chief participants were to die before a verdict was 

 rendered; Captain Cook was giving to this world new 

 lands, while William Herschel and his sister were 

 showing the world still other worlds, till then un- 

 known. 



LITTLE 

 JOURNEYS 



|HE brother and sister had thought they 

 would be content when they had followed 

 the subject of astronomy as far as Fer- 

 guson had followed it, and knew all that 

 he knew. Progress depends upon being 

 continually dissatisfied. Ferguson now 

 only aggravated them by his limitations. 

 In their music they amused, animated and inspired 

 the fashionable idlers. William gave lessons to private 

 pupils, led his orchestra, played the organ and harp- 

 sichord and managed to make ends meet, and would 

 have gotten reasonably rich had he not invested his 

 spare cash in lenses, brass tubes, eye-pieces, specula 

 and other such trifles, and stood most of the night out 

 on the lawn peering at the sky. 



He had been studying stars for seven years before the 

 Bath that he amused awoke to the fact that there was 

 a genius among them. And this genius was not the 

 idolized Beau Nash whose statue adorned the Pump 

 Room! No, it was the man -whose back they saw at 

 the concerts. 



During all these years Herschel had worked alone and 

 had scarcely ever mentioned the subject of astron- 



143 



