. . I spent all
Sunday with him and his family. His son is a prodigy in sciences,
and fond of poetry, but very unassuming. . . . Now, for the old
astronomer himself. His simplicity, his kindness, his anecdotes, his
readiness to explain--and make perfectly conspicuous too--his own
sublime conceptions of the universe are indescribably charming. He
is seventy-six, but fresh and stout; and there he sat, nearest the
door, at his friend's house, alternately smiling at a joke, or
contentedly sitting without share or notice in the conversation.
Any train of conversation he follows implicitly; anything you ask he
labors with a sort of boyish earnestness to explain.

"I was anxious to get from him as many particulars as I could about
his interview with BUONAPARTE.[27] The latter, it was reported, had
astonished him by his astronomical knowledge.

"'No,' he said, 'the First Consul did surprise me by his quickness
and versatility on all subjects; but in science he seemed to know
little more than any well-educated gentleman, and of astronomy much
less for instance than our own king. His general air,' he said, 'was
something like affecting to know more than he did know.' He was
high, and tried to be great with HERSCHEL, I suppose, without
success; and 'I remarked,' said the astronomer, 'his hypocrisy in
concluding the conversation on astronomy by observing how all these
glorious views gave proofs of an Almighty Wisdom.' I asked him if he
thought the system of LAPLACE to be quite certain, with regard to
the total security of the planetary system from the effects of
gravitation losing its present balance? He said, No; he thought by
no means that the universe was secured from the chance of sudden
losses of parts.

"He was convinced that there had existed a planet between _Mars_
and _Jupiter_, in our own system, of which the little asteroids, or
planetkins, lately discovered, are indubitably fragments; and
'Remember,' said he, 'that though they have discovered only four of
those parts, there will be thousands--perhaps thirty thousand
more--yet discovered.' This planet he believed to have been lost by
explosion.

"With great kindness and patience he referred me, in the course of
my attempts to talk with him, to a theorem in NEWTON'S 'Principles
of Natural Philosophy' in which the time that