I now completed the theory of this construction by correcting the aberrations, spherical as well as chromatic.

The transit instruments used by Halley, Bradley, and Pond hang side by side; the zenith sector with which Bradley discovered the 'aberration of light,' now moving rustily on its arc, is the ornament of another room; while the shelves of the computing-room are filled with volumes of unpublished observations of Flamstead and others.

My eldest brother, while at work in the hayfield, was smitten by the sun, causing a mental aberration which made him a wanderer upon the face of the earth, and finally led him to cut the thread of life with his own hand; my second brother was pulled by his coat entangled in a wheel, beneath a heavy load which crushed his thigh.

Diseased brains, corrupt hearts, and impossible desires go far to constitute aberration of intellect.

At this time there is on my papers an infinity of optical investigations: also a plan of an eye-piece with a concave lens to destroy certain aberrations.

But how can these phenomena of nature have escaped them, and by what indescribable aberration can they direct, under the name of law, a process absolutely contrary to that so plainly followed by those same phenomena?

It is difficult enough for us to lay down a law for the actions of our own immediate neighbours and friends; how much more difficult to 'cast the shell of habit,' and place ourselves at the point of view of a civilisation and world of thought wholly different from our own, so as not only to explain its apparent aberrations, but to be able to say, positively, 'this must have been so,' 'that must have been otherwise.'

To illustrate spherical aberration.

Nay, in the intolerable arrogance which marked the worst aberration of Stoicism, the wise man is under certain aspects placed even higher than Godhigher than God Himselfbecause God is beyond the reach of misfortunes, but the wise man is superior to their anguish; and because God is good of necessity, but the wise man from choice.

However, it pleased "God the light to enlighten the darkness" of his spirit, and to convince him of the error and the wickedness of his ways; and from the terrors which such conviction engendered, seems to have originated that aberration of intellect, of which he was the victim during great part of two years.

Moreover, the veneration of human beings was favoured by some forms of mysticism; for, like many saints, many mystics had their eccentricities, and it was much to the advantage of mystic theologians if the vulgar could be persuaded to accept their aberrations from normal rules of life as peculiarities of holy men.

And what further and deeper aberration might it not yet produce?

The direction first taken by the eyes of the latter was in quest of the neighbouring ship; nor was the look entirely without that unsettled and vague expression which seems to announce a momentary aberration of the faculties.