68 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



should make one or the other of these opinions most 

 probable." This man could think, could reason and 

 observe : he had also unusual powers of imagination : 

 but he was only beginning his travels through the 

 infinitudes of space and time. 



Three papers for the Royal Society in the course 

 of ten months ! The musician of Bath puts himself 

 at once on a level with the first men of science in 

 the kingdom. He is modest, but he has in him the 

 confidence of true genius. In his retirement he had 

 been collecting facts from the heavens for six or seven 

 years. A chance of speaking out what he saw and 

 had gathered together was presented to him. He 

 seized it with all eagerness, and was making his voice 

 heard. In these papers he has been speaking to the 

 Royal Society, of which he was not even a member. 

 When he speaks next, about three months after, it is 

 not as the musician of Bath, but as a member of the 

 Royal Society ; and he speaks to the whole world and 

 to all time. This paper, which was read on April 26, 

 1781, and is headed "Account of a Cornet," was really 

 the beginning of modern astronomy. It fills only ten 

 pages of the Transactions. 



He had been engaged for some time in an attempt, 

 not altogether novel, but certainly demanding great 

 labour, to find out the distance of the fixed stars. 

 His thoughts and plans were high, for though 

 more than a century has passed since then, the dis- 

 tances of not more than twenty or thirty out of 

 many millions can be said to be known, or perhaps 

 safely guessed. While thus engaged, rummaging 

 among the stars, "on Tuesday, 13th March, between 

 ten and eleven in the evening, he perceived a star, in 



