the best
advantage, brought their high significance vividly to the public
consciousness; a result aided by the facile pen of Lalande, in rendering
intelligible the means by which these elaborate arrangements were to
issue in an accurate knowledge of the sun's distance. Lastly, Herschel's
discovery of Uranus, March 13, 1781, had the surprising effect of utter
novelty. Since the human race had become acquainted with the company of
the planets, no addition had been made to their number. The event thus
broke with immemorial traditions, and seemed to show astronomy as still
young and full of unlooked-for possibilities.

Further popularity accrued to the science from the sequel of a career so
strikingly opened. Herschel's huge telescopes, his detection by their
means of two Saturnian and as many Uranian moons, his piercing scrutiny
of the sun, picturesque theory of its constitution, and sagacious
indication of the route pursued by it through space; his discovery of
stellar revolving systems, his bold soundings of the universe, his
grandiose ideas, and the elevated yet simple language in which they were
conveyed--formed a combination powerfully effective to those least
susceptible of new impressions. Nor was the evoked enthusiasm limited to
the British Isles. In Germany, Schroeter followed--_longo intervallo_--in
Herschel's track. Von Zach set on foot from Gotha that general
communication of ideas which gives life to a forward movement. Bode
wrote much and well for unlearned readers. Lalande, by his popular
lectures and treatises, helped to form an audience which Laplace himself
did not disdain to address in the _Exposition du Systeme du Monde_.

This great accession of public interest gave the impulse to the
extraordinarily rapid progress of astronomy in the nineteenth century.
Official patronage combined with individual zeal sufficed for the elder
branches of the science. A few well-endowed institutions could
accumulate the materials needed by a few isolated thinkers for the
construction of theories of wonderful beauty and elaboration, yet
precluded, by their abstract nature, from winning general applause. But
the new physical astronomy depends for its prosperity upon the favour of
the multitude whom its striking results are well fitted to attract. It
is, in a special manner, the science of amateurs. It welcomes the most
unpretending co-operation. There is no one "with a true eye and a
faithful hand" but can do good work i