that we of this generation draw near him. This

grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord I cannot believe that these Christian and and Saviour Jesus Christ, and that I may hear tenderly affectionate letters to his own thereof. The Lord is very near, which we see family could have been a tissue of falseby his wonderful works; and therefore he looks hood and hypocrisy. Assuredly Cromwell late great mercy in Ireland is a great manifes-understood Scriptural truth, and inculcated tation thereof. Your husband will acquaint you it upon his children; and such letters as with it. We should be much stirred up in our these would seem to indicate that he himspirits to thankfulness. We need much the self often felt much of its power; but the Spirit of Christ to enable us to praise God for greater his guilt that he did not act accordso admirable a mercy. The Lord bless thee, ing to his professions. my dear daughter. I rest, thy loving father, O. CROMWELL.

The following letter also is transcribed from the original among the family papers. It is to his son Richard, under the date of Carrick, 2d of April, 1650:

DICK CROMWELL,-I take your letters kindly. I like expressions when they come plainly from the heart, and are not strained nor affected. I am persuaded it is the Lord's mercy to place you where you are: I wish you may own it, and be thankful, fulfilling all relations to the glory of God. Seek the Lord and his face continu: ally; let this be the business of your life and strength, and let all things be subservient and in order to this. You cannot find, nor behold, the face of God but in Christ; therefore labor to know God in Christ, which the Scripture makes to be the sum of all, even life eternal. Because the true knowledge is not literal or speculative, but inward, transforming the mind to it, it is uniting to, and participating of, the Divine nature (2 Peter i. 4). It is such a knowledge as Paul speaks of, Philip. iii. 8, 9, 10. How little of this knowledge of Christ is there among us. My weak prayers shall be for you. Take heed of an unactive vain spirit. Recreate yourself with Sir Walter Raleigh's History; it is a body of history, and will add more to your understanding than fragments of story. Intend to understand the estate I have settled; it is your concernment to know it all, and how it stands. I have heretofore suffered much by too much trusting others. I know my brother Major will be helpful to you in all this. You will, perhaps, think I need not advise you to love your wife. The Lord teach you how to do it, or else it will be done ill-favoredly. Though marriage be no instituted sacrament, yet this union aptly resembles Christ and his Church. If you can truly love your wife, what doth Christ bear to his Church, and every poor soul therein, who gave himself for it and to it? Commend me to your wife: tell her I entirely love her, and rejoice in the goodness of the Lord to her. I wish her every way fruitful. thank her for her loving letter. I have presented my love to my sister and cousin Anne, etc., in my letter to my brother Major. I would not have him alter his affairs because of my debt [his debt to me]. My purse is as his. My present thoughts are but to lodge such a sum for my two little girls. It is in his hand as well as any where. I shall not be wanting to accommodate him to his mind. I would not have him solicitous. Dick, the Lord bless you every way.

I rest, your loving father, O. CROMWELL.

THE CONVALESCENT.

BY MRS. ABDY.

From the Metropolitan.

F. H.

THOU hast quitted the feverish couch of pain,
Thou art breathing the fresh free air again,
Thou hast bent thy way through the primrose glade
To the wildwood's deep and leafy shade,
Where, beneath thy slow and lingering tread,
Where the song-birds pour their tuneful lay,
The clustering cool green moss is spread,
And the silvery fountains softly play.
Dost thou not joy to exchange the gloom
Of the shaded blinds, and the curtained room
For the gladdening breezes, the sun's bright beams,
The waving blossoms, and glittering streams?
Dost thou not joy, in reviving health,
To gaze upon Nature's lavish wealth,
The rushing waters, and flowery land,
Decked for thy sake by thy Maker's hand?

And does not thy heart at this moment thrill
With thoughts more tender, more grateful still?
Dost thou not yet on the chamber dwell,
Where awhile Death's darkening shadows fell,
When thy manly strength was quelled and fled,
And friends stood mournfully round thy bed,
Wailing that thou, in thy youthful bloom,
Must be gathered soon to the dreary tomb?
Then did not a secret voice within
Tell thee to weep o'er each former sin?
And didst thou not wish thy days renewed,
To walk henceforth with the wise and good?
Oh! now, while within thy languid veins
Some trace of the suffering past remains,
Think of the world, and its pomp and power,
As thou didst in that sad and trying hour.

The woods and the fields that meet thy gaze
Thou deem'st more bright than in former days;
So may earth's course appear to thee
More fair than it seemed in thy frolic glee;
Shun its broad highways-in peace pursue
The narrow path that is sought by few,
And give to the Lord, in faith and prayer,
The life that he graciously deigned to spare.

rained lately at Futtehpose, Sicree. The matter MOFUSSIL RAIN.-A strange yellow liquid has adhered to the fingers when touched, and dyed the ground where it fell.-Indian Journal.

The widow of the late lamented Bishop Heber has again married. Her husband is a French Roman Catholic gentleman.-Morning Post.

This extraordinary man was born in Hanover, the 15th of November, 1738. Of his family there is but little known, although public curiosity has of course busily inquired after the origin of one so illustrious. His great-grandfather, Abraham Herschel, was driven, it is said, from Moravia* on account of his attachment to the Protestant creed. His son Isaac was a farmer in the neighborhood of Leipsic, whence Jacob Herschel, Isaac's eldest son, afterwards re-strument in a very short time. The genmoved to Hanover, renouncing agriculture

self for the career on which he was shortly about to enter with so much glory.

his election. Although we suppose this story to be in the main untrue, it has the merit of suggesting a very important and A reflecting telescope, two feet long, probable conjecture, which is, that Her- happened to fall into the hands of Herschel, schel, during his sojourn in Halifax, had the at Bath. With it he saw countless stars in good fortune to be thrown into the compa- the heavens, the existence of which he had ny of able and educated men, who took an previously not even suspected. A new interest in him from their love of music; creation seemed to open on him. He was yet were not musicians of that class who transported with delight and enthusiasm, have "Nothing but a solo in their heads," and immediately wrote to London for an but rather philosophers who know the util- instrument of similar construction, but of ity of music in keeping alive the imagin- greater size. The price of the desired inative faculties, in maintaining the elasticity strument, however, was much beyond his of the mind, and averting that intellectual means. Inflamed rather than cooled by the rigidity which so often ensues from long disappointment, he resolved that if he could continuance in undiverted habits of thought. not buy a powerful telescope he would make The following year (1766) Herschel ob- one. From this day forward the organist tained the appointment of organist in the of the Octagon chapel devoted all his leisure Octagon Chapel, Bath, a more lucrative and his energies to the making of Metallic situation than that which he filled in Hali- specula. He made experiments to ascertain fax. So rapid an advancement shows the best composition of the metal, the best that his superior talents were already re- form of the mirror, and the best mode of cognised. He was now in the midst of polishing it. He labored with an enthusifashionable society, constantly occupied asm which took no heed of difficulties. with the arrangements of concerts and ora- The scale of his operations is hardly credi torios, or with the numerous pupils whom ble. He made no fewer than two hundred his patrons forced upon him. Here his metallic mirrors of seven feet focus, a hunbiographer remarks: dred and fifty of ten feet, and about eighty of twenty feet focus. While polishing the mirrors, he never desisted from his task, not even to take food, till the whole was completed, though this implies the continued labor of ten, twelve, even fourteen hours. Such ardor and intelligence could not fail of success. In 1774 Herschel had the happiness of surveying the heavens with a telescope of five feet focal length, made wholly by himself; but he afterwards went on to instruments of ten and even twenty feet focus. The captious world was of course disposed to ridicule these gigantic preparations of the star-gazing musician; but a lucky hit raised him at once in the general estimation to the rank of an astronomer. On the 13th of March, 1781, he discovered a new planet on the furthest confines of the solar system. George III., in compliment to whom the new discovery was named the Georgium Sidus, "and who," says M. Arago, "had a great leaning to men and things of Hanoverian origin," showered on the self-taught astronomer the most substantial favors. He assigned him a pension of three hundred guineas a year and a residence near Windsor, first at Clay Hall, and afterwards at Slough.

"One can hardly conceive how, in the midst of so much business and distracting variety of calls, Herschel was able to continue the studies, which even in Halifax had required of him a strength of will, a steadfastness and grasp of intellect much above the common. We have already seen that it was music which led Her schel to mathematics; mathematics, in turn, led him to optics, the first and amplest source of his celebrity. The hour at length came when the young musician was to proceed from theoretic knowledge to its application with an extreme boldness and brilliant success, which cannot fail

to excite astonishment."

We may here hazard a natural conjecture respecting the course of Herschel's early studies. Music conducted him to mathematics, or in other words, impelled him to study Smith's "Harmonics." Now, this Robert Smith (a cousin of the celebrated Cotes, and his successor at Cambridge in the chair of natural philosophy) was also author of "A Complete System of Optics," a masterly work which, notwithstanding the rapid growth of that branch of science, is not yet wholly superseded. It seems to us not unlikely then, that Herschel, studying the "Harmonics," conceived a reverence for the author, who was at that time still living, so that from the Philosophy of Music he passed to the Optics, the work on which Smith's great reputation chiefly rested; and thus undesignedly prepared him

Arago, "have been completely realized. One "The expectations of George III," adds M. may fearlessly say of the garden and little dwelling at Slough, that it is the spot in the world in which the greatest number of discove

ries have been made. The name of the village | topics which are unimportant either in will never perish; science will scrupulously themselves or as they affect his reputation. hand it down to the latest posterity." The grandeur of Herschel's views, with respect to instruments of observation, and Herschel was now released from profes- his dexterity in carrying those views into sional engagements, and at liberty to de-effect, would alone have entitled him to vote himself wholly to astronomy. It must form an epoch in science. His telescopes not be supposed that his good fortune was far surpassed in power those which had wholly attributable to his discovery of the preceded him; and in his mode of mountnew planet. That discovery, in itself suffi-ing them, so as to combine perfect firmness cient to confer distinction on an ordinary with facility of movement, he showed himastronomer, served chiefly in his case to self a consummate mechanician. Galileo, call attention to the extreme boldness of when he discovered the satellites of Jupiter his genius evinced in the construction of his and the phases of Venus, used instruments telescopes. For even the intrepid resolu- magnifying ordinarily seven times, and tion of Columbus to sail directly westward never exceeding thirty-two times. The across the unexplored ocean to India, is telescope with which Huygens discovered not a more admirable example of enthusiasm the first satellite of Saturn, had a magnify. than the determination of the Bath organist ing power not exceeding ninety-two. A to outdo, by far, all that opticians or astron- monster telescope made by Auzout, in the omers had hitherto attempted in the means latter half of the 17th century, which was of penetrating into space, and his perse- 300 feet long (and therefore useless), mag. verance till he completely succeeded. The nified but six hundred times. Until the making of reflecting telescopes became means of achromatizing images formed by after this a very lucrative branch, we be refraction were discovered, it was vain to lieve, of Herschel's occupations. His mode think of employing high magnifying powers of preparing the specula has never been in the eyeglass of a telescope. After the divulged. It was stated with much empha-invention indeed of achromatic lenses, sis, at the last meeting of the British Asso-telescopes were easily made to obtain an ciation, that Lord Ross had attained such accession of power without any increase of skill in the treatment of metallic specula, length. But notwithstanding this, the scien that he could dismount the mirror of his tific world was not a little astonished, when large telescope, repolish and replace it the informed in 1782, that Herschel, with a resame day. Now M. Arago, in the follow-flecting telescope seven feet long, had used ing extract from a letter written by Sir magnifying powers of 2000 and even 6000 John Herschel four years ago, furnishes us times. "No one will be surprised," ob with an example of still greater address. "By following," says Sir John, "my father's rules minutely, and using his apparatus, I have succeeded, in a single day and without the least assistance, in polishing completely three Newtonian mirrors of nineteen inch aperture."

serves M. Arago, "that people were slow to believe in a magnifying power which ought to show us the mountains of the moon as Mont Blanc is seen from Mâcon, Lyons, or even from Geneva." The Royal Society called for an explanation of the mode in which the astronomer of Slough ascertained the power of his instruments, and he replied in a memoir which satisfied the most skeptical, and firmly established his reputation.

The anecdotes of Herschel's life terminate with his removal to Slough. Henceforward he devoted day and night to the study of the heavens, or to perfecting the means of observing them. The proofs of Soon after Herschel was settled at Slough his unwearied industry, and best record of he conceived the design of erecting a telehis labors, are to be seen in the sixty-nine scope which should eclipse all his former memoirs which he furnished to the "Phi- efforts, and show him not unworthy of the losophical Transactions" in the following royal munificence which had enabled him years; and which, his biographer remarks, to give his whole time to his favorite pur"constitute one of the principal treasures suits. He accordingly began his great of that celebrated collection." We cannot telescope which was finished in 1789. The however think of recapitulating those vo- iron cylinder of this instrument was thirtyluminous records, in order to form an esti- nine feet four inches in length, and four mate of his scientific achievements: for feet ten inches wide. These colossal di brevity sake we shall rather survey his la-mensions were still further amplified by bors systematically, under the guidance of public report, and according to M. Arago, his able biographer, and omitting those there were people who confounded the

great telescope at Slough with the great vigilant. His memoir "On the power of vat of Meux or Barclay. But the magnitude penetrating into space by Telescopes,' of this instrument was not its only peculi was the fruit of twenty years' assiduous arity; Herschel was too sagacious to let labors of this kind. It is strongly impressslip an opportunity of making an improve-ed with the peculiar character of his genius: ment. In ordinary reflecting telescopes bold and original, marked with all the cirthere is, besides the speculum which re- cumspection required in the disciples of ceives the rays from the object viewed, a the inductive philosophy, but at the same second mirror, the purpose of which is to time regardless of the paths established by direct the rays to the eye of the spectator routine and of the limits set to speculation From this second reflexion there necessari- by vulgar opinion. ly ensues a great loss of light. This inconvenience Herschel averted by a method equally bold and simple. The focal image in his great telescope was formed near the edge of the aperture, and the spectator, looking down into the instrument with his back to the heavens, viewed the image immediately without the aid of a second reflexion. The obliquity of the axis of vision in this arrangement, and the interposition of the spectator's head, were, with so large an instrument, of no importance. Thus, owing to the simplicity of its construction, as well as to its size, the great telescope had a great superiority in the abundance of its light.

In the memoir here alluded to, Herschel assumes that the stars are all of the same size, and that they are uniformly distributed through space. These assumptions are, it is evident, not strictly true; but they are true in the main when we speak of many thousand stars. He thus supposes that stars of the second magnitude are removed as far from stars of the first magnitude as the latter from the sun. Sirius, for example, the brightest star in the heavens, would become a star of the second class, if removed to double its actual distance from us; at three times that distance, it would be reduced to the third magnitude; and at 100 times that distance to the 100th magnitude. Some have supposed, and even eminent This being premised, he found that with astronomers have stated, that the great his 20 feet telescope he could penetrate telescope at Slough proved useless; while into space 75 times further than with the others imagine that Herschel never used naked eye; 96 times further with a 25 feet any other. Both these opinions are erro-instrument; and with his great telescope, neous. Herschel had recourse to the great 192 times the distance reached by the uninstrument for observations which required assisted eye. Now since the naked eye much light. But he found that for ordinary can discern stars of the seventh magnitude, purposes the most manageable instruments it follows that stars of the 1344th magniare the best. Besides, telescopes magnify not merely real objects, but also all the irregularities of the atmosphere, so that the tremor of the image increases with the power of the instrument.

tude were rendered visible by the 39 feet telescope. This conclusion, followed through all its bearings, has something in it quite astounding. Light, notwithstanding its velocity of 77,000 leagues in a second, could not clear the distance from such a nebula or cluster of stars of the 1344th magnitude to the earth, in less than

"Herschel found that in England there are not above a hundred hours in the course of a year, during which observations can be made to any purpose with a 39 feet telescope and a magnify-half a million of years! ing power of 1000 times. He thence concluded, that in order to make, with his great telescope, such a survey of the heavens that every point of space would pass under review for an instant, he should require 800 years!"

It ought to be here mentioned, as connected in some degree with the history of the great telescope, that no individual ever contributed more than Herschel to what may be called the arts of observation. His great experience in the use of telescopes. of various powers, was not unproductive of valuable results. Many minute and appa rently anomalous phenomena of vision caught his attention, which would have escaped the notice of one less scrupulous or

"Consequently," observes M. Arago, "the changes which take place in nebulæ of this order, must have already gone by, half a million years before we perceive them. If such a nebula, for example, were to be this day extinguished, it would yet continue to be seen, from the earth, for half a million years. In this sense, we may be allowed to say that telescopes enable us to dive into time as well as into space."

Previous to Herschel, little attention was given by astronomers to the physical constitution of the stars. The character of his instruments, as well as the bias of

Published in the "Philosophical Transactions," of 1800.