“HE EXAMINES THE HEAVENS. 261 
had never suspected. Herschel is transported with enthu- 
siasm. He will, without delay, have a similar instrument 
but of larger dimensions. ‘The answer from London is 
delayed for some days: these few days appear as many 
centuries to him. When the answer arrives, the price 
that the optician demands proves to be much beyond the 
pecuniary resources of a mere organist. ‘To any other 
man this would have been a clap of thunder. This un- 
expected difficulty on the contrary, inspired Herschel 
with fresh energy; he cannot buy a telescope, then he 
will construct one with his own hands. ‘The musician of 
the Octagon Chapel rushes immediately into a multitude 
of experiments, on metallic alloys that reflect light with 
the greatest intensity, on the means of giving the para- 
bolic. figure to the mirrors, on the causes that in the 
operation of polishing affect the regularity of the figure, 
&c. So rare a degree of perseverance at last receives its 
reward. In 1774 Herschel has the happiness of being 
able to examine the heavens with a Newtonian telescope 
of five English feet focus, entirely made by himself. 
This success tempts him to undertake still more difficult 
enterprises. Other telescopes of seven, of eight, of ten, 
and even of twenty feet focal distance, crown his efforts. 
As if to answer in advance those critics who would have 
accused him of a superfluity of apparatus, of unnecessary 
luxury, in the large size of the new instruments, and his 
extreme minutiz in their execution, Nature granted to 
the astronomical musician, on the 13th of March 1781, 
the unheard-of honour of commencing his career of obser- 
vation with the discovery of a new planet, situated on the 
confines of our solar system. Dating from that moment, 
Herschel’s reputation, no longer in his character of 
musician, but as a constructor of telescopes and as an 
