46 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



indispensable race for bread along one course, which 

 they all saw and had little or no sympathy with, 

 and the unquenchable race for fame along another 

 totally unlike, to which they were altogether in- 

 different. To run both races at the same time required 

 a spirit of indomitable energy and perseverance. 



In the world of literature and science it is not 

 unfrequently the hard fate of genius to be passed by 

 in the crowd, till some onlooker discovers it, as a 

 diamond may be discovered among a heap of common 

 stones on the roadside. The fire of genuine inspira- 

 tion may have warmed the heart or lighted up the 

 eye ; but, until the onlooker, long waited for, it may 

 be, goes past, no difference will be seen between a 

 genius and other men by the ordinary crowd of 

 humanity. 



Ministers of state, heads of political parties, busy- 

 bodies filled with national affairs were seen, recognised, 

 or pointed out in carriages or places of public resort 

 by those who enjoyed or were compelled by doctors' 

 orders to endure the weariness of the place. 1 But 

 " there are forty thousand others that I neither know 

 nor intend to know," Walpole wrote : " in short, it is 

 living in a fair, and I am heartily sick of it already." 

 In the very year in which these words were written, 

 Herschel was settled at Bath. He was one of the 

 forty thousand nobodies, but Walpole was compelled 

 in good time to reckon him a power in the world ; 

 he was only a poor player in the world's fair at 

 Bath. 



Court ladies and people of distinction knew William 

 Herschel at Bath. They patronised him and his sister, 

 1 See Walpole's Letters from Bath, v. 160, Oct. 2, 1766. 



