no HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



be acquired." Herschel cannot well be supposed to 

 have been ignorant of this scientific faith. With the 

 modest boldness of true genius he not only set it aside, 

 but he proved it was entirely wrong. This was at the 

 very beginning of his career. A novice challenged the 

 accuracy of an eminent master and veteran in the art ! 

 A novice compelling a veteran to withdraw his pro- 

 phecies and confess himself in error ! Why he thus 

 set aside the refractor and boldly followed to un- 

 imagined ends the path of improvement for Newton's 

 reflector he has not told us. Both ways were open ; 

 he had perhaps tried both, for he was aware of both ; 

 but he preferred the latter. 



While still engaged as musical director and teacher 

 at Bath, Herschel formed the design of constructing 

 a 30-feet reflector with a 3-feet mirror. This was 

 about the year 1778, before he was even known to 

 the upper classes of citizens or visitors as an amateur 

 astronomer. The first mirror of this kind which he 

 cast cracked in the cooling. When preparing for a 

 second casting, the furnace, which he had built on pur- 

 pose in his own house, gave way, the molten metal 

 ran into the fire, overflowed the stone floor, and nearly 

 cost him his life. But his papers in the Philosophical 

 Transactions were making him known, and his dis- 

 covery of the planet Uranus brought him to the 

 King's notice, and put a stop for a time to the realisa- 

 tion of his cherished idea of a great telescope. From 

 the first he was bent on doing what no other had done 

 before him carrying out Newton's conception of a 

 great reflector, whether the mirror used were glass or 

 metal, and exploring the heavens with an instrument 

 such as the mind of man had never before imagined. 



