CHAPTER IV 



THE DISCOVERY OF HERSCHEL 



HERSCHEL had been studying the stars with improved 

 telescopes for upwards of four years before any of the 

 literary and high-placed people, who nocked every 

 winter to Bath, knew that a man of genius lived 

 among them and was a servant to their gaiety or 

 devotion. Beau Nash had been a better known figure 

 in their streets, a more respected man among a com- 

 munity of fops, idlers, and intriguers, and was deemed 

 more worthy of a statue in their pump-room or their 

 public park. 1 The man among them, who was destined 

 to write his name on the heavens and to live when 

 triflers and fops were all forgotten, attended their 

 church meetings as an organist, their concerts as a 

 conductor, and their drawing-rooms as a teacher of 

 music to them or their children. They had not dis- 

 covered that, by the irony of fate, a genius, head and 

 shoulders above them all, was toiling for bread one 

 half of the year, and slaving for fame or the welfare 

 of mankind for the other half. He was really running 

 two races before their eyes at the same time, the 



1 ' ' At the east end of the saloon, a posthumous marble statue of the 

 great Nash, executed by Prince Hoare, at the expense of the corpora- 

 tion, is handsomely ensconced" (Granville (in 1839), Spas of England, 

 ii. 394). 



45 



