The view in Plate 5 gives but the faintest conception of the glories of [chi] Persei.

Sir W.Herschel tried in vain to gauge the depths of this cluster with his most powerful telescope.

He spoke of the most distant parts as sending light to us which must have started 4000 or 5000 years ago.

But it appears improbable that the cluster has in reality so enormous a longitudinal extension compared with its transverse section as this view would imply.
On the contrary, I think we may gather from the appearance of this cluster, that stars are far less uniform in size than has been commonly supposed, and that the mere irresolvability of a cluster is no proof of excessive distance.

It is unlikely that the faintest component of the cluster is farther off than the brightest (a seventh-magnitude star) in the proportion of more than about 20 to 19, while the ordinary estimate of star magnitudes, applied by Herschel, gave a proportion of 20 or 30 to 1 at least.