HERSCHEL'S REVEALING AT HAND 43 



When his sister expected him to cheer her lonely life 

 by lesson or talk, he was so absorbed in work that he 

 withdrew to his bedroom to study some favourite 

 author, and fell asleep in the midst of his books. One 

 of the favourite works she mentions was the Astronomy 

 of James Ferguson, published in 1756, the work of a 

 self-taught Scottish peasant, whose proudest boast, had 

 he lived to see the result, would have been that he did 

 as much as any man, perhaps more, to start William 

 Herschel on the path which led to results undreamed 

 of in the history of science. And the book that 

 Herschel thus fell asleep over was published anew by 

 a famous man of science after Herschel's death, and 

 was enriched with the multitudinous observations of the 

 great astronomer. Master and pupil were embalmed 

 together in that edition of the Astronomy, which can 

 still bear comparison with any books of the kind that 

 have been published, without coming out second best. 



But the time of revealing William Herschel to the 

 world as a practical astronomer of the first rank was 

 now at hand. That he was little known in Bath and 

 its neighbourhood we might gather from the silence 

 observed regarding him by Hannah More, whose sisters 

 kept a girls' school in Bristol, where she also resided. 

 She was a lover of astronomy, and in 1762 made the 

 " acquaintance of Ferguson, the popular astronomer, 

 then engaged at Bristol in giving public lectures an 

 acquaintance which soon ripened into friendship." ] 

 But the girl who, as a woman of thirty-four, knew and 

 recorded her impressions of Miss Linjey, finds no place 

 in either her Bristol or her London gossip for the far 

 greater name of William Herschel, who conducted 

 1 Life, etc., i. 16. 



