42 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



bitterness. But among the purest and freest from vice 

 of all the harvests reaped from the seedbed then tilled 

 and sown, was that of William Herschel in his laborious 

 study of the stars. It left no bitter weed behind it to 

 poison or deface the riches of its harvest. 



Herschel was prospering in worldly circumstances 

 amid this stress of effort and thought. He had learned 

 also what a great poet expressed in words some years 

 after: "The excellence of every art is its intensity, 

 capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from 

 their being in relation with beauty and truth." l His 

 intensity required more room for its exercise. He was 

 realising, he was putting into practical form Laplace's 

 idea of a philosopher as one " who, uniting to a fertile 

 imagination a rigid severity in investigation and 

 observation, is at once tormented by the desire of 

 ascertaining the cause of the phenomena, and by the 

 fear of deceiving himself in that which he assigns." 2 

 Accordingly, he first " moved to a larger house, which 

 had a garden behind it, and open space down to the 

 river." It should be a place of pilgrimage to astro- 

 nomers, for there discoveries were made, and also what 

 were thought to be famous discoveries, but were not, 

 and there the mirror for a great telescope was fin- 

 ished. Alone, without encouragement from the outside 

 world of science, plunged in the depths of triflers' 

 gay idleness, and sometimes subjected to the sharp 

 tongue of his sister Caroline, this unwearied worker 

 toiled on to his goal. He was determined to see what 

 others had not seen, to know what others had not dis- 

 covered. And he succeeded in reaching that goal. 



1 Keats, Life, i. 92. 



2 System of the World, ii. 310. 



