126 SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM HERSCHEL. 



Or still again, "The students of science are as messengers from Heaven 

 to earth to make sucli stupendous announcements, that they may claim 

 to be listened to when they repeat in every variety of urgent instance, 

 that these are not the last announcements they have to communicate ; 

 that there are yet behind, to search out and to declare, not only secrets 

 of nature which shall increase the wealth and power of men, but truths 

 which shall ennoble the age and country in which they are divulged, 

 and, by dilating the intellect, react upon the moral character of man- 

 kind." 



We have called Sir John Herschel the Homer of science because he 

 was its highest poet. It is the poet's function to move the soul — rous- 

 ing the emotions, animating the affections, and inspiring the imagina- 

 tion; and all this Herschel did on almost every i^ageof his writings. It 

 is true that he avoids all fanciful representations of the facts of nature 

 just as he eschews the meageruess of literal narration, but he has drawn 

 beautiful pictures of nature's doings — so beautiful that they have dis- 

 posed two generations to find their recreation and joy in science. 



There is, besides, poetry of no mean order in such a life as that of Sir 

 John Herschel — a life wholly given to lofty, unselfish aims — a life of 

 labor, working, as he expresses it, "like a working-bee" to the very end, 

 reserving his almost only indignation for that spirit of idleness and 

 luxury w^hich spends life but does not use it. 



There is a passage in one of Sir John's popular addresses that fur- 

 nishes so admirable an insight to his own character, that it is worth trans- 

 cribing. Speaking of the advantages of a taste for reading, he says: 

 ••'Give a nian this, and you place him in contact with the best societj^ 

 in every period of history — with the wisest, wittiest, tenderest, bravest, 

 and purest of characters who have adorned humanity ; you mr^ke him a 

 denizen with all nations, a contemporary of all ages. It is hardly possible 

 but the character sliould take a higher and better tone from the con- 

 stant habit of associating with thinkers above the average of humanity. 

 It is morally impossible but that the manners should take a tinge of 

 good breeding from having before one's eyes the ways in which the best 

 bred and the best informed men have talked and acted." 



No word he ever spoke, no sentence he ever wrote, so exactly depicts 

 liimself. lie was in tbe utmost degree a well-bred nmn, not from gentle 

 birth and careful training, not from scholarly pursuits and polite society, 

 not from association with persons of rank and intimacy with men of 

 taste and thought, not even from his loving nature and noble aspira- 

 tions — not from all these together, so much as from the lofty ideal be 

 cherished from boyhood to old age of perfect manhood. The upright 

 form grew^ bent with passing years, the firm footstep staggered, the 

 hand that poised instruments so accurately that well-nigh impossible 

 angles of space could be measured to a hair's breadth became tremu- 

 lous, the lines of thought on his face deepened into wrinkles, the 

 straggling, grizzled hair turned to snow-like whiteness, and the absent 



