What these were, no astronomer had succeeded in
defining. It was left for Herschel, with his rare powers of patient and
discriminating observation, assisted by the more powerful instruments
which his ingenuity succeeded in constructing, to discern in them
innumerable groups of worlds, in various stages of formation! A new
light was thrown upon the history of the Universe. Man was able to
assist, as it were, at the process of creation, and to watch the
development of a mass of incoherent matter into a perfect star. This
alone was a discovery which might well have immortalised the name of
Herschel.
But we owe to him the elements of our knowledge of the Sun's physical
constitution. He swept aside the erroneous theories and conjectures
which had previously prevailed, and guided the astronomical inquirer
into the right path. He convinced himself, by long and patient
researches, that the luminous envelope of the great "orb of day" was
neither a liquid nor an elastic fluid; that it was in certain respects
analogous to the clouds which wreathe our mountain-summits and fertilize
our plains; that it floated in the solar atmosphere.
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