I 



IIERSCIIEL IIERTZBERG. 



ground on a neighbouring hill, resembling a garden, 

 ami called by the Brethren, Garden of Peace. 



HKRSCHEL,Sir WILLIAM ; a distinguished astro- 

 nomer ; son of a musician of Hanover; uorn Novem- 

 ber 15, 1738. Being destined by his father for his 

 own profession, he was placed, at the age of four- 

 teen, in tlie band of the Hanoverian foot-guards. 

 He went to England in 1757, and was employed in 

 the formation ot a military band, and in conducting 

 several concerts, oratorios, &c. Although enthusi- 

 astically fond of music, he had for some time devoted 

 his leisure hours to the study of mathematics and 

 astronomy ; and, being dissatisfied with the only 

 telescopes within his reach, he set about construct- 

 ing one for himself, in which arduous undertaking 

 lie succeeded, having, in 1774, finished nn excellent 

 reflecting instrument of five feet with his own hands. 

 Encouraged by his success, he proceeded to com- 

 plete larger telescopes, and soon constructed a seven, 

 a ten, and a twenty-feet reflector, having, in the 

 latter case, finished nearly two hundred object-mir- 

 rors before he could satisfy himself. From this 

 period he gradually withdrew from his professional 

 engagements. Late in 1779, he began a regular 

 survey of the heavens, star by star, with a seven feet 

 reflector, and, after eighteen months' labour, dis- 

 covered, March 13, 1781, a new primary planet, 

 which he named the Georgium Sidus. George III., 

 by the settlement of a salary upon him, enabled him 

 to devote the rest of his life to astronomy. At 

 Slough, he commenced the erection of a telescope of 

 the enormous dimensions of forty feet, and completed 

 it in 1787. Its diameter was four and a half feet, and 

 it weighed 2118 pounds. With this powerful instru- 

 ment, he continued to prosecute his discoveries, regu- 

 larly communicating the results to the royal society, 

 till the year 1818. In 1783, he had discovered a 

 volcanic mountain in the moon, and, from farther 

 observations made with his large instrument, in 

 1787, two others were distinguished, emitting fire. 

 He also ascertained that the Georgium Sidus was 

 surrounded with rings, and had six satellites, and 

 acquired far more knowledge of the appearance, satel- 

 lites, &c., of Saturn, than had before existed. The 

 four new planets discovered by Piazzi, Gibers, and 

 Harding Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta he ob- 

 served with his usual accuracy. He fixed their dia- 

 meter, which Schroter had determined to be from one 

 to four seconds, at less than one second, and made 

 an ingenious hypothesis, in respect to their nature 

 and formation. (See Planets.} He ascertained also 

 the important fact, that Saturn's ring revolves in ten 

 hours thirty-two minutes. He was constantly en- 

 gaged in determining the orbits and physical consti- 

 tution of individual stars; in fixing their relative 

 positions to one another, and to the Milky Way ; in 

 ascertaining the greatest possible distance of distinct 

 vision with the aid of the best instruments. An 

 account of most of his labours is found in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions and other English periodicals ; 

 but some of them are still unprinted. Herschel 

 received much assistance in making and recording 

 observations from his sister Caroline ; and this lady 

 herself discovered several comets. In 1802, he laid 

 before the royal society a catalogue of 5000 new 

 nebulae, nebulous stars, planetary nebulae, and clusters 

 of stars which he had discovered, and, in consequence 

 of the important additions made by him to the stock 

 of astronomical knowledge, received from the uni- 

 versity of Oxford the honorary degree of doctor of 

 laws an honour which was followed up, in 1816, by 

 the Guelphic order of knighthood from the king. 

 He continued his astronomical observations till within 

 a few years of his death, which took place at Slough ; 

 and he was buried at Upton, Berks, in August, 1822. 



His son, John F. W. Herschel, has distinguished 

 himself by his skill in mathematics and natural 

 philosophy. 



Herschel's gigantic telescope, of forty feet focus, 

 is capable of being moved in any direction, by ma- 

 chinery, which turns on a vertical axis. He found 

 with it the time of Saturn's rotation; and his obser- 

 vations agree with the results at which Laplace 

 arrived by a mathematical analysis deduced from tlie, 

 laws of gravitation. He discovered, likewise, that 

 this singular planet revolves upon an axis perpemli 

 cular to the plane of its orbit. From observations 

 made with his large telescope, he concluded that light 

 does not come directly from the body of the sun, but 

 from very bright, phosphorescent clouds, formed in 

 tlie sun's atmosphere. The discovery of Arago, that 

 the sun's rays are not polarized, confirmed tlie opinion 

 of Herschel. Moreover, he found that the red rays 

 in a beam of light give out more heat than the other 

 six rays together. 



HERTFORD COLLEGE; an establishment of 

 the East India company, at Hertford, England, for 

 affording instruction in the languages, laws, and cus- 

 toms of the East Indies, to persons intended for the 

 service of the company. 



HERTHA, JORD, JOARD, in Scandinavian 

 mythology ; the goddess Earth, the mother and pre- 

 server of things (Cybele). She was the daughter of 

 Night and Anar, sister of Dagnr or Day, wife of 

 Odin, and mother of Thor, or the god of thunder. 

 She is the same with Frigga. In a sacred grove on 

 an island in the Baltic was her sanctuary. When 

 her chariot was drawn through the land, all enmities 

 ceased festivals began. When the chariot returned, 

 it was washed in a sacred lake, by slaves who were 

 then drowned in its mysterious waters, because they 

 had seen the holy secrets of the goddess. The island 

 of Rngen is supposed to have been the holy island ; 

 and a small lake, called Burgsee, surrounded by 

 beautiful trees, is shown there as the supposed lake. 



HERTZBERG, EWALD FREDERIC, count of, a 

 statesman whose name is intimately connected with 

 the history of Frederic the Great, was born in 1725, 

 at Lottin in Pomerania, and died May 25, 1795, after 

 having been in the public service almost half a cen- 

 tury. He studied at Halle, and afterwards received 

 an appointment in the department of foreign affairs. 

 In 1742, Frederic appointed him counsellor of lega 

 tion, that prince having become acquainted with his 

 talents by the assistance which Hertzberg had ren- 

 dered him in making extracts from the archives for 

 Frederic's Memoires pour servir a i Histoirede Bran- 

 denbourg. In 1756, lie wrote, in eight days, the fa- 

 mous Memoire raisonne in Latin, German, and French, 

 from Austrian and Saxon papers found in archives in 

 Dresden, the object of which was to justify Frederic's 

 invasion of Saxony. In 1762, he concluded the 

 treaty of Hubertsburg, on which occasion Frederic 

 received him with the remarkable encomium, Von* 

 avez fait la paix, comme fai fait la guerre, un conhe 

 plusieurs. The king then made him minister of 

 foreign affairs. The first partition of Poland was to 

 be made in 1772 ; and, as the Prussians maintained 

 that it would have taken place without Prussia's par- 

 ticipation, she thought it expedient to acquire West 

 Prussia for her own defence ; and Hertzberg exerted 

 himself with great zeal to effect this object. He was 

 also very active in the conclusion of the Furstenbund, 

 in 1785, to oppose the designs of Austria on Bavaria. 

 (See his second vol. of Recueil des Deductions, Ma- 

 nifestes, Declarations, Traites et autres 4ctes, qui ont 

 etc rediges, etptib lies pour la Cour de Prtisse.) Dur 

 ing the last days of Frederic, Hertzberg was one 

 of the few whom the king used to see daily in the 

 Sans Souci. Under Frederic's successor he stilled 





