454 



NA TURE 



yMarch 17, 1881 



sits Herschel's si iter, and she has Flamsteed's Atlas open 

 before her. As he gives her the word she writes down 

 the declination and right ascension, and other circum- 

 stances of the observation. In this way Herschel 

 examines the whole sky without omitting the least part. 

 ... He has already found about 900 double stars and 

 almost as many nebulas. I went to bed about one 

 o'clock, and up to that time he had found that night 

 four or five new nel:>ulffi. The thermometer in the 

 garden stood at 13° Fahrenheit, but in spite of this 

 Herschel observes the whole night through, except that 

 he stops every three or four hours and goes in the room 

 for a few moments. For some years Herschel had 

 observed the heavens every hour when the weather is 

 clear, and this always in the open air, because he says 

 that the telescope only performs well when it is at the 

 same temperature as the air. ... He has an excellent 

 constitution, and thinks about nothing else in the world 

 but the celestial bodies." 



An account of the discoveries made with the 20-feet 

 instrument and the improvements effected in its mecha- 

 nical parts during the winter of 17S5 is given with the 

 catalogue of the first 1000 new nebulas in the Phil. Tratis. 

 1786. The house at Datchet being found to be more 

 and more unfit for the requirements of the family, 

 Herschel removed in June 1785 to Clay Hall in Old 

 Windsor, but here '' a litigious woman '' for a landlady 

 brought unlooked-for troubles, and on April 3, 1786, the 

 house and garden at Slough were taken, and all appa- 

 ratus and machinery immediately removed there. " The 

 last night at Clay Hall was spent," as Caroline Herschel 

 records, " in sweeping till daylight, and by the next 

 evening the telescope stood ready for observation at 

 Slough." Here Herschel resided for thirty-six years, or 

 from 17S6 until his death. As Arago has said of this 

 spot, " On pent dire hardiment du jardin et de la petite 

 maison de Slough, que, c'est le lieu du monde oil il a dt^ 

 fait le plus de ddcouvertes. Le nom de ce village ne 

 perira pas ; les sciences le ti'ansmettront r^ligieusement h 

 nos derniers neveux." 



On January 11, 1787, Herschel discovered two satellites 

 to the planet Uranus, and Prof. H olden relates, before 

 making known his discovery to the world, he satisfied 

 himself by this crucial test: he prepared a sketcfi of 

 Uranus attended by his two satellites, as it would appear 

 on the night of February lo, 1787, and when the night 

 came " the heavens displayed the original of my drawings, 

 by showing, in the situation I had delineated them, the 

 Georgian planet attended by two satellites. I confess that 

 this scene appeared to me with additional beauty, as the 

 little secondary planets seemed to give a dignity to the 

 primary one. which raises it into a more conspicuous 

 situation among the great bodies of the solar system." In 

 the subsequent announcement of the discovery of four 

 additional satellites of Uranus it is now generally conceded 

 that Herschel was misled by minute stars : his American 

 biographer indeed conjectures that he may have seen 

 Ariel on March 27, 1794, and Umbriel on April 17, 1801, 

 but however this may be, the discovery of these satellites 

 in the strict sense of the term is considered due to the late 

 Mr. Lassell, who, from repeated observations, was enabled 

 to assign their pei iods of revolution and mean distances 

 from the primary. 



Herschel dates the completion of the celebrated 40- 

 feet reflector from August 28, 1789, when he writes : 

 " Having brought the instrument to the parallel of Saturn 

 I discovered a sixth satellite to that planet, and also saw 

 Saturn better than I had ever seen them before." On 

 September 17 following a seventh satellite was discovered 

 with the same instrument, of which we shall have occasion 

 to say more, when we come to treat of the subjects included 

 in Prof. Holden's last chapter. 



Although Herschel's relations with his contemporaries 

 were usually of the most pleasant kind, there were several 

 occasions upon which he appears to have been somewhat 

 irritated by their comments respecting his work and 

 writings, as in the case of the discovery, or rather sup- 

 posed discovery, of mountains of great elevation upon 

 the planet Venus, claimed by Schroter of Lilienthal, and 

 described in a paper which appeared in the Phil. Trans. 

 for 1793 Herschel's memoir, "Observations on the 

 Planet Venus, " in the Phil. Trans, of the following year, 

 is viewed by Holden as intended far more as a rejoinder 

 for detractors at home than for the astronomer abroad. 

 At this time he considers there certainly existed a feeling 

 that Herschel undervalued the labours of his contempo- 

 raries, an impression no doubt fostered by his general 

 habit of not quoting previous authorities in the fields in 

 which he was working : but he is nevertheless of opinion 

 that "his definite indebtedness to his contemporaries was 

 vanishingly small." The work of Michell and Wilson he 

 always mentioned with appreciation. Some annoyance 

 may have been evinced that the papers of Christian 

 Mayer, "De novis in coelo sidereo phenomenis" (1779), 

 and " Beobachtungen von Fixterntrabanten" (1778), 

 should have been quoted to prove that the method which 

 he had proposed in 17S2 for determining the parallax of 

 the fixed stars should not have entirely originated with 

 himself, but his biographer affirms that in the Memoir of 

 Caroline Herschel there is direct proof that it did so, 

 and further it is shown in his Catalogue of Double Stars. 

 His proposal to call the minor planets detected by Piazzi 

 and Olbers [jOercs and Pallas) asteroids also led to much 

 criticism, and Prof. Holden transfers from the first 

 volume of the Edinburgh Review part of an article on 

 the subject, as it is remarked, " simply to show the kind 

 of envy to which even he, the glory of England, was 

 subject." 



In the Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay we find 

 various personal reminiscences of visits paid to Herschel 

 both by herself and Dr. Burney between 1786 and 1799. 

 In 1793 Herschel was a witness for his friend James 

 Watt in the case of Watt v. Bull, tried in the Court of 

 Common Pleas, and it appears that he visited Watt at 

 Hcathfield in iSio In the " Life and Letters of Thomas 

 Campbell," edited by William Beattie, is published a 

 letter from the poet, describing his meeting with Herschel 

 in September, 1813. "His simplicity, his kindness, his 

 anecdotes," writes Campbell, " his readiness to explain — 

 and make perfectly conspicuous too — his own subhme 

 conceptions of the universe are indescribably charming- 

 He is seventy-six, but fresh and stout; and there he sat, 

 nearest the door, at his friend's house, alternately smiling 

 at a joke, or contentedly sitting without share or notice in 

 the conversation. Any train of conversation he follows 

 implicitly ; anything you ask he labours with a sort of 



