Ill KS( ill 1 S REVEALING AT HAND 43 



When bin muter expected him to cheer her lonely 



by lesson or talk, he was o absorbed in work thai he 



irew to hi* bedroom to study nome favourite 



11 asleep in books. One 



<>f ill.- fiiv, u rite works she mention* waa the Agronomy 



tnoa Ferguson, jmhli.shl in 1756, the work of a 



i tight Soottiah peasant, whoae proudest boast, had 



he lived to see the result, would have been ttmt ho did 



as much ait any man, perhaps more, to start William 



Horachcl on the path which led to results undreamed 



lory of science. And the book that 



Ht-rsrh. 1 thus iVH nsl,-,-|, ,,\,-r \v;i- |.uMM,.-.l ;in w l.y 



a famous man of science after Herachel's death, and 



was enriched with the multitudinous observations of th<- 



great astronomer. Master and pupil were embalmed 



together in that edition of the Astronomy, which can 



^till hear comparison with any books of the kind that 



have been published, without coming out second best. 



But th< time of revealing William Herschel to the 



1 as a practical astronomer of th<> first rank was 



now at hand. That he was little known in Bath and 



its neighbourhood wo might gath< r frin the silence 



observed regarding him by Hannah More, whose sisters 



a girls' school in Bristol, where she also resided. 



vaa a lover of astronomy, and in 1762 made the 



"acquaintance of Ferguson, the popular astronomer, 



engaged at Bristol in giving public lectures an 



i nee which soon ripened into friends) 



nl who, as a woman of thirty-four, knew and 



recorded ressions of Miss Linley, finds no place 



Bristol o London gossip for the far 



greater name of William Herschel, who conducted 



tie., i. 16. 



