worthy of their speculative grandeur.  The stars are the landmarks of the universe; and, amidst the endless and complicated fluctuations of our system, seem placed by its Creator as guides and records, not merely to elevate our minds by the contemplation of what is vast, but to teach us to direct our actions by reference to what is immutable in His works.  It is, indeed, hardly possible to over-appreciate their value in this point of view.  Every well-determined star, from the moment its place is registered, becomes to the astronomer, the geographer, the navigator, the surveyor, a point of departure which can never deceive or fail him, the same for ever and in all places, of a delicacy so extreme as to be a test for every instrument yet invented by man, yet equally adapted for the most ordinary purposes; as available for regulating a town clock as for conducting a navy to the Indies; as effective for mapping down the intricacies of a petty barony as for adjusting the boundaries of Transatlantic empires.  When once its place has been thoroughly ascertained and carefully recorded, the brazen circle with which that useful work was done may moulder, the marble pillar may totter on its base, and the astronomer himself survive only in the gratitude of posterity; but the record remains, and transfuses all its own exactness into every determination which takes it for a groundwork, giving to inferior instruments—­nay, even to temporary contrivances, and to the observations of a few weeks or days—­all the precision attained originally at the cost of so much time, labour, and expense.”

Sir John Herschel wrote many other works besides those we have mentioned.  His “Treatise on Meteorology” is, indeed, a standard work on this subject, and numerous articles from the same pen on miscellaneous subjects, which have been collected and reprinted, seemed as a relaxation from his severe scientific studies.  Like certain other great mathematicians Herschel was also a poet, and he published a translation of the Iliad into blank verse.

In his later years Sir John Herschel lived a retired life.  For a brief period he had, indeed, been induced to accept the office of Master of the Mint.  It was, however, evident that the routine of such an occupation was not in accordance with his tastes, and he gladly resigned it, to return to the seclusion of his study in his beautiful home at Collingwood, in Kent.

His health having gradually failed, he died on the 11th May, 1871, in the seventy-ninth year of his age.

THE EARL OF ROSSE.

The subject of our present sketch occupies quite a distinct position in scientific history.  Unlike many others who have risen by their scientific discoveries from obscurity to fame, the great Earl of Rosse was himself born in the purple.  His father, who, under the title of Sir Lawrence Parsons, had occupied a distinguished position in the Irish Parliament, succeeded on the death of his father to the Earldom which had been recently created.  The subject of our present memoir was, therefore, the third of the Earls of Rosse, and he was born in York on June 17, 1800.  Prior to his father’s death in 1841, he was known as Lord Oxmantown.