to say, unlike the vision of the morning and the evening rehearsed in Babylonwhich was true, but none understood itthis vision yielded realities through the interpretation of a figment of the imagination. The distance of Ceres from Jupiter was to a nicety double its distance from Mars; and the periodic time round the sun, which Baron Zach had predicted to be 43 years, turned out to be actually upwards of 4. But the planet was very small; so small and so ill-shaped as hardly to deserve the name of a planet. It seemed like a huge fragment of rock, struck off from some larger globe. This fact induced Olbers to conjecture that it was only the portion of a planet which had burst from some internal explosion. He expected that, if search were made, other similar fragments would be picked up; and he had himself the good fortune to discover one on the 28th of March, 1802, and a third on the 29th of March, 1807. Meantime a fourth had been discovered by Harding. And now occurs one of those remarkable blanks which present themselves in the annals of every branch of scientific discovery. The wise and gracious Disposer of Events seems to mete out to each generation its proper limit of success, that future ages may have a store reserved for the exercise of their faculties. The history of the steam-engine, the history of optics, equally with that of astronomy, exhibit stations of unaccountable arrestment. A restraining hand seems to hide, with the thinnest veil, bright objects from the eyes of searchers. Not a single addition was made to the catalogue of these little planets-asteroids, as they are calledfrom March, 1807, to December, 1845— 38 years. It was not because they were not sought for that they were not

found. On the contrary, the look-out had been most careful. Olbers states, that from 1801 to 1816 he had examined the part of the heavens where the other asteroids had been discovered, with such strict scrutiny and unfailing regularity, that he was quite certain no new planets had passed. On the 6th December, 1845, Professor Hencke had the good fortune to find a fifth asteroid, naming it Astræa; and now, in 1861, seventeen years later, the number has been increased by sixty-two more. No less than eight were discovered in one year, 1857, and we may reasonably expect four or five annually. We owe this abundant crop of planets to the excellence of the German star-maps, and to the new mode of observation, which consists in constantly comparing a district of the heavens with its map. The difficulty is now no longer to find planets, but to find names for them. The English discoverer, Hind, names one of his Victoria, and the French discoverer, Goldschmidt, names one of his Eugenia. The Pantheon is exhausted -very nearly at least, only a muse or two being left; and Urania is weeping because men will persist in desecrating the skies by raising mortals to them.

There is little to add about the asteroids, and that little of no great importance. The interest which attaches to their discovery is all expressed when we say that they were wanted and looked for. I will pass on then to another case of anticipation of a still higher class.

I have spoken of the empirical law of Bode as a dream; but it was not the only dream which haunted the waking, hours of the German mind during the latter half of the last century. There was another dream equally unsubstantial, and almost equally fruitful. Kant, the great metaphysician, had confidently asserted that there would be found at least one planet beyond Saturn; and his reason was this-that, as nature does not operate abruptly, she must have filled up the interval between the planets and the comets with some intermediate bodies. The reason may be good or bad; it is certain that men were on the

look-out. Twenty years after the prediction is uttered, Uranus enters on the stage, filling up some portion of the gap. The German metaphysician is right: the planet has appeared in obedience to the prediction. But it has done more. It has appeared at a distance from Saturn only a little more than double the distance of the latter from Jupiter-just what the law of Bode required. The German dreamer is right, too.

Twenty years, save one, pass away, concluding the century, and Ceres appears, as we have explained, filling up the gap between Mars and Jupiter. Here are two facts-enough, in good sooth, says the German mind. On these I can build a theory that shall span the heavens. The law of nature is a law of continuity, argues Kant. The law of planetary distance is a law of duplication, argues Bode. Facts have borne out both arguments. Accordingly, when Ceres ushered in the present century, she was received throughout Germany as a long-expected stranger, and in many quarters as the harbinger of another and another planet. We have seen how Dr. Olbers took up the matter, and with what triumphant success. But astronomers did not limit themselves to the space between Mars and Jupiter. They saw in the dim distance a chain of bodies stretching away from Uranus to the dogstar. They even went further. They gave to the remote imaginary planet next in succession in the vast abyss "a local habitation and a name. In Jacobi's pocket-book for 1802 we read thus-" Ophion, the next planet beyond "Uranus, is 780 millions of (German) "miles distant from the sun, and has an "orbit of 250 years. It is not yet dis"covered."

serenity of his movements. Some astronomers thought the law of gravitation at fault, but the wisest men reverted to the now almost forgotten notion of an outer planet. Amongst these was the illustrious Bessel. Speculations like the following began to find favour. Mädler, in 1841, writes-"Had we possessed "very exact Saturnian observations [prior "to 1781], extended over a long series "of years, it might have been possible "to have discovered Uranus theoretically "by analytical combinations before Her"schel found it (by telescopic observa"tion);" and he adds, applying this conclusion to Uranus, "We approach a

planet acting upon and disturbing it;

yes, we may express the hope that "analysis will, some time or other, "solemnize this, her highest triumph"making discoveries with her mind's eye in regions where our actual sight "has failed to penetrate."

This is the language of a visionarya dreamer; but a dreamer of a very different cast from those we have already been speaking of. The dreams of the astronomer of Dorpat, and such as he, were like those of that strange deaf dreamer Kitto, who, when in the lowest depths of poverty, and the most pitiable state of helplessness, saw himself in a dream risen in station, and surrounded by books and manuscripts all his own; while into those ears where earthly sounds could find no access an angel whispered words which, like the touch of Ithuriel's spear, caused the vision to start up into a reality. These were, in truth, no dreams. Sparks from the anvil of time's workshop fell hot and hissing on the souls of astronomers. A student, young and unknown, sits in his lonely rooms in St. John's College, Cambridge. It is vacation-time, but vacation-time finds him hard at work. And, as he works, a spark reaches his soul, and kindles within him the desire to be, like Columbus, the discoverer of a world. drift thrown upon Uranus from the dark ocean tells him that there is life beyond; and he longs to set out on a voyage of discovery. But his longings cannot yet be satisfied; so he writes in his journal

The

of the 3d of July, 1841-"Formed a "design of investigating, as soon as pos"sible after taking my degree, the irre"gularities in the motion of Uranus, in "order to find whether they may be "attributed to the action of an undis"covered planet beyond it, and, if possible, to determine the elements of its "orbit, which would probably lead to "its discovery." Good resolutions often come to nought; but this was more than a good resolution-it was a great resolution. And great resolutions are the forerunners of great deeds. They belong to great minds. The servants of Naaman knew their master when they said, "If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it ?" And so this young man acts upon his great resolve, and consecrates some of the best years of his life-the years which others in his circumstances would have devoted to the acquisition of a little of this world's good-to a patient search after the disturbing agent which is at work on the remotest planet of our system. And the work is done. The planet is found. But here again occurs one of those remarkable conjunctions with which the history of science abounds. Whilst Mr. Adams is quietly pursuing his calculations at Cambridge, another man is occupied with a similar work in Paris. And the results are almost coincident. Adams had caught the planet-it was in his net; but, from the want of an accurate star-map, there required some little time for its identification. The process was going on surely and steadily; but it was incomplete, when Leverrier stepped in and bore off the prize.

Of course you will conclude that astronomers so distinguished as Adams and Leverrier gave no heed to an empirical law like that of Bode, which had not even the semblance of a basis to stand on. You are wrong. Both astronomers tacked that law to their preliminary hypotheses. They used it just as a statesman would use rumours of a French invasion. They don't believe a word of it, but there can be no harm in employing it in the construction of a nation of sharpshooters!

As an episode to this curious history, it remains to be added that M. Leverrier, having succeeded so wonderfully in detecting a planet situated beyond the outer borders of the known system, naturally set to work to try his hand on the space lying between Mercury and the sun. The result was that, on the 2d of January, 1860, he announced that the irregularities traceable in the motion of Mercury would be made to disappear if a planet of the size of Mercury, and situated at half his distance from the sun-or, better still, if a group of planets like those which we have spoken of, lying between Mars and Jupiter-should be found. But in the dazzling proximity of the sun it was no easy matter to look for such bodies. They might exist, and their places might be pretty well determined, as was the place of Neptune; but what eagle-eye should pierce through the rays of the sun? Whilst men were debating this question a rumour arose that the thing had already been done. A medical practitioner residing in the provinces of France had been addicted to astronomy from his infancy, and for twenty years had been ruminating on the law of Bode; and, being led, by studying that law, to believe the possibility of the existence of a planet between Mercury and the sun, he had argued that, if there is such a planet, he must often cross the sun's disk. Accordingly, whenever his professional duties allowed him leisure during the day, he set himself on the watch. On the 26th of March, 1859, he observed the passage of the body he had been looking for. This circumstance is made known to Leverrier soon after the publication of the memoir referred to. He hastens down to the country, and marches up to the doctor's residence. The worthy man, whose name is Lescarbault, submits to the astronomer's crossexamination. He demands the record of the observations, and it is found covered with grease and laudanum, performing the part of marker in the Connaissance des Temps. He asks for the rough drafts of the calculations which have led M. Lescarbault to the conclusion that the planet's distance is half

AFTER giving his account of the Reformation in Scotland, and propounding his theory of the nature and causes of that movement, Mr. Buckle continues his sketch of Scottish ecclesiastical history as far as the Revolution of 1688-9. In the events of these hundred and thirty years he finds also a thin sort of unity, consisting in a modification of that problem of three bodies, in terms of which he had represented all prior Scottish history as capable of being expressed. He does not say this directly himself. Indeed, as soon as he has got a little way clear of the Reformation, his problem of three bodies seems rather to desert him; and, though we still hear of king, nobles, and clergy, and are called upon to contemplate, as before, their mutual attractions and repulsions, there has somehow bounced up in the meantime a vast, black fourth body, the people, of whom it seems to be necessary to take account more and more, and whose relations to the king, nobles, and clergy have suddenly become such that the movement which we were taught so expressly to regard as aristocratic in its origin assumes, under our eyes, a decidedly democratic prolongation. In other words, after passing the immediate fact of the Reformation, Mr. Buckle does come round very considerably to the more ordinary view, which represents the course of the Reformed Kirk of Scotland as an extraordinary development of democratic spirit and principle. I believe that there is a historical inconsistency, which he would find it difficult to get over, between his acquiescence in this account of the course and tendency of the Reformed Kirk after its establishment, and his preceding account of the manner in which it came to be established. Mr. Buckle, however, has

a way of letting himself over the apparent inconsistency. It is as follows:

Although the Reformation was the act of the nobles, triumphing over the old clergy and the crown, it was no sooner effected than they found themselves face to face with a Frankenstein of their own raising, in the shape of the new Protestant preachers, who had gone with them so far. These black-coated gentry, appearing in the field after the battle was over, had their own views as to the division of the spoil, and somewhat astonished the barons and lairds by saying so. In Mr. Buckle's own words,

Immediately the revolution was com"pleted, the nobles and the preachers "began to quarrel about the wealth of "the Church. The nobles, thinking that "they ought to have it, took it into their own hands. Thereupon the Protestant

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preachers said that the nobles were "instigated by the devil." The nobles, we are left to imagine, only clung the harder to what they had seized, and told the preachers to go to the personage named. They did not go quite so far; but they did the next most vehement thing in the circumstances; they went to the people. "The clergy," says Mr. Buckle, "finding themselves despised by "the governing class, united themselves "heartily with the people, and advocated "democratic principles. In 1574 Mel"ville became their leader. Under his "auspices that great struggle began "which never stopped until, sixty years

later, it produced the rebellion against "Charles I." This struggle, he goes on to explain, assumed at once the form of a contest whether Presbyterianism or Episcopacy should be the system of the Reformed Kirk. The preachers and the people fought frantically for Presbyterianism; but the nobles upheld Episco