e believed myself--if
the rapid lapse of time in the uniform retirement in which we live
were not pressed upon me in a variety of ways which convince me that
as a man grows older, his sand, as the grains get low in the glass,
slips through more glibly, and steals away with accelerated speed. I
wish I could either send you a copy of my Cape observations, or tell
you they are published or even in the press. Far from it--I do not
expect to "go to press" before another year has elapsed, for though
I have got my catalogues of Southern nebulae and Double stars reduced
and arranged, yet there is a great deal of other matter still to be
worked through, and I have every description of reduction entirely
to execute myself. These are very tedious, and I am a very slow
computer, and have been continually taken off the subject by other
matter, forced upon me by "pressure from without." What I am now
engaged on is the monograph of the _principal_ Southern Nebulae, the
object of which is to put on record every ascertainable particular
of their actual appearance and the stars visible in them, so as to
satisfy future observers whether _new stars_ have appeared, or
changes taken place in the nebulosity. To what an extent this work
may go you may judge from the fact that the catalogue of visible
stars actually mapped down in their places within the space of less
than a square degree in the nebula about [Greek: e] Argus which I have
just completed comprises between 1300 and 1400 stars. This is indeed a
stupendous object. It is a vastly extensive branching and looped
nebula, in the centre of the densest part of which is [Greek: e] Argus,
itself a most remarkable star, seeing that from the fourth magnitude
which it had in Ptolemy's time, it has risen (by _sudden starts_,
and not gradually) to such a degree of brilliancy as _now_ actually
to surpass Canopus, and to be second only to Sirius. One of these
_leaps_ I myself witnessed when in the interval of ceasing to
observe it in one year, and resuming its observation in two or three
months after in the next, it had sprung over the heads of _all the
stars of the first_ magnitude, from Fomalhaut and Regulus (the two
least of them) to [Greek: a] Centauri, which it then just equalled, and
which is the brightest of all but Canopus and Sirius! It has since
made a