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Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers

T >> Thomas De Quincey >> Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers




As a hint for apprehending the delicacy and difficulty of the process
in sidereal astronomy, let the inexperienced reader figure to himself
these separate cases of perplexity: 1st, A perplexity where the dilemma
arises from the collision between magnitude and distance:--is the size
less, or the distance greater? 2dly, Where the dilemma arises between
motions, a motion in ourselves doubtfully confounded with a motion in
some external body; or, 3dly, Where it arises between possible
positions of an object: is it a real proximity that we see between two
stars, or simply an apparent proximity from lying in the same visual
line, though in far other depths of space? As regards the first
dilemma, we may suppose two laws, A and B, absolutely in contradiction,
laid down at starting: A, that all fixed stars are precisely at the
same _distance_; in this case every difference in the apparent
magnitude will indicate a corresponding difference in the real
magnitude, and will measure that difference. B, that all the fixed
stars are precisely of the same _magnitude_; in which case, every
variety in the size will indicate a corresponding difference in the
distance, and will measure that difference. Nor could we imagine any
exception to these inferences from A or from B, whichever of the two
were assumed, unless through optical laws that might not equally affect
objects under different circumstances; I mean, for instance, that might
suffer a disturbance as applied under hypoth. B, to different depths in
space, or under hypoth. A, to different arrangements of structure in
the star. But thirdly, it is certain, that neither A nor B is the
abiding law: and next it becomes an object by science and by
instruments to distinguish more readily and more certainly between the
cases where the distance has degraded the size, and the cases where the
size being _really_ less, has caused an exaggeration of the
distance: or again, where the size being really less, yet co-operating
with a distance really greater, may degrade the estimate, (though
travelling in a right direction,) below the truth; or again where the
size being really less, yet counteracted by a distance also less, may
equally disturb the truth of human measurements, and so on.

A second large order of equivocating appearances will arise,--not as to
magnitude, but as to motion. If it could be a safe assumption, that the
system to which our planet is attached were absolutely fixed and
motionless, except as regards its own _internal_ relations of
movement, then every change outside of us, every motion that the
registers of astronomy had established, would be objective and not
subjective. It would be safe to pronounce at once that it was a motion
in the object contemplated, _not_ in the subject contemplating.
Or, reversely, if it were safe to assume as a universal law, that no
motion was possible in the starry heavens, then every change of
relations in space, between ourselves and them, would indicate and
would measure a progress, or regress, on the part of our solar system,
in certain known directions. But now, because it is not safe to rest in
either assumption, the range of possibilities for which science has to
provide, is enlarged; the immediate difficulties are multiplied; but
with the result (as in the former case) of reversionally expanding the
powers, and consequently the facilities, lodged both in the science and
in the arts ministerial to the science. Thus, in the constellation
_Cygnus_, there is a star gradually changing its relation to our
system, whose distance from ourselves (as Dr. Nichol tells us) is
ascertained to be about six hundred and seventy thousand times our own
distance from the sun: that is, neglecting minute accuracy, about six
hundred and seventy thousand stages of one hundred million miles each.
This point being known, it falls within the _arts_ of astronomy to
translate this apparent angular motion into miles; and presuming this
change of relation to be not in the star, but really in ourselves, we
may deduce the velocity of our course, we may enter into our _log_
daily the rate at which our whole solar system is running. Bessel, it
seems, the eminent astronomer who died lately, computed this velocity
to be such (viz., three times that of our own earth in its proper
orbit) as would carry us to the star in forty-one thousand years. But,
in the mean time, the astronomer is to hold in reserve some small share
of his attention, some trifle of a side-glance, now and then, to the
possibility of an error, after all, in the main assumption: he must
watch the indications, if any such should arise, that not ourselves,
but the star in _Cygnus_, is the real party concerned, in drifting
at this shocking rate, with no prospect of coming to an anchorage.
[Footnote: It is worth adding at this point, whilst the reader
remembers without effort the numbers, viz., forty-one thousand
years, for the time, (the space being our own distance from the sun
repeated six hundred and seventy thousand times,) what would be the
time required for reaching, in the _body_, that distance to which
Lord Rosse's six feet mirror has so recently extended our
_vision_. The time would be, as Dr. Nichol computes, about two
hundred and fifty millions of years, supposing that our rate of
travelling was about three times that of our earth in its orbit. Now,
as the velocity is assumed to be the same in both cases, the ratio
between the distance (already so tremendous) of Bessel's 61
_Cygni_, and that of Lord Rosse's farthest frontier, is as forty-
one thousand to two hundred and fifty millions. This is a simple rule-
of-three problem for a child. And the answer to it will, perhaps,
convey the simplest expression of the superhuman power lodged in the
new telescope:--as is the ratio of forty-one thousand to two hundred
and fifty million, so is the ratio of our own distance from the sun
multiplied by six hundred and seventy thousand, to the outermost limit
of Lord Rosse's sidereal vision.]

Another class, and a frequent one, of equivocal phenomena, phenomena
that are reconcilable indifferently with either of two assumptions,
though less plausibly reconciled with the one than with the other,
concerns the position of stars that seem connected with each other by
systematic relations, and which yet _may_ lie in very different
depths of space, being brought into seeming connection only by the
human eye. There have been, and there are, cases where two stars
dissemble an interconnection which they really _have_, and other
cases where they simulate an interconnection which they have not. All
these cases of simulation and dissimulation torment the astronomer by
multiplying his perplexities, and deepening the difficulty of escaping
them. He cannot get at the truth: in many cases, magnitude and distance
are in collusion with each other to deceive him: motion subjective is
in collusion with motion objective; duplex systems are in collusion
with fraudulent stars, having no real partnership whatever, but
mimicking such a partnership by means of the limitations or errors
affecting the human eye, where it can apply no other sense to aid or to
correct itself. So that the business of astronomy, in these days, is no
sinecure, as the reader perceives. And by another evidence, it is
continually becoming less of a sinecure. Formerly, one or two men,--
Tycho, suppose, or, in a later age, Cassini and Horrox, and Bradley,
had observatories: one man, suppose, observed the stars for all
Christendom; and the rest of Europe observed _him_. But now, up
and down Europe, from the deep blue of Italian skies to the cold frosty
atmospheres of St. Petersburg and Glasgow, the stars are conscious of
being watched everywhere; and if all astronomers do not publish their
observations, all use them in their speculations. New and brilliantly
appointed observatories are rising in every latitude, or risen; and
none, by the way, of these new-born observatories, is more interesting
from the circumstances of its position, or more _picturesque_ to a
higher organ than the eye--viz., to the human heart--than the New
Observatory raised by the university of Glasgow.[Footnote: It has been
reported, ever since the autumn of 1845, and the report is now,
(August, 1846,) gathering strength, that some railway potentate, having
taken a fancy for the ancient college of Glasgow, as a bauble to hang
about his wife's neck, (no accounting for tastes,) has offered, (or
_will_ offer,) such a price, that the good old academic lady in
this her moss-grown antiquity, seriously thinks of taking him at his
word, packing up her traps, and being off. When a spirit of galavanting
comes across an aged lady, it is always difficult to know where it will
stop: so, in fact, you know, she may choose to steam for Texas. But the
present impression is, that she will settle down by the side of what
you may call her married or settled daughter--the Observatory; which
one would be glad to have confirmed, as indicating that no purpose of
pleasure-seeking had been working in elderly minds, but the instinct of
religious rest and aspiration. The Observatory would thus remind one of
those early Christian anchorites, and self-exiled visionaries, that
being led by almost a necessity of nature to take up their residence in
deserts, sometimes drew after themselves the whole of their own
neighborhood.]

The New Observatory of Glasgow is now, I believe, finished; and the
only fact connected with its history that was painful, as embodying and
recording that Vandal alienation from science, literature, and all
their interests, which has ever marked our too haughty and Caliph-Omar-
like British government, lay in the circumstance that the glasses of
the apparatus, the whole mounting of the establishment, in so far as it
was a scientific establishment, and even the workmen for putting up the
machinery, were imported from Bavaria. We, that once bade the world
stand aside when the question arose about glasses, or the graduation of
instruments, were now literally obliged to stand cap in hand, bowing to
Mr. Somebody, successor of Frauenhofer or Frauendevil, in Munich! Who
caused _that_, we should all be glad to know, if not the wicked
Treasury, that killed the hen that laid the golden eggs by taxing her
until her spine broke? It is to be hoped that, at this moment, and
specifically for this offence, some scores of Exchequer men,
chancellors and other rubbish, are in purgatory, and perhaps working,
with shirt-sleeves tucked up, in purgatorial glass-houses, with very
small allowances of beer, to defray the cost of perspiration. But why
trouble a festal remembrance with commemorations of crimes or
criminals? What makes the Glasgow Observatory so peculiarly
interesting, is its position, connected with and overlooking so vast a
city, having more than three hundred thousand inhabitants, (in spite of
an American sceptic,) nearly all children of toil; and a city, too,
which, from the necessities of its circumstances, draws so deeply upon
that fountain of misery and guilt which some ordinance, as ancient as
'our father Jacob,' with his patriarchal well for Samaria, has
bequeathed to manufacturing towns,--to Ninevehs, to Babylons, to Tyres.
How tarnished with eternal canopies of smoke, and of sorrow; how dark
with agitations of many orders, is the mighty town below! How serene,
how quiet, how lifted above the confusion and the roar, how liberated
from the strifes of earth, is the solemn Observatory that crowns the
grounds above! And duly, at night, just when the toil of over-wrought
Glasgow is mercifully relaxing, then comes the summons to the laboring
astronomer. _He_ speaks not of the night, but of the day and the
flaunting day-light, as the hours 'in which no man can work.' And the
least reflecting of men must be impressed by the idea, that at wide
intervals, but intervals scattered over Europe, whilst 'all that mighty
heart' is, by sleep, resting from its labors, secret eyes are lifted up
to heaven in astronomical watch-towers; eyes that keep watch and ward
over spaces that make us dizzy to remember, eyes that register the
promises of comets, and disentangle the labyrinths of worlds.

Another feature of interest, connected with the Glasgow Observatory, is
personal, and founded on the intellectual characteristics of the
present professor, Dr. Nichol; in the deep meditative style of his mind
seeking for rest, yet placed in conflict for ever with the tumultuous
necessity in _him_ for travelling along the line of revolutionary
thought, and following it loyally, wearied or not, to its natural home.

In a sonnet of Milton, one of three connected with his own blindness,
he distinguishes between two classes of servants that minister to the
purposes of God. '_His_ state,' says he, meaning God's state, the
arrangement of his regular service, 'is kingly;' that is to say, it
resembles the mode of service established in the courts of kings; and,
in this, it resembles that service, that there are two classes of
ministers attending on his pleasure. For, as in the trains of kings are
some that run without resting, night or day, to carry the royal
messages, and also others--great lords in waiting--that move not from
the royal gates; so of the divine retinues, some are for action only,
some for contemplation. 'Thousands' there are that

----'at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest.'

Others, on the contrary, motionless as statues, that share not in the
agitations of their times, that tremble not in sympathy with the storms
around them, but that listen--that watch--that wait--for secret
indications to be fulfilled, or secret signs to be deciphered. And, of
this latter class, he adds-that they, not less than the others, are
accepted by God; or, as it is so exquisitely expressed in the closing
line,

'_They_ also serve, that only stand and wait.'

Something analogous to this one may see in the distributions of
literature and science. Many popularize and diffuse: some reap and
gather on their own account. Many translate, into languages fit for the
multitude, messages which they receive from human voices: some listen,
like Kubla Khan, far down in caverns or hanging over subterranean
rivers, for secret whispers that mingle and confuse themselves with the
general uproar of torrents, but which can be detected and kept apart by
the obstinate prophetic ear, which spells into words and ominous
sentences the distracted syllables of ærial voices. Dr. Nichol is one
of those who pass to and fro between these classes; and has the rare
function of keeping open their vital communications. As a popularizing
astronomer, he has done more for the benefit of his great science than
all the rest of Europe combined: and now, when he notices, without
murmur, the fact that his office of popular teacher is almost taken out
of his hands, (so many are they who have trained of late for the duty,)
that change has, in fact, been accomplished through knowledge, through
explanations, through suggestions, dispersed and prompted by himself.

For my own part, as one belonging to the laity, and not to the
_clerus_, in the science of astronomy, I could scarcely have
presumed to report minutely, or to sit in the character of dissector
upon the separate details of Dr. Nichol's works, either this, or those
which have preceded it, had there even been room left disposable for
such a task. But in this view it is sufficient to have made the general
acknowledgment which already _has_ been made, that Dr. Nichol's
works, and his oral lectures upon astronomy, are to be considered as
the _fundus_ of the knowledge on that science now working in this
generation. More important it is, and more in reconciliation with the
tenor of my own ordinary studies, to notice the philosophic spirit in
which Dr. Nichol's works are framed; the breadth of his views, the
eternal tendency of his steps in advance, or (if advance on that
quarter, or at that point, happens to be absolutely walled out for the
present,) the vigor of the _reconnoissances_ by which he examines
the hostile intrenchments. Another feature challenges notice. In
reading astronomical works, there arises (from old experience of what
is usually most faulty) a wish either for the naked severities of
science, with a total abstinence from all display of enthusiasm; or
else, if the cravings of human sensibility are to be met and gratified,
that it shall be by an enthusiasm unaffected and grand as its subject.
Of that kind is the enthusiasm of Dr. Nichol. The grandeurs of
astronomy are such to him who has a capacity for being grandly moved.
They are none at all to him who has not. To the mean they become
meannesses. Space, for example, has no grandeur to him who has no space
in the theatre of his own brain. I know writers who report the marvels
of velocity, &c., in such a way that they become insults to yourself.
It is obvious that in _their_ way of insisting on our earth's
speed in her annual orbit, they do not seek to exalt _her_, but to
mortify _you_. And, besides, these fellows are answerable for
provoking people into fibs:--for I remember one day, that reading a
statement of this nature, about how many things the Earth had done that
we could never hope to do, and about the number of cannon balls,
harnessed as a _tandem_, which the Earth would fly past, without
leaving time to say, _How are you off for soap?_ in vexation of
heart I could not help exclaiming--'That's nothing: I've done a great
deal more myself;' though, when one turns it in one's mind, you know
there must be some inaccuracy _there_. How different is Dr.
Nichol's enthusiasm from this hypocritical and vulgar wonderment! It
shows itself not merely in reflecting the grandeurs of his theme, and
by the sure test of detecting and allying itself with all the indirect
grandeurs that arrange themselves from any distance, upon or about that
centre, but by the manifest promptness with which Dr. Nichol's
enthusiasm awakens itself upon _every_ road that leads to things
elevating for man; or to things promising for knowledge; or to things
which, like dubious theories or imperfect attempts at systematizing,
though neutral as regards knowledge, minister to what is greater than
knowledge, viz., to intellectual _power_, to the augmented power
of handling your materials, though with no more materials than before.
In his geological and cosmological inquiries, in his casual
speculations, the same quality of intellect betrays itself; the
intellect that labors in sympathy with the laboring _nisus_ of
these gladiatorial times; that works (and sees the necessity of
working) the apparatus of many sciences towards a composite result; the
intellect that retires in one direction only to make head in another;
and that already is prefiguring the route beyond the barriers, whilst
yet the gates are locked.

There was a man in the last century, and an eminent man too, who used
to say, that whereas people in general pretended to admire astronomy as
being essentially sublime, he for _his_ part looked upon all that
sort of thing as a swindle; and, on the contrary, he regarded the solar
system as decidedly vulgar; because the planets were all of them so
infernally punctual, they kept time with such horrible precision, that
they forced him, whether he would or no, to think of nothing but post-
office clocks, mail-coaches, and book-keepers. Regularity may be
beautiful, but it excludes the sublime. What he wished for was
something like Lloyd's list.

_Comets_--due 3; arrived 1.
_Mercury_, when last seen, appeared to be distressed; but made no
signals.
_Pallas_ and _Vesta_, not heard of for some time; supposed to
have foundered.
_Moon_, spoken last night through a heavy bank of clouds; out
sixteen days: all right.

Now this poor man's misfortune was, to have lived in the days of mere
planetary astronomy. At present, when our own little system, with all
its grandeurs, has dwindled by comparison to a subordinate province, if
any man is bold enough to say so, a poor shivering unit amongst myriads
that are brighter, we ought no longer to talk of astronomy, but of
_the astronomies_. There is the planetary, the cometary, the
sidereal, perhaps also others; as, for instance, even yet the nebular;
because, though Lord Rosse has smitten it with the son of Amram's rod,
has made it open, and cloven a path through it, yet other and more
fearful _nebulæ_ may loom in sight, (if further improvements
should be effected in the telescope,) that may puzzle even Lord Rosse.
And when he tells his _famulus_--'Fire a shot at that strange
fellow, and make him show his colors,' possibly the mighty stranger may
disdain the summons. That would be vexatious: we should all be incensed
at _that_. But no matter. What's a _nebula_, what's a world,
more or less? In the spiritual heavens are many mansions: in the starry
heavens, that are now unfolding and preparing to unfold before us, are
many vacant areas upon which the astronomer may pitch his secret
pavilion. He may dedicate himself to the service of the _Double
Suns_; he has my license to devote his whole time to the quadruple
system of suns in _Lyra_. Swammerdam spent his life in a ditch
watching frogs and tadpoles; why may not an astronomer give nine lives,
if he had them, to the watching of that awful appearance in
_Hercules_, which pretends to some rights over our own unoffending
system? Why may he not mount guard with public approbation, for the
next fifty years, upon the zodiacal light, the interplanetary ether,
and other rarities, which the professional body of astronomers would
naturally keep (if they could) for their own private enjoyment? There
is no want of variety now, nor in fact of irregularity: for the most
exquisite clock-work, which from enormous distance _seems_ to go
wrong, virtually for us _does_ go wrong; so that our friend of the
last century, who complained of the solar system, would not need to do
so any longer. There are anomalies enough to keep him cheerful. There
are now even things to alarm us; for anything in the starry worlds that
look suspicious, anything that ought _not_ to be there, is, for
all purposes of frightening us, as good as a ghost.

But of all the novelties that excite my own interest in the expanding
astronomy of recent times, the most delightful and promising are those
charming little pyrotechnic planetoids,[Footnote: _'Pyrotechnic
Planetoids:'_--The reader will understand me as alluding to the
periodic shooting stars. It is now well known, that as, upon our own
poor little earthly ocean, we fall in with certain phenomena as we
approach certain latitudes; so also upon the great ocean navigated by
our Earth, we fall in with prodigious showers of these meteors at
periods no longer uncertain, but fixed as jail-deliveries. 'These
remarkable showers of meteors,' says Dr. Nichol, 'observed at different
periods in August and November, seem to demonstrate the fact, that, at
these periods, we have come in contact with two streams of such
planetoids then intersecting the earth's orbit.' If they intermit, it
is only because they are shifting their nodes, or points of
intersection.] that variegate our annual course. It always struck me as
most disgusting, that, in going round the sun, we must be passing
continually over old roads, and yet we had no means of establishing an
acquaintance with them: they might as well be new for every trip. Those
chambers of ether, through which we are tearing along night and day,
(for _our_ train stops at no stations,) doubtless, if we could put
some mark upon them, must be old fellows perfectly liable to
recognition. I suppose, _they_ never have notice to quit. And yet,
for want of such a mark, though all our lives flying past them and
through them, we can never challenge them as known. The same thing
happens in the desert: one monotonous iteration of sand, sand, sand,
unless where some miserable fountain stagnates, forbids all approach to
familiarity: nothing is circumstantiated or differenced: travel it for
three generations, and you are no nearer to identification of its
parts: so that it amounts to travelling through an abstract idea. For
the desert, really I suspect the thing is hopeless: but, as regards our
planetary orbit, matters are mending: for the last six or seven years I
have heard of these fiery showers, but indeed I cannot say how much
earlier they were first noticed,[Footnote: Somewhere I have seen it
remarked, that if, on a public road, you meet a party of four women, it
is at least fifty to one that they are all laughing; whereas, if you
meet an equal party of my own unhappy sex, you may wager safely that
they are talking gravely, and that one of them is uttering the word
_money_. Hence it must be, viz, because our sisters are too much
occupied with the playful things of this earth, and our brothers with
its gravities, that neither party sufficiently watches the skies. And
_that_ accounts for a fact which often has struck myself, viz.,
that, in cities, on bright moonless nights, when some brilliant
skirmishings of the Aurora are exhibiting, or even a luminous arch,
which is a broad ribbon of snowy light that spans the skies, positively
unless I myself say to people--'Eyes upwards!' not one in a hundred,
male or female, but fails to see the show, though it may be seen
_gratis_, simply because their eyes are too uniformly reading the
earth. This downward direction of the eyes, however, must have been
worse in former ages: because else it never _could_ have happened
that, until Queen Anne's days, nobody ever hinted in a book that there
_was_ such a thing, or _could_ be such a thing, as the Aurora
Borealis; and in fact Halley had the credit of discovering it.] as
celebrating two annual festivals--one in August, one in November. You
are a little too late, reader, for seeing this year's summer festival;
but that's no reason why you should not engage a good seat for the
November meeting; which, if I recollect, is about the 9th, or the Lord
Mayor's day, and on the whole better worth seeing. For anything
_we_ know, this may be a great day in the earth's earlier history;
she may have put forth her original rose on this day, or tried her hand
at a primitive specimen of wheat; or she may, in fact, have survived
some gunpowder plot about this time; so that the meteoric appearance
may be a kind congratulating _feu-de-joye_, on the anniversary of
the happy event. What it is that the 'cosmogony man' in the 'Vicar of
Wakefield' would have thought of such novelties, whether he would have
favored us with his usual opinion upon such topics, viz., that
_anarchon ara kai ateleutaion to pan_, or have sported a new one
exclusively for this occasion, may be doubtful. What it is that
astronomers think, who are a kind of 'cosmogony men,' the reader may
learn from Dr. Nichol, Note B, (p. 139, 140.)

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