WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



CHAPTER I 



THE FAMILY 



CICERO in his exquisite little book, written two 

 thousand years ago in the infancy of astronomy, and 

 called Scipio's Dream, delighted the Roman world of 

 his day with stories of the stars, which were a mixture 

 of romance and truth. He formed some idea of their 

 movements from a rough approach that had been made 

 even then to a globe of the heavens, and he filled his 

 readers with awe at the music which was believed 

 to accompany their passage through space. The music 

 of the spheres has passed into our language and our 

 thoughts at the present day. But it would have been 

 the greatest wonder of all could Cicero have foreseen 

 that, more than nineteen centuries after his day, the 

 true music of the spheres and the truest means of 

 hearing it sung would be discovered by the genius, 

 the almost unaided genius, of " a philosopher without 

 the rules," a musician in the town of Bath, then a 

 haunt of savages or wild beasts. He was organist 

 in the Octagon Chapel of that city, the director of 



