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CARROCHE has made for this Observatory a twenty-two feet telescope, which rivals those of HERSCHEL of the same length; and the use of reflecting circles, imagined by MAYER, and brought into use by BORDA, which LENOIR executes in a superior manner, and which we have not yet chosen to adopt in England, has introduced into the observations of the French an accuracy hitherto unknown.
"In science? Bah!" "Why not? There was Mary Somerville and and and Caroline Herschel and well, I can't think of their names all in a minute, but I'm proud to be one of the girls here anyway." "You are not one of t'em," he cried angrily. "T'ey are life failures. You fancy t'ey are selected examples, but t'ey are not; t'ey are t'e rejected.
The garden and workrooms swarmed with labourers and workmen smiths and carpenters speeding to and fro between the forge and the forty-foot machinery; and so incessant was the vigilance of Herschel, that not a screw-bolt in the whole apparatus was fixed except under his eye.
In the course of his career he built two hundred telescopes, having a seven-foot focus; 150 of ten feet and about eighty of twenty feet each. With these instruments the astronomical work in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was mostly performed. The study of the heavens at this epoch began to reach out from the planetary system to the fixed stars. In this work Herschel led the way.
Entering the sphere of Hanoverian officialism in 1788, he settled a few years later at Lilienthal, near Bremen, as "Oberamtmann," or chief magistrate. Here he built a small observatory, enriched in 1785 with a seven-foot reflector by Herschel, then one of the most powerful instruments to be found anywhere out of England.
Herschel supposed the belts to be the body of the planet, and the lighter parts to be clouds confined to certain latitudes. In 1665 Cassini observed transits of the four satellites, and also saw their shadows on the planet, and worked out a lunar theory for Jupiter.
The father of Richard Brinsley Sheridan was "Elocutionist to the King," and was paid a like sum. When Doctor Watson heard that Herschel was about to leave Bath he wrote, "Never bought King honor so cheap." It was nominated in the bond that Herschel should act as "Guide to the heavens for the diversification of visitors whenever His Majesty wills it."
Isaac Herschel was a man of tastes and education above his position; but he had married a person in some respects quite unfitted for him. His good wife, Anna, though an excellent housekeeper and an estimable woman in her way, had never even learned to write; and when the pair finally settled down to old age in Hanover, they were hampered by the cares of a large family of ten children.
If only he had reduced and compared his observations, he would have anticipated Herschel by twelve years. As it was, he missed it. It was seen once by Bradley also. Altogether it had been seen twenty times.
While in England I made several visits; the first was to my dear friends Sir John and Lady Herschel, at Collingwood, who received me with the warmest affection. I cannot express the pleasure it gave me to feel myself at home in a family where not only the highest branches of science were freely discussed, but where the accomplishments and graces of life were cultivated.
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