VALUE OF THE GREAT TELESCOPE 121 



books they read. But the spirit of a wholesome 

 rivalry, which it awoke in many bosoms, did more for 

 astronomy than its builder or it ever did. It was the 

 origin of other instruments of the same kind, as grand 

 as itself or even grander. Some men of science, 

 waspishly inclined perhaps, denounced the great 

 telescope as of no use. Both in England and on 

 the Continent this was said, and most unfairly, as 

 everyone who reads Herschel's papers may discover 

 for himself. He has frankly and fully explained in 

 his writings 1 why he preferred to use other and smaller 

 telescopes, and perhaps to use them oftener, but his 

 love for and his pride in this work of his hands is ever 

 and again coming to the front. One instance alone 

 deserves to be quoted as a specimen : " I saw the 

 fourth satellite and the ring of Saturn in the 40-feet 

 speculum without an eye-glass." 2 



But it was seldom that astronomers on the Con- 

 tinent followed the example of William Herschel or 

 gave themselves the trouble he took. Some of them 

 did. Of " Professor Amici, an artist and a man of 

 science of the first rank," his son, Sir John Her- 

 schel, writes : " He is the only man who has, since 

 my father, bestowed great pains on the construction of 

 specula, and his 10-foot telescopes with 12-inch mirrors 

 are of very extraordinary perfection." This was 

 true at the time it was written, two years after his 

 father's death. It did not remain true, for Lord Rosse's 

 great 6-feet mirror and 56-feet tube had still to 

 come. And like Herschel, Lord Rosse was his own 

 workman. When visiting him at Birr Castle in 1862, 



1 Phil. Trans., 1815, p. 295. 



3 Phil. Trans., 1791, p. 76 (October 10). 



