Influenced by a deference, a modesty, a timidity, without any plausible motive, our artists in the last century surrendered to the English the exclusive privilege of constructing instruments of astronomy.  Thus, let us frankly acknowledge the fact, at the time when Herschel was prosecuting his beautiful observations on the other side of the Channel, there existed in France no instruments adapted for developing them; we had not even the means of verifying them.  Fortunately for the scientific honour of our country, mathematical analysis is also a powerful instrument.  Laplace gave ample proof of this on a memorable occasion when from the retirement of his chamber he predicted, he minutely announced, what the excellent astronomer of Windsor would see with the largest telescopes which were ever constructed by the hand of man.

When Galileo, in the beginning of the year 1610, directed towards Saturn a telescope of very low power which he had just executed with his own hands, he perceived that the planet was not an ordinary globe, without however being able to ascertain its real form.  The expression tri-corporate, by which the illustrious Florentine designated the appearance of the planet, implied even a totally erroneous idea of its structure.  Our countryman Roberval entertained much sounder views on the subject, but from not having instituted a detailed comparison between his hypothesis and the results of observation, he abandoned to Huyghens the honour of being regarded as the author of the true theory of the phenomena presented by the wonderful planet.

Every person knows, in the present day, that Saturn consists of a globe about 900 times greater than the earth, and a ring.  This ring does not touch the ball of the planet, being everywhere removed from it at a distance of 20,000 (English) miles.  Observation indicates the breadth of the ring to be 54,000 miles.  The thickness certainly does not exceed 250 miles.  With the exception of a black streak which divides the ring throughout its whole contour into two parts of unequal breadth and of different brightness, this strange colossal bridge without piles had never offered to the most experienced or skilful observers either spot or protuberance adapted for deciding whether it was immovable or endued with a movement of rotation.

Laplace considered it to be very improbable, if the ring was immovable, that its constituent parts should be capable of resisting by their mere cohesion the continual attraction of the planet.  A movement of rotation occurred to his mind as constituting the principle of stability, and he hence deduced the necessary velocity.  The velocity thus found was exactly equal to that which Herschel subsequently deduced from a course of extremely delicate observations.