462 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



lation, the full import of which cannot even now be more than surmised. 

 The magnificent and almost solitary career of the elder Herschel is 

 thus described by the late Sir David Brewster : " The springtide of 

 knowledge, which was thus let in upon the human mind, continued for 

 a while to spread its waves over Europe ; but when it sank to its ebb 

 in England, there was no other bark left upon the strand but that of 

 the Deucalion of Science, whose home had been so long upon its waters." 



On such a spot as this, and into such a home as this, the young Her- 

 schel was born. There are, no doubt, those, and not a few, on whom 

 such high companionship, such inspiring examples, would have been 

 wasted. There are in science, as well as in literature and all the other 

 walks of life, examples enough of degenerate sons placed in saddest 

 contrast with an illustrious ancestry. Happily for science, John Her- 

 schel was not of this class. His great career, as well as the few glimpses 

 he has permitted the world to have into his early life, gives us the 

 assurance that none of that untiring devotion to science, of those mid- 

 night watches among the stars, or of that incessant labor by day, which 

 have made the name of Herschel a household word in all lands, was 

 lost upon his young mind and heart. It was not in vain that the aroma of 

 Science perfumed his cradle and his early childhood. By it, no doubt, he 

 was won to lovingly enter her service and prepare himself to receive the 

 mantle when it fell from the shoulders of his aged father. No micro- 

 scopic autobiography has distinctly revealed to us the reality of what we 

 can easily suspect. But the obituary notices of the Royal Astronomical 

 Society inform us that John Herschel himself, in a few rare instances, 

 has lifted the veil which obstructs our view by reporting the dialogues 

 which he had with his father. These hints justify our inference that 

 the boy, at an early age, was charged to reflect as well as to hear, and 

 to see as well as to look. 



Until Herschel entered St. John's College in the University of Cam- 

 bridge, for which he was fitted at the early age of seventeen, his education 

 was received chiefly at home, with private tutors. For, after a short trial 

 at Eton, he was removed from that school in consequence of the abuse he 

 endured from a stronger boy, the nature of which we do not know ; but 

 perhaps here it would be called hazing. At the University, he mastered 

 Newton's Principiq, and graduated as senior wrangler, the eminent 

 mathematician, Professor George Peacock, being second on the list. If 

 it be true, as has been pithily said, that God always works by geometry, 

 the course which Herschel preferred at Cambridge was the best prepa- 



