Further, he had entered
upon the experiments which ultimately showed that the Sun positively
moves; that in this, as in other respects, the magnificent orb of day
must be ranged among the stars; that the apparently inextricable
irregularities of numerous sidereal proper motions arise in great part
from the displacement of the Solar System; that, in short, the point of
space toward which Earth and its sister planets are annually advancing,
is situated in the constellation of Hercules.
"Let us," says a French writer, "to these immortal labours add the
ingenious ideas that we owe to Herschel on the nebulae, on the
constitution of the Milky Way, on the Universe as a whole,--ideas which
almost by themselves constitute the actual history of the formation of
the worlds,--and we cannot but have a deep reverence for that powerful
genius that scarcely ever erred, notwithstanding the ardour of its
imagination."
The ordinary spectator, looking upon the face of the heavens through a
telescope, had, prior to Herschel's time, felt his curiosity excited by
the appearance here and there of filmy patches, vague in structure and
irregular in shape, which, from their resemblance to clouds, received
the name of _nebulae_.
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