When Miller talked of his friend Herschel's good fortune, and of his astronomical discoveries, and of his sister, Miss Caroline Herschel, who, while in his absence she could get possession of his twenty-feet reflector, amused herself with sweeping the sky, and searching for comets in the neighbourhood of the sun, the warm-hearted and musical-minded man used to wish that the science of acoustics had been advanced in the same degree as that of optics, and that his old friend, when he gave up music as a profession, had still retained it as a pursuit; for, had he constructed auditory tubes of proportionate power and magnitude to his great telescope, “who knows,” said Miller, “but we might have been enabled to hear the music of the spheres!” Pythagoras used to listen to that music, when he retired into the depths of his own being; and, according to his disciples, to him alone of all mortals has it been audible. But philosophers in modern times have thought that the existence of this music is more than an enthusiast's dream, a poet's fiction, or an impostor's fable. They say it may be inferred as probable from some of Newton's discoveries; and as a consequence of that principle of harmony which in some parts of the system of nature is so clearly shown, and in others so mysteriously indicated. As for the Doctor, when Miller talked to him of Miss Herschel's performances in sky-sweeping and comet-hunting, it reminded him of the nursery song, and he quoted the lines, Old woman, old woman whither so high? I'm going to sweep cobwebs off the sky, And I shall be back again by and bye: not meaning, however, any disrespect to the lady, nor knowing any thing of her age. Herschel would have opened no new field of speculation for Peter Hopkins, if Hopkins had lived till that day; but he would have eradicated the last remains of his lurking belief in astrology, by showing how little those who pretended to read the stars, had seen or known of them. The old man would have parted with it easily, though he delighted in obsolete knowledge, and took as much interest in making himself acquainted with the freaks of the human mind, as with the maladies of the human frame. He thought that they belonged to the same study; and the affection which he had so soon contracted for his pupil, was in no small degree occasioned by his perceiving in him a kindred disposition. Mr. Danby says, “there is perhaps more of instinct in our feelings than we are aware of, even in our esteem of each other;” it is one of the many wise remarks of a thoughtful man.