A low power should be employed.
The nebula is shown in Plate 3 as I have seen it with a 3-inch aperture.
We see nothing of those complex streams of light which are portrayed in the drawings of Herschel, Bond, and Lassell, but enough to excite our interest and wonder.

What is this marvellous light-cloud?
One could almost imagine that there was a strange prophetic meaning in the words which have been translated "Canst thou loose the bands of Orion ?" Telescope after telescope had been turned on this wonderful object with the hope of resolving its light into stars.

But it proved intractable to Herschel's great reflector, to Lassell's 2-feet reflector, to Lord Rosse's 3-feet reflector, and even partially to the great 6-feet reflector.

Then we hear of its supposed resolution into stars, Lord Rosse himself writing to Professor Nichol, in 1846, "I may safely say there can be little, if any, doubt as to the resolvability of the nebula;--all about the trapezium is a mass of stars, the rest of the nebula also abounding with stars, and exhibiting the characteristics of resolvability strongly marked." It was decided, therefore, that assuredly the great nebula is a congeries of stars, and not a mass of nebulous matter as had been surmised by Sir W.Herschel.And therefore astronomers were not a little surprised when it was proved by Mr.Huggins' spectrum-analysis that the nebula consists of gaseous matter.

How widely extended this gaseous universe may be we cannot say.