112 SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM HERSCHEL. 



nouuced. It was the great achievmeut of the one ; it was the first 

 dictate to the young manhood of the other. Three years of conversa- 

 tion and thought i:)assed away, when the son, then twenty-four, took 

 from his father, then seventy-eight, the work of examining the double 

 stars. The old man's end of life was gained. What of nobility was in 

 him had descended right royally. In the space of five years the young 

 astronomer had mapped 380 double and triple stars, obtained by above 

 10,000 separate measurements. The record of these observations was 

 acknowledged by the French Academy of Sciences in bestowing their 

 astronomical medal, and followed by a similar reward in England. This 

 occurred in 1824. The old astronomer had foreseen the honors which his 

 son would win, but did not live to rejoice in them. Sir William had died 

 two years before. With his death came great changes to the pleasant 

 family at Slough. The good mother survived, indeed, but the strange, 

 ancient household was broken up. The aunt, who had watched the clock 

 and catalogued the stars up to the last, returned to her old home in Ger- 

 many. The cheerful old uncle had desisted from mechanical adj ustmeuts 

 only when apoplexy felled him at his work, and the young inheritor of 

 all the honors was left to perform his task alone. 



To those who have had no experience in continuous astronomical 

 observations there can be no conception of its anxious toil. Money 

 cannot repay it, nor honors, nor fame. In the pursuit day must be 

 turned into night, society abandoned, the round of home comforts 

 broken in upon, intercourse with friends and neighbors discontinued ; 

 and the astronomical observer, quitting all the amenities of life, finds 

 his compensation in the brotherhood of the stars. This self-sacrifice 

 young llerschel made. The objects to observe required a calm atmos- 

 phere. The best time for this is between midnight and sun-rise. This 

 continuous night- work requires health. llerschel felt the severity of it. 

 "Should I be fortunate enough,'' he writes, when he was but thirty years 

 old, " to bring this work to a conclusion, I shall then joyfully yield up 

 a subject on which I have bestowed a large portion of my time, and 

 expended much of my health and strength, to others who will hereafter, 

 by the aid of those masterpieces of workmanship which modern art 

 places at their disposal, pursue with comparative ease and convenience 

 an inquiry which has presented to myself difficulties such as at one 

 period had almost compelled me to abandon it in despair." 



In 1831 Mr. llerschel received the honor of knighthood from the 

 hands of King William, in acknowledgment of his eminent scientific 

 services. 



In 1833 he was awarded the royal medal of the Royal Society for his 

 paper " On the investigation of the orbits of revolving double stars." 

 The Duke of Sussex then said of him, " Sir John llerschel has devoted 

 himself for many years, as much from filial piety, perhaps, as from in- 

 clination, to the examination of those remote regions of the universe 

 into which his illustrious father first penetrated, and which he trans- 



