88 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



found a temporary home in the Royal Observatory at 

 Greenwich, where it put Dr. Maskelyne out of conceit 

 with the instruments he had for national use, and, not 

 long before, for exhibition, with handling by the public, 

 at so much per head ! l Colonel Walsh again makes 

 his appearance as entertaining Herschel at dinner with 

 the Astronomer-Royal, and Mr. Aubert, a well-known 

 observer of those days. Both of them were delighted 

 with the new telescope and its inventor. 



Maskelyne was provided at Greenwich with two 

 mural quadrants of eight feet radius at a cost of 280 

 each, a great transit instrument, a sector of 12 feet, 

 and many other instruments. An assistant also was 

 kept constantly at work on the observations made. 

 Astronomers allowed that at no place had so many 

 good observations been made as at Greenwich, but 

 Maskelyne was dissatisfied when he compared the 

 instruments with the telescope of Herschel, the work 

 of the ablest craftsmen in England with that of a 

 novice. 2 On February 20, 1806, the French mathe- 

 maticians, " notwithstanding the spirit of hostility that 

 had so long animated England and France against one 

 another," gave a most gratifying proof of the regard 

 in which they held Maskelyne and his predecessors in 

 the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. They wrote by 

 De Lambre to Maskelyne, sending him seven copies 

 of their newly published astronomical tables, and 

 paying the homage of gratitude and esteem to "the 

 author of the greatest and most precious collection of 

 observations that exists." They were " deduced, by the 

 rules of Laplace, chiefly from a series of more than 

 three thousand two hundred observations made at 

 1 Weld, ii. 28. 3 Lalande, Preface, xxxvii. (1771). 



