14 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



of, and seems to have taught SOUK <>i his 

 chiMr.-n, was a knowledge of tho starry hea\.n 

 Caroline, who enjoyed little of h-r intiriu i'atli.i s 

 instruction an-1 ^ui.Iann-, was sometim.'x tan-lit 1 . y 



liini to recognise stars and constellations in tli< r].>u<! 

 leas nights; but the teaching tin -n -iven was not seed 



iVH on a good soil. With William it was <litr.-r.-nt. 

 He was of an age and a disposition to be fascinated 

 by the subject, and the golden hopes which ih< M 

 at that time held out to astronomers must have 

 colour' -1 th* dreams of many a youthful star-gazer. 



r.riti>h Government offered a great reward for 

 the best means of finding the longitude of a ships 

 place at sea. A clockmaker mi^ht solve the proMnn 

 by ingenious contrivances, and win the reward ; or 

 an astronomer, by more refined and more subtle 

 methods, might furnish the sailor with knowledge 

 and safety, and carry off the prize. William Herschel 

 was a boy of thirteen when a young mathematics an. 



t self-taught, was appointed to a chair 

 in the Hanoverian Uni\'-r.-ii y of Gottingen, not 

 forty miles from the town of Hanover. 1 It was John 

 Tobias Mayer, who taught there from 1751 till his 

 death in 1762, and whose widow got three thousand 

 pounds of the reward for the solution he left behiml 

 him of the problem of the longitude. It is probable 

 enough that the name of this famous astronomer, 

 with whose writings Herschel became familiar in 



1 The favour with which Gottingen was regarded by George n., who 

 founded both University and Observatory, could not fail to exercise an 

 influence on Herschel and his father. In 17.v'. tin- King present^! tin- 

 Observatory with a mural quadrant of six feet radius, made by Bird 

 of London. 



