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Updated: June 5, 2025
To this day the lunar hoax is talked of in America, where originally it had its chief or, one may rather say, its only real success as a hoax. It reached England too late to deceive any but those who were unacquainted with Herschel's real doings, and no editors of public journals, I believe, gave countenance to it at all.
Watson, well known as the most celebrated private optical instrument maker in Europe, and at the time living on intimate terms with the late Mr. Arnold, the most eminent watchmaker of the day. When the late Sir William Herschel's great telescope was first exhibited at Slough, among other scientific men who went to see it was Mr. Arnold, who took Mr. W. with him.
Nevertheless, when one remembers the humble grade of military bandsmen in Germany, even at the present day, and the fact that most of the Herschel family remained in that grade during all their lives, it is clear that William Herschel's life may be fairly included within the scope of the present series.
But though many of the subtler suggestions of Herschel's genius passed unnoticed by his contemporaries, the main result of his solar researches was an unmistakable one.
But Herschel's calculations were in their turn corrected by the observations of Halley, Nasmyth, Bianchini, Gruithuysen, and others; but it was reserved for the labors of Boeer and Maedler finally to solve the question. They succeeded in measuring 1,905 different elevations, of which six exceed 15,000 feet, and twenty-two exceed 14,400 feet.
Paine was a devoted student of astronomy, and it cannot for a moment be supposed that he had not participated in the universal welcome of Herschel's discovery. The omission of any allusion to it convinces me that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered.
We have reproduced these observations by a distinguished French astronomer, in order to show the reader what was the nature, and how great was the importance, of Herschel's labours, and in how remarkable and comprehensive a manner he conducted his survey of the celestial phenomena. We now return to our brief narrative of his life.
Then comes a description of the construction of the object-glass, twenty-four feet in diameter, 'just six times the size of the elder Herschel's; who, by the way, never made a telescope with an object-glass.
This point settled, let it now be remarked, that Herschel's resources enabled him to unmask many of these nebulae: stars they were, and stars he forced them to own themselves. Why should any decent world wear an alias? There was nothing, you know, to be ashamed of in being an honest cluster of stars.
Had Macaulay's History or Herschel's Astronomy been put before Pen at this period, he would have looked through the volumes, meditated his opinion over a cigar, and signified his august approval of either author, as if the critic had been their born superior and indulgent master and patron.
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