SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM HERSCHEL. Ill 



Amid such a cbildhood, separated fi-om bojs of his own age, suppressed in 

 every demoustratiou which youthful spirits naturally give to feeling, 

 without the school antagonisms that teach a lad his real worth, or the 

 school rivalries that lead him to rate his fellow according to the plucky 

 boyhood he exhibits, at the form or on the play-ground, in the dormi- 

 tory or at the sparring-match, it is strange that the boy did not grow 

 up fall of eccentricities. . His detractors — and even he, the gentlest of 

 men, was not without them — say that he did. But there was in him, 

 from first to last, no lack of manliness, no insincerity, no jealousy, no 

 indifference even to rival merit. And then the man's life-loug and con- 

 spicuous veneration for his father is perhaps the best proof of a happy 

 childhood and youth. No want pinched the household ; warm affection 

 existed between the parents; the boy was the idol of a fond aunt and a 

 fonder uncle ; and it must have been from a happy home that he went 

 to Eton. 



At the usual period of life young Herschel entered St. John's Col- 

 lege, Cambridge, from which he graduated B. A. in 1813, as senior 

 wrangler, having for his competitors the late Dr. Peacock, Deaia of Ely, 

 who was second wrangler, and the lato Eev. Fearou Fallows, formerly 

 astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope, as third wrangler. The names 

 of several other men of mark appear in the honor-list as contemporary 

 students, such as Professor Mill, Dr. Eobinson, Master of the Temple, 

 and Bishop Carr, of Bombay. Mr. Herschel had no sooner attained 

 his degree than he forwarded a mathematical paper to the Eoyal Society, 

 " On a remarkable application of Cotes's Theorem." This was published 

 in the Philosophical Transactions. In the same year he was elected a 

 Fellow of the Royal Society, and though barely past his majority be- 

 came at once an active member. 



The early researches of Herschel were confined to pure mathematics. 

 For papers on this subject, published in the Philosophical Transactions, 

 the Copley medal was awarded him in 1821. In 1822 he turned his 

 attention to "observing" astronomy, that practical branch which 

 descended to him as a hereditary duty. This occupation led him to 

 associate with others in forming a special society for the general ad- 

 vancement of astronomical science. A few years previous to the death 

 of his father, in consequence of the improvement in astronomical tele- 

 scopes, amateur observers sprang up, who took great interest in the delin- 

 eation of the heavens. It was considered an epoch favorable to the 

 formation of a body that should be exclusively devoted to the encourage- 

 ment of astronomy ; and Mr. Herschel drew up an address which forms 

 the first publication of the present Eoyal Astronomical Society. 



All the while, hcfwever, the imagination of the young philoso[)her 

 was dwelling on the last discovery of his father — the binary stars. 

 It was a secret, won from the unknown, that opened a new view 

 into the universe. The boy was scarcely in adolescence, the father 

 passing into old age, when the constitution of the nebuhe was an- 



