In recognition of his scientific triumphs, the honorary degree of LL.D was conferred upon Herschel, in 1786, by the University of Oxford. They were triumphs that well merited such a recognition. He had already made some important observations on the nature of double stars, on the dimensions of the telescopic planets, and had begun his famous investigations into the composition of the nebulae,--those clusters of stars and nebulous matter which had previously proved such a problem to astronomers. The remarkable phenomenon of a periodical change of intensity in certain stars, which wax and wane in radiance like a revolving light, had also excited his attention. Further, he had entered upon the experiments which ultimately showed that the Sun positively moves; that in this, as in other respects, the magnificent orb of day must be ranged among the stars; that the apparently inextricable irregularities of numerous sidereal proper motions arise in great part from the displacement of the Solar System; that, in short, the point of space toward which Earth and its sister planets are annually advancing, is situated in the constellation of Hercules.
"Let us," says a French writer, "to these immortal labours add the ingenious ideas that we owe to Herschel on the nebulae, on the constitution of the Milky Way, on the Universe as a whole,--ideas which almost by themselves constitute the actual history of the formation of the worlds,--and we cannot but have a deep reverence for that powerful genius that scarcely ever erred, notwithstanding the ardour of its imagination."
The ordinary spectator, looking upon the face of the heavens through a telescope, had, prior to Herschel's time, felt his curiosity excited by the appearance here and there of filmy patches, vague in structure and irregular in shape, which, from their resemblance to clouds, received the name of _nebulae_. 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.