But if some of the adventurous speculations built by Sir William Herschell on the bewildering revelations of his telescope have been since questioned, the vast progress which has been made in sidereal astronomy, to which, as I understand, the Dudley Observatory will be particularly devoted, the discovery of the parallax of the fixed stars, the investigation of the interior relations of binary and triple systems of stars, the theories for the explanation of the extraordinary, not to say fantastic, shapes discerned in some of the nebulous systems--whirls and spirals radiating through spaces as vast as the orbit of Neptune;[A] the glimpses at systems beyond that to which our sun belongs;--these are all splendid results, which may fairly be attributed to the school of Herschell, and will for ever insure no secondary place to that name in the annals of science. [Footnote A: See the remarkable memoir of Professor Alexander, "On the origin of the forms and the present condition of some of the clusters of stars, and several of the nebulæ," (Gould's _Astronomical Journal_, Vol. iii, p. 95.)] RELATIONSHIP OF THE LIBERAL ARTS. In the remarks which I have hitherto made, I have had mainly in view the direct connection of astronomical science with the uses of life and the service of man. But a generous philosophy contemplates the subject in higher relations. It is a remark as old, at least, as Plato, and is repeated from him more than once by Cicero, that all the liberal arts have a common bond and relationship.[A] The different sciences contemplate as their immediate object the different departments of animate and inanimate nature; but this great system itself is but one, and its parts are so interwoven with each other, that the most extraordinary relations and unexpected analogies are constantly presenting themselves; and arts and sciences seemingly the least connected, render to each other the most effective assistance. [Footnote A: Archias, i.; De Oratore, iii., 21.]