204 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



only two men on the terrace or in the Castle concert- 

 room that evening, the King and Dr. Burney; and 

 the important subject talked of was Dr. Burney 's 

 poem. 



Herschel's friendship with Dr. Wilson, 1 the Pro- 

 fessor of Astronomy in Glasgow University, was 

 probably the reason of repeated visits paid by him 

 to Scotland. Of the first of these visits no notice 

 is taken by his sister, a somewhat singular omission. 

 It was paid in the summer of 1792. The second 

 known visit was made eighteen years after, is briefly 

 referred to by his sister, and is confounded by his 

 biographers with that of 1792. It took place in 1810. 

 A third visit, obscurely hinted at by his sister, took 

 place the following year. In a paper read to the 

 Royal Society in 1812, he mentions an observation 

 of the comet of 1811 made by him at Glasgow, and 

 records another which he made at Alnwick on his 

 way south, some weeks later. That Glasgow may 

 have been to Herschel a place of summer pilgrimage 

 more frequently than on these three visits seems not 

 improbable. His friendship with the Wilsons and 

 their families, like that with Dr. Watson, was close and 

 long continued, the friendship of worthy men, holding 

 each other in the highest esteem. As he visited Dr. 

 Watson at Bath and Dawlish, so he appears to have 

 visited the Wilsons at Glasgow. At any rate we 

 know that he " was generally from home " in summer. 



When Herschel was in Scotland in the summer 

 of 1792, he was accompanied by a Russian friend, 

 General Komarzewsky. So intimate were the two 



1 Alexander "Wilson was Professor of Astronomy from 1760 to 1784 ; 

 his son Patrick from 1784 to 1799. 



