HERSCHEL VISITS LONDON, 259 
regiment, which he accompanied to England. The third 
son, William, remained under his father’s roof. Without 
neglecting the fine arts, he took lessons in the French 
language, and devoted himself to the study of metaphy- 
sics, for which he retained a taste to his latest day. 
In 1759, William Herschel, then about twenty-one 
years old, went over to England, not with his father, as 
has been erroneously published, but with his brother | 
Jacob, whose connections in that country seemed likely 
to favour the young man’s opening prospects in life. 
Still, neither London nor the country towns afforded him 
any resource in the beginning, and the first two or three 
years after his expatriation were marked by some cruel 
privations, which, however, were nobly endured, A 
fortunate chance finally raised the poor Hanoverian to a 
better position; Lord Durham engaged him as Master 
of the Band in an English regiment which was quartered 
on the borders of Scotland. From this moment the 
musician Herschel acquired a reputation that spread 
gradually, and in the year 1765 he was appointed organ- 
ist at Halifax (Yorkshire). The emoluments of this 
situation, together with giving private lessons both in the 
town and the country around, procured a degree of com- 
fort for the young William. He availed himself of it to 
remedy, or rather to complete, his early education. It 
was then that he learnt Latin and Italian, though without 
any other help than a grammar and a dictionary. It was 
then also that he taught himself something of Greek. So 
great was the desire for knowledge with which he was 
inspired while residing at Halifax, that Herschel found 
means to continue his hard philological exercises, and at 
the same time to study deeply the learned but very ob- 
secure mathematical work on the theory of music by R. 
