Thanks all for your kind comments
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Venus reminds me with that quotation from Herschel one of main things that appeals to me about these old texts - their prose, while in todays terms might be considered a bit "over the top", is so descriptive, evocative and, in some cases, just sheer poetic. Here's a thought (from the current debate in another thread), just as digital is heralding the death of film as way to capture the night sky, a hundred years ago perhaps it was film photography that heralded the death of detailed descriptive prose - take that photo of the great "nebula" in Andromeda; you throw that up on a page and all of a sudden you don't need to say much anymore...
cheers,