76 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



this was right, or whether the same rule should hold 

 among the stars as has been allowed to hold on earth, 

 where an adventurer gives his name to a New World, 

 and the real discoverer has to rest content with naming 

 a province of it, perhaps a province of little worth. 



In writing this letter to the President of the Royal 

 Society, William Herschel could plead more grounds 

 for justification than we might be disposed, at first 

 sight, to allow. That he was recognised by the King 

 as a discoverer and a leader of thought was a great 

 honour, recommending him at once to the nation and 

 to the whole world. That he was paid a salary out of 

 the King's or the nation's purse, and was placed by the 

 King near the palace and brought into close relations 

 with the Royal Family is also manifest. We are 

 bound to give due weight to these considerations in 

 the mind of an upright and honourable man, who 

 deeply respected his sovereign, and knew best the 

 amount of his own indebtedness. But history tells 

 more than one story, that goes far to justify Herschel's 

 name for the newly discovered star. It was not an 

 uncommon thing to exalt an earthly prince to a throne 

 in earthly skies. Probably we shall all admit that this 

 was a mistake, perhaps a degradation of true science, 

 which knows no distinction between king and beggar, 

 and whose boundaries have been extended, to quote 

 the words of Galileo, a hundred thousand fold by 

 those whom popes and princes despised. But the 

 fact is beyond dispute. The hair of Berenice, the 

 Queen of Egypt and the murderess of the lover by 

 whom she was slighted, was carried off from the 

 temple of Venus, to whom it was vowed, and placed by 

 Conon as a constellation among the stars. Sobieski, 



