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 i5 m t ^ 1 01 ^{^ ncn 

 language, and devoted himself to the stud^ ear ag man T Ir 

 sics, for which he retained a taste to his late eg 



In 1759, William Herschel, then aboi^ b eyon( j 

 years old, went over to England, not with h a other 

 has been erroneously published, but with hi^,, . 



lllb L4.IJ. 



Jacob, whose connections in that country seemeu r , c j ie i 

 to favour the young man's opening prospects in^ ^ 

 Still, neither London nor the country towns afforded . ^ 

 any resource in the beginning, and the first two or tim e 

 years after his expatriation were marked by some. w^ 

 privations, which, however, were nobly endured- 1 

 fortunate chance finally raised the poor Hanoverktn to e 

 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 vjo* 

 then also that he taught himself something of Greek, gj 

 great was the desire for knowledge with which l\) Ser _ 

 inspired while residing at Halifax, that Herschel n t j ie 

 means to continue his hard philological exercises, , ment 

 the same time to study deeply the learned but v er Q f 

 scure mathematical work on the theory of music as an 



