and northern hemispheres at more than twelve millions in number."
The average of many hundreds of these gauges gave him what he called "the contents of the heavens." Where the stars were exceedingly crowded, "no more than half a field was counted, and even sometimes only a quadrant"; but the result of these vast labours was that the Milky Way could not be described as other than "a very extensive, branching, compound congeries of many millions of stars; which, most probably, owes its origin to many remarkably large as well as pretty closely scattered small stars, that may have drawn together the rest." Imagination stands appalled at the thought of millions of shining stars, each of the same kindred as our sun, and each, it may be supposed, with a train of habitable worlds like his planets, all circling round their central orb. The littleness of man, the smallness of human life, the meanness of its petty details, that usually fill the whole horizon of human thought, are dwarfed into nothingness in presence of these stupendous realities, till even they become insignificant before the nobler and more inspiring conception of the grandeur of the soul, which measures and weighs these innumerable suns, which takes them up in the hollow of its hand, which deals with them as playthings for its leisure moments, and which says to every one of them, I am greater and of more worth than thou, yes, greater than all your millions put together. "There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard."
By these star gauges Herschel did a service to the world, for which humanity can never be sufficiently
