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- 

 scure mathematical work on the theory of music by R. 



