—Herschel, with fuller knowledge, and after many years of labour, departed from Cassini's simple classification of nebulæ, and adopted another in closer agreement with facts. It was as follows:—

As he entered these nebulæ on a star map, it was evident to the eye that the parts of the heavens at a distance from the Milky Way are most abundant in white clouds. Of a connection between them and the Milky Way he does not appear to have been certain. We must leave it as he left it—in uncertainty and doubt. Future ages may determine whether the whole material universe, designed by one mind, governed by the same laws, built of the same materials, and upheld for purposes in which the mighty littleness of man seems to play a not unimportant part, moral as well as intellectual, has been spread out before our eyes. We can only look on in wondering adoration at the