246 IIKRSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



described thU discovery of the distance of a fixed star 

 as the greatest and most glorious triumph which pnic- 

 tical astronomy has perhaps ever witnessed, and the 

 three who shar.-d the triumph between tli m \\. n 

 Bessel with c>\ (V^ni. ll.-nderson 1 of Edinburgh with 

 a Centau r i . a 1 1 d S t ruve of Doq >. 1 1 \\itha Ly r. Bessel's 

 object -\ a- . that he got cut in two to form a h-li<>- 

 meter, Sir John saw at Munich before it was mounted, 

 considered it invaluable, and !> li< \< .1 that genius alone 

 could have dared to divide it in two for the purposes 

 of science. Caroline Herschel's delimit, in her i 

 ment, at the success of these three astronomt ; 

 following her baffled brother's lead may be imagined. 

 To know that the parallax of a fixed star had been 

 found by Bessel to be the f^ of a second ! To know 

 that it was a double star ! To know, besides, that the 

 smaller of the two companion stars revolved round 

 the larger in an orbit fifty times the diameter of the 

 earth's orbit round the sun, or two and a half timai 

 that of Uranus ! and to know also that the pair of 

 stars were 670,000 times as distant from us 

 sun! To her these discoveries were a delightful 

 mentary on her brother's words " In this case, million- 

 of years are perhaps but moments." The "little old 

 woman " in the " abominable city" of Hanover, unable 

 to endure " happy England," where her dead hero was 

 buried, and where his son, her nephew, was a 

 name in the world of science, revelled in the new.- 



1 It is only just to Henderson to say that he was preferred by Lord 

 Advocate Jeffrey to the Edinburgh Professorship of Astronomy over 

 . al, Thomas Carlyle. Froude was guilty of an unpardonable 

 blunder in printing the unwise and acrimonious criticism of Carlyle on 

 Henderson's fitness for the post. Facts had given a vrnli <-t in II 

 son's favour. 



