Chapter 4

Herrera’s other works are the following:Historia de lo sucedido en Escocia é Inglaterra en quarenta y quatro años que vivió la reyna Maria Estuarda(Madrid, 1589);Cinco libros de la historia de Portugal, y conquista de las islas de los Açores, 1582-1583(Madrid, 1591);Historia de lo sucedido en Francia, 1585-1594(Madrid, 1598);Historia general del mundo del tiempo del rey Felipe II, desde 1559 hasta su muerte(Madrid, 1601-1612, 3 vols.);Tratado, relacion, y discurso historico de los movimientos de Aragon(Madrid, 1612);Comentarios de los hechos de los Españoles, Franceses, y Venecianos en Italia, &c., 1281-1559(Madrid, 1624, seq.). See W. H. Prescott,History of the Conquest of Mexico, vol. ii.

HERRICK, ROBERT(1591-1674), English poet, was born at Cheapside, London, and baptized on the 24th of August 1591. He belonged to an old Leicestershire family which had settled in London. He was the seventh child of Nicholas Herrick, goldsmith, of the city of London, who died in 1592, under suspicion of suicide. The children were brought up by their uncle, Sir William Herrick, one of the richest goldsmiths of the day, to whom in 1607 Robert was bound apprentice. He had probably been educated at Westminster school, and in 1614 he proceeded to Cambridge; and it was no doubt during his apprenticeship that the young poet was introduced to that circle of wits which he was afterwards to adorn. He seems to have been present at the first performance ofThe Alchemistin 1610, and it was probably about this time that Ben Jonson adopted him as his poetical “son.” He entered the university as fellow-commoner of St John’s College, and he remained there until, in 1616, upon taking his degree, he removed to Trinity Hall. A lively series of fourteen letters to his uncle, mainly begging for money, exists at Beaumanoir, and shows that Herrick suffered much from poverty at the university. He took his B.A. in 1617, and in 1620 he became master of arts. From this date until 1627 we entirely lose sight of him; it has been variously conjectured that he spent these years preparing for the ministry at Cambridge, or in much looser pursuits in London. In 1629 (September 30) he was presented by the king to the vicarage of Dean Prior, not far from Totnes in Devonshire. At Dean Prior he resided quietly until 1648, when he was ejected by the Puritans. The solitude there oppressed him at first; the village was dull and remote, and he felt very bitterly that he was cut off from all literary and social associations; but soon the quiet existence in Devonshire soothed and delighted him. He was pleased with the rural and semi-pagan customs that survived in the village, and in some of his most charming verses he has immortalized the morris-dances, wakes and quintains, the Christmas mummers and the Twelfth Night revellings, that diversified the quiet of Dean Prior. Herrick never married, but lived at the vicarage surrounded by a happy family of pets, and tended by an excellent old servant named Prudence Baldwin. His first appearance in print was in some verses he contributed toA Description of the King and Queen of Fairies, in 1635. In 1650 a volume ofWit’s Recreationscontained sixty-two small poems afterwards acknowledged by Herrick in theHesperides, and one not reprinted until our own day. These partial appearances make it probable that he visited London from time to time. We have few hints of his life as a clergyman. Anthony Wood says that Herricks’s sermons were florid and witty, and that he was “beloved by the neighbouring gentry.” A very aged woman, one Dorothy King, stated that the poet once threw his sermon at his congregation, cursing them for their inattention. The same old woman recollected his favourite pig, which he taught to drink out of a tankard. Hewas a devotedly loyal supporter of the king during the Civil War, and immediately upon his ejection in 1648 he published his celebrated collection of lyrical poems, entitledHesperides; or the Works both Human and Divine of Robert Herrick. The “divine works” bore the title ofNoble Numbersand the date 1647. That he was reduced to great poverty in London has been stated, but there is no evidence of the fact. In August 1662 Herrick returned to Dean Prior, supplanting his own supplanter, Dr John Syms. He died in his eighty-fourth year, and was buried at Dean Prior, October 15, 1674. A monument was erected to his memory in the parish church in 1857, by Mr Perry Herrick, a descendant of a collateral branch of the family. TheHesperides(andNoble Numbers) is the only volume which Herrick published, but he contributed poems toLachrymae Musarum(1649) and toWit’s Recreations.

As a pastoral lyrist Herrick stands first among English poets. His genius is limited in scope, and comparatively unambitious, but in its own field it is unrivalled. His tiny poems—and of the thirteen hundred that he has left behind him not one is long—are like jewels of various value, heaped together in a casket. Some are of the purest water, radiant with light and colour, some were originally set in false metal that has tarnished, some were rude and repulsive from the first. Out of the unarranged, heterogeneous mass the student has to select what is not worth reading, but, after he has cast aside all the rubbish, he is astonished at the amount of excellent and exquisite work that remains. Herrick has himself summed up, very correctly, the themes of his sylvan muse when he says:—

“I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,Of April, May, of June and July flowers,I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,Of bridegrooms, brides and of their bridal-cakes.”

“I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,

Of April, May, of June and July flowers,

I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,

Of bridegrooms, brides and of their bridal-cakes.”

He saw the picturesqueness of English homely life as no one before him had seen it, and he described it in his verse with a certain purple glow of Arcadian romance over it, in tones of immortal vigour and freshness. His love poems are still more beautiful; the best of them have an ardour and tender sweetness which give them a place in the forefront of modern lyrical poetry, and remind us of what was best in Horace and in the poets of the Greek anthology.

After suffering complete extinction for more than a century, the fame of Herrick was revived by John Nichols, who introduced his poems to the readers of theGentleman’s Magazineof 1796 and 1797. Dr Drake followed in 1798 with considerable enthusiasm. By 1810 interest had so far revived in the forgotten poet that Dr Nott ventured to print a selection from his poems, which attracted the favourable notice of theQuarterly Review. In 1823 theHesperidesand theNoble Numberswere for the first time edited by Mr T. Maitland, afterwards Lord Dundrennan. Since then the reprints of Herrick’s have been too numerous to be mentioned here; there are few English poets of the 17th century whose writings are now more accessible. See F. W. Moorman,Robert Herrick(1910).

(E. G.)

HERRIES, JOHN CHARLES(1778-1855), English politician, son of a London merchant, began his career as a junior clerk in the treasury, and became known for his financial abilities as private secretary to successive ministers. He was appointed commissary-in-chief (1811), and, on the abolition of that office (1816), auditor of the civil list. In 1823 he entered parliament as secretary to the treasury, and in 1827 became chancellor of the exchequer under Lord Goderich; but in consequence of internal differences, arising partly out of a slight put upon Herries, the ministry was broken up, and in 1828 he was appointed master of the mint. In 1830 he became president of the board of trade, and for the earlier months of 1835 he was secretary at war. From 1841 to 1847 he was out of parliament, but during 1852 he was president of the board of control under Lord Derby. He was a consistent and upright Tory of the old school, who carried weight as an authority on financial subjects. His eldest son,Sir Charles John Herries(1815-1882), was chairman of the board of inland revenue.

See theLifeby his younger son, Edward Herries (1880).

HERRIES, JOHN MAXWELL,4th Lord(c.1512-1583), Scottish politician, was the second son of Robert Maxwell, 4th Lord Maxwell (d. 1546). In 1547 he married Agnes (d. 1594), daughter of William Herries, 3rd Lord Herries (d. 1543), a grandson of Herbert Herries (d.c.1500) of Terregles, Kirkcudbrightshire, who was created a lord of the Scottish parliament about 1490, and in 1567 he obtained the title of Lord Herries. But before this event Maxwell had become prominent among the men who rallied round Mary queen of Scots, although during the earlier part of his public life he had been associated with the religious reformers and had been imprisoned by the regent, Mary of Lorraine. He was, moreover—at least until 1563—very friendly with John Knox, who calls him “a man zealous and stout in God’s cause.” But the transition from one party to the other was gradually accomplished, and from March 1566, when Maxwell joined Mary at Dunbar after the murder of David Rizzio and her escape from Holyrood, he remained one of her staunchest friends, although he disliked her marriage with Bothwell. He led her cavalry at Langside, and after this battle she committed herself to his care. Herries rode with the queen into England in May 1568, and he and John Lesley, bishop of Ross, were her chief commissioners at the conferences at York. He continued to labour in Mary’s cause after returning to Scotland, and was imprisoned by the regent Murray; he also incurred Elizabeth’s displeasure by harbouring the rebel Leonard Dacres, but he soon made his peace with the English queen. He showed himself in general hostile to the regent Morton, but he was among the supporters of the regent Lennox until his death on the 20th of January 1583. His son William, 5th Lord Herries (d. 1604), was, like his father, warden of the west marches.

William’s grandson John, 7th Lord Herries (d. 1677), became 3rd earl of Nithsdale in succession to his cousin Robert Maxwell, the 2nd earl, in 1667. John’s grandson was William, 5th earl of Nithsdale, the Jacobite (seeNithsdale). William was deprived of his honours in 1716, but in 1858 the House of Lords decided that his descendant William Constable-Maxwell (1804-1876) was rightly Lord Herries of Terregles. In 1876 William’s son Marmaduke Constable-Maxwell (b. 1837) became 12th Lord Herries, and in 1884 he was created a baron of the United Kingdom.

HERRING(Clupea harengus,Häringin German,le harengin French,sillin Swedish), a fish belonging to the genusClupea, of which more than sixty different species are known in various parts of the globe. The sprat, pilchard or sardine and shad are species of the same genus. Of all sea-fishesClupeaeare the most abundant; for although other genera may comprise a greater variety of species, they are far surpassed byClupeawith regard to the number of individuals. The majority of the species ofClupeaare of greater or less utility to man; it is only a few tropical species that acquire, probably from their food, highly poisonous properties, so as to be dangerous to persons eating them. But no other species equals the common herring in importance as an article of food or commerce. It inhabits in incredible numbers the North Sea, the northern parts of the Atlantic and the seas north of Asia. The herring inhabiting the corresponding latitudes of the North Pacific is another species, but most closely allied to that of the eastern hemisphere. Formerly it was the general belief that the herring inhabits the open ocean close to the Arctic Circle, and that it migrates at certain seasons towards the northern coasts of Europe and America. This view has been proved to be erroneous, and we know now that this fish lives throughout the year in the vicinity of our shores, but at a greater depth, and at a greater distance from the coast, than at the time when it approaches land for the purpose of spawning.

Herrings are readily recognized and distinguished from the other species ofClupeaby having an ovate patch of very small teeth on the vomer (that is, the centre of the palate). In the dorsal fin they have from 17 to 20 rays, and in the anal fin from 16 to 18; there are from 53 to 59 scales in the lateral line and 54 to 56 vertebrae in the vertebral column. They have a smooth gill-cover, without those radiating ridges of bone which are so conspicuous in the pilchard and otherClupeae. The sprat cannot be confounded with the herring, as it has no teeth on the vomer and only 47 or 48 scales in the lateral line.

The spawn of the herring is adhesive, and is deposited onrough gravelly ground at varying distances from the coast and always in comparatively shallow water. The season of spawning is different in different places, and even in the same district,e.g.the east coast of Scotland, there are herrings spawning in spring and others in autumn. These are not the same fish but different races. Those which breed in winter or spring deposit their spawn near the coast at the mouths of estuaries, and ascend the estuaries to a considerable distance at certain times, as in the Firths of Forth and Clyde, while those which spawn in summer or autumn belong more to the open sea,e.g.the great shoals that visit the North Sea annually.

Herrings grow very rapidly; according to H. A. Meyer’s observations, they attain a length of from 17 to 18 mm. during the first month after hatching, 34 to 36 mm. during the second, 45 to 50 mm. during the third, 55 to 61 mm. during the fourth, and 65 to 72 mm. during the fifth. The size which they finally attain and their general condition depend chiefly on the abundance of food (which consists of crustaceans and other small marine animals), on the temperature of the water, on the season at which they have been hatched, &c. Their usual size is about 12 in., but in some particularly suitable localities they grow to a length of 15 in., and instances of specimens measuring 17 in. are on record. In the Baltic, where the water is gradually losing its saline constituents, thus becoming less adapted for the development of marine species, the herring continues to exist in large numbers, but as a dwarfed form, not growing either to the size or to the condition of the North-Sea herring. The herring of the American side of the Atlantic is specifically identical with that of Europe. A second species (Clupea leachii) has been supposed to exist on the British coast; but it comprises only individuals of a smaller size, the produce of an early or late spawn. Also the so-called “white-bait” is not a distinct species, but consists chiefly of the fry or the young of herrings and sprats, and is obtained “in perfection” at localities where these small fishes find an abundance of food, as in the estuary of the Thames.

Several excellent accounts of the herring have been published, as by Valenciennes in the 20th vol. of theHistoire naturelle des poissons, and more especially by Mr J. M. Mitchell,The Herring, its Natural History and National Importance(Edinburgh, 1864). Recent investigations are described in the Reports of the FisheryBoard for Scotland, and in the reports of the GermanKommission zur Untersuchung der Deutschen Meere(published at Kiel).

(J. T. C.)

HERRING-BONE,a term in architecture applied to alternate courses of bricks or stone, which are laid diagonally with binding courses above and below: this is said to give a better bond to the wall, especially when the stone employed is stratified, such as Stonefield stone, and too thin to be laid in horizontal courses. Although it is only occasionally found in modern buildings, it was a type of construction constantly employed in Roman, Byzantine and Romanesque work, and in the latter is regarded as a test of very early date. It is frequently found in the Byzantine walls in Asia Minor, and in Byzantine churches was employed decoratively to give variety to the wall surface. Sometimes the diagonal courses are reversed one above the other. Examples in France exist in the churches at Querqueville in Normandy and St Christophe at Suèvres (Loir et Cher), both dating from the 10th century, and in England herring-bone masonry is found in the walls of castles, such as at Guildford, Colchester and Tamworth. The term is also applied to the paving of stable yards with bricks laid flat diagonally and alternating so that the head of one brick butts against the side of another; and the effect is more pleasing than when laid in parallel courses.

HERRINGS, BATTLE OF THE,the name applied to the action of Rouvray, fought in 1429 between the French (and Scots) and the English, who, under Sir John Falstolfe (or Falstaff), were convoying Lenten provisions, chiefly herrings, to the besiegers of Orleans. (SeeOrleansandHundred Years’ War.)

HERRNHUT,a town of Germany, in the kingdom of Saxony, 18 m. S.E. of Bautzen, and situated on the Löbau-Zittau railway. Pop. 1200. It is chiefly known as the principal seat of the Moravian or Bohemian brotherhood, the members of which are calledHerrnhuter. A colony of these people, fleeing from persecution in Moravia, settled at Herrnhut in 1722 on a site presented by Count Zinzendorf. The buildings of the society include a church, a school and houses for the brethren, the sisters and the widowed of both sexes, while it possesses an ethnographical museum and other collections of interest. The town is remarkable for its ordered, regular life and its scrupulous cleanliness. Linen, paper (to varieties of which Herrnhut gives its name), tobacco and various minor articles are manufactured. The Hutberg, at the foot of which the town lies, commands a pleasant view. Berthelsdorf, a village about a mile distant, has been the seat of the directorate of the community since about 1789.

HERSCHEL, CAROLINE LUCRETIA(1750-1848), English astronomer, sister of Sir William Herschel, the eighth child and fourth daughter of her parents, was born at Hanover on the 16th of March 1750. On account of the prejudices of her mother, who did not desire her to know more than was necessary for being useful in the family, she received, in youth only the first elements of education. After the death of her father in 1767 she obtained permission to learn millinery and dressmaking with a view to earning her bread, but continued to assist her mother in the management of the household until the autumn of 1772, when she joined her brother William, who had established himself as a teacher of music at Bath. At once she became a valuable co-operator with him both in his professional duties and in the astronomical researches to which he had already begun to devote all his spare time. She was the principal singer at his oratorio concerts, and acquired such a reputation as a vocalist that she was offered an engagement for the Birmingham festival, which, however, she declined. When her brother accepted the office of astronomer to George III., she became his constant assistant in his observations, and also executed the laborious calculations which were connected with them. For these services she received from the king in 1787 a salary of £50 a year. Her chief amusement during her leisure hours was sweeping the heavens with a small Newtonian telescope. By this means she detected in 1783 three remarkable nebulae, and during the eleven years 1786-1797 eight comets, five of them with unquestioned priority. In 1797 she presented to the Royal Society an Index to Flamsteed’s observations, together with a catalogue of 561 stars accidentally omitted from the “British Catalogue,” and a list of the errata in that publication. Though she returned to Hanover in 1822 she did not abandon her astronomical studies, and in 1828 she completed the reduction, to January 1800, of 2500 nebulae discovered by her brother. In 1828 the Astronomical Society, to mark their sense of the benefits conferred on science by such a series of laborious exertions, unanimously resolved to present her with their gold medal, and in 1835 elected her an honorary member of the society. In 1846 she received a gold medal from the king of Prussia. She died on the 9th of January 1848.

SeeThe Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel, by Mrs John Herschel (1876).

HERSCHEL, SIR FREDERICK WILLIAM(1738-1822), generally known as Sir William Herschel, English astronomer, was born at Hanover on the 15th of November 1738. His father was a musician employed as hautboy player in the Hanoverian guard. The family had quitted Moravia for Saxony in the early part of the 17th century on account of religious troubles, they themselves being Protestants. Herschel’s earlier education was necessarily of a very limited character, chiefly owing to the warlike commotions of his country; but being at all times an indomitable student, he, by his own exertions, more than repaired this deficiency. He became a very skilful musician, both theoretical and practical; while his attainments as a self-taught mathematician were fully adequate to the prosecution of those branches of astronomy which he so eminently advanced and adorned. Whatever he did he did methodically and thoroughly; and in this methodical thoroughness lay the secret of what Arago very properly termed his astonishing scientific success.

In 1752, at the age of fourteen, he joined the band of the Hanoverian guard, and with his detachment visited England in 1755, accompanied by his father and eldest brother; in the following year he returned to his native country; but the hardships of campaigning during the Seven Years’ War imperilling his health, his parents privately removed him from the regiment, and on the 26th of July 1757 despatched him to England. There, as might have been expected, the earlier part of his career was attended with formidable difficulties and much privation. We find him engaged in several towns in the north of England as organist and teacher of music, which were not lucrative occupations. But the tide of his fortunes began to flow when he obtained in 1766 the appointment of organist to the Octagon chapel in Bath, at that time the resort of the wealth and fashion of the city.

During the next five or six years he became the leading musical authority, and the director of all the chief public musical entertainments at Bath. His circumstances having thus become easier, he revisited Hanover for the purpose of bringing back with him his sister Caroline, whose services he much needed in his multifarious undertakings. She arrived in Bath in August 1772, being at that time in her twenty-third year. She thus describes her brother’s life soon after her arrival: “He used to retire to bed with a bason of milk or a glass of water, with Smith’sHarmonicsand Ferguson’sAstronomy, &c., and so went to sleep buried under his favourite authors; and his first thoughts on waking were how to obtain instruments for viewing those objects himself of which he had been reading.” It is not without significance that we find him thus reading Smith’sHarmonics; to that study loyalty to his profession would impel him; as a reward for his thoroughness this led him to Smith’sOptics; and this, by a natural sequence, again led him to astronomy, for the purposes of which the chief optical instruments were devised. It was in this way that he was introduced to the writings of Ferguson and Keill, and subsequently to those of Lalande, whereby he educated himself to become an astronomer of undying fame. In those days telescopes were very rare, very expensive and not very efficient, for the Dollonds had not as yet perfected even their beautiful little achromatics of 2¾ in. aperture. So Herschel was obliged to content himself with hiring a small Gregorian reflector of about 2 in. aperture, which he had seen exposed for loan in a tradesman’s shop. Not satisfied with this implement, he procured a small lens of about 18 ft. focal length, and set his sister to work on a pasteboard tube to match it, so as to make him a telescope. This unsatisfactory material was soon replaced by tin, and thus a sorry sort of vision was obtained of Jupiter, Saturn and the moon. He then sought in London for a reflector of much larger dimensions; but no such instrument was on sale; and the terms demanded for the construction of a reflecting telescope of 5 or 6 ft. focal length he regarded as too exorbitant even for the gratification of such desires as his own. So he was driven to the only alternative that remained; he must himself build a large telescope. His first step in this direction was to purchase the débris of an amateur’s implements for grinding and polishing small mirrors; and thus, by slow degrees, and by indomitable perseverance, he in 1774 had, as he says, the satisfaction of viewing the heavens with a Newtonian telescope of 6 ft. focal length made by his own hands. But he was not contented to be a mere star-gazer; on the contrary, he had from the very first conceived the gigantic project of surveying the entire heavens, and, if possible, of ascertaining the plan of their general structure by a settled mode of procedure, if only he could provide himself with adequate instrumental means. For this purpose he, his brother and his sister toiled for many years at the grinding and polishing of hundreds of specula, always retaining the best and recasting the others, until the most perfect of the earlier products had been surpassed. This was the work of the daylight in those seasons of the year when the fashionable visitors of Bath had quitted the place, and had thus freed the family from professional duties. After 1774 every available hour of the night was devoted to the long-hoped-for scrutiny of the skies. In those days no machinery had been invented for the construction of telescopic mirrors; the man who had the hardihood to undertake polishing them doomed himself to walk leisurely and uniformly round an upright post for many hours, without removing his hands from the mirror, until his work was done. On these occasions Herschel received his food from the hands of his faithful sister. But his reward was nigh.

In May 1780 his first two papers containing some results of his observations on the variable star “Mira” and the mountains of the moon were communicated to the Royal Society through the influential introduction of Dr William Watson. Herschel had made his acquaintance in a characteristic manner. In order to obtain a sight of the moon the astronomer had taken his telescope into the street opposite his house; the celebrated physician happening to pass at the time, and seeing his eye removed for a moment from the instrument, requested permission to take his place. The mutual courtesies and intelligent conversation which ensued soon ripened this casual acquaintance into a solid and enduring regard.

The phenomena of variable stars were examined by Herschel as a guide to what might be occurring in our own sun. The sun, he knew, rotated on its axis, and he knew that dark spots often exist on its photosphere; the questions that he put to himself were—Are there dark spots also on variable stars? Do the stars also rotate on their axes? or are they sometimes partially eclipsed by the intervention of opaque bodies? And he went on to enquire, What are these singular spots upon the sun? and have they any practical relation to the inhabitants of this planet? To these questions he applied his telescopes and his thoughts; and he communicated the results to the Royal Society in no less than six memoirs, occupying very many pages in thePhilosophical Transactions, and extending in date from 1780 to 1801. It was in the latter year that these remarkable papers culminated in the inquiry whether any relation could be traced in the recurrence of sun-spots, regarded as evidences of solar activity, and the varying seasons of our planet, as exhibited by the varying price of corn. Herschel’s reply was inconclusive; nor has a final solution of the related problems yet been obtained.

In 1781 he communicated to the Royal Society the first of a series of papers on the rotation of the planets and of their several satellites. The object which he had in view was not so much to ascertain the times of their rotation as to discover whether those rotations are strictly uniform. From the result he expected to gather, by analogy, the probability of an alteration in the length of our own day. These inquiries occupy the greater part of seven memoirs extending from 1781 to 1797. While engaged on them he noticed the curious appearance of a white spot near to each of the poles of the planet Mars. On investigating the inclination of its axis to the plane of its orbit, and finding that it differed little from that of the earth, he concluded that its changes of climate also would resemble our own, and that these white patches were probably polar snow. Modern researches have confirmed his conclusion. He also discovered that, as far as his observations extended, the times of the rotations of the various satellites round their axes conform to the analogy of our moon by equalling the times of their revolution round their primaries. Here again we perceive that his discoveries arose out of the systematic and comprehensive nature of his investigation. Nothing with such a man is accidental.

In the same year (1781) Herschel made a discovery which completely altered the character of his professional life. In the course of a methodical review of the heavens he lighted on an object which at first he supposed to be a comet, but which, by its subsequent motions and appearance, averred itself to be a new planet, moving outside the orbit of Saturn. The name of Georgium Sidus was by him assigned to it, but has by general consent been laid aside in favour of Uranus. The object was detected with a 7-ft. reflector having an aperture of 6½ in.; subsequently, when he had provided himself with a much more powerful telescope, of 20 ft. focal length, he discovered, as he believed, no less than six Uranian satellites. Modern observations, while abolishing four of these supposed attendants, have added two others apparently not observed by Herschel. Seven memoirson the subject were communicated by him to the Royal Society, extending from the date of the discovery in 1781 to 1815. A noteworthy peculiarity in Herschel’s mode of observation led to the discovery of this planet. He had observed that the spurious diameters of stars are not much affected by increasing the magnifying powers, but that the case is different with other celestial objects; hence if anything in his telescopic field struck him as unusual in aspect, he immediately varied the magnifying power in order to decide its nature. Thus Uranus was discovered; and had a similar method been applied to Neptune, that planet would have been found at Cambridge some months before it was recognized at Berlin.

We now come to the beginning of Herschel’s most important series of observations, culminating in what ought probably to be regarded as his capital discovery. A material part of the task which he had set himself embraced the determination of the relative distances of the stars from our sun and from each other. Now, in the course of his scrutiny of the heavens, he had observed many stars in apparently very close contiguity, but often differing greatly in relative brightness. He concluded that, on the average, the brighter star would be the nearer to us, the smaller enormously more distant; and considering that an astronomer on the earth, in consequence of its immense orbital displacement of some 180 millions of miles every six months, would see such a pair of stars under different perspective aspects, he perceived that the measurement of these changes should lead to an approximate determination of the stars’ relative distances. He therefore mapped down the places and aspects of all the double stars that he met with, and communicated in 1782 and 1785 very extensive catalogues of the results. Indeed, his very last scientific memoir, sent to the Royal Astronomical Society in the year 1822, when he was its first president and already in the eighty-fourth year of his age, related to these investigations. In the memoir of 1782 he threw out the hint that these apparently contiguous stars might be genuine pairs in mutual revolution; but he significantly added that the time had not yet arrived for settling the question. Eleven years afterwards (1793), he remeasured the relative positions of many such couples, and we may conceive what his feelings must have been at finding his prediction verified. For he ascertained that some of these stars circulated round each other, after the manner required by the laws of gravitation, and thus demonstrated the action among the distant members of the starry firmament of the same mechanical laws which bind together the harmonious motions of our solar system. This sublime discovery, announced in 1802, would of itself suffice to immortalize his memory. If only he had lived long enough to learn the approximate distances of some of these binary combinations, he would at once have been able to calculate their masses relative to that of our own sun; and the quantities being, as we now know, strictly comparable, he would have found another of his analogical conjectures realized.

In the year 1782 Herschel was invited to Windsor by George III., and accepted the king’s offer to become his private astronomer, and henceforth devote himself wholly to a scientific career. His salary was fixed at £200 per annum, to which an addition of £50 per annum was subsequently made for the astronomical assistance of his sister. Dr Watson, to whom alone the amount was mentioned, made the natural remark, “Never before was honour purchased by a monarch at so cheap a rate.” In this way the great astronomer removed from Bath, first to Datchet and soon afterwards permanently to Slough, within easy access of his royal patron at Windsor.

The old pursuits at Bath were soon resumed at Slough, but with renewed vigour and without the former professional interruptions. The greater part, in fact, of the papers already referred to are dated from Datchet and Slough; for the magnificent astronomical speculations in which he was engaged, though for the most part conceived in the earlier portion of his philosophical career, required years of patient observation before they could be fully examined and realized.

It was at Slough in 1783 that he wrote his first memorable paper on the “Motion of the Solar System in Space,”—a sublime speculation, yet through his genius realized by considerations of the utmost simplicity. He returned to the same subject with fuller details in 1805. It was also after his removal to Slough that he published his first memoir on the construction of the heavens, which from the first had been the inspiring idea of his varied toils. In a long series of remarkable papers, addressed as usual to the Royal Society, and extending from the year 1784 to 1818, when he was eighty years of age, he demonstrated the fact that our sun is a star situated not far from the bifurcation of the Milky Way, and that all the stars visible to us lie more or less in clusters scattered throughout a comparatively thin, but immensely extended stratum. At one time he imagined that his powerful instruments had pierced through this stellar stratum, and that he had approximately determined the form of some of its boundaries. In the last of his memoirs, having convinced himself of his error, he admitted that to his telescopes the Milky Way was “fathomless.” On either side of this assemblage of stars, presumably in ceaseless motion round their common centre of gravity, Herschel discovered a canopy of discrete nebulous masses, such as those from the condensation of which he supposed the whole stellar universe to have been formed,—a magnificent conception, pursued with a force of genius and put to the practical test of observation with an industry almost incredible.

Hitherto we have said nothing about the great reflecting telescope, of 40 ft. focal length and 4 ft. aperture, the construction of which is often, though mistakenly, regarded as his chief performance. The full description of this celebrated instrument will be found in the 85th volume of theTransactionsof the Royal Society. On the day that it was finished (August 28, 1789) Herschel saw at the first view, in a grandeur not witnessed before, the Saturnian system with six satellites, five of which had been discovered long before by C. Huygens and G. D. Cassini, while the sixth, subsequently named Enceladus, he had, two years before, sighted by glimpses in his exquisite little telescope of 6½ in. aperture, but now saw in unmistakable brightness with the towering giant he had just completed. On the 17th of September he discovered a seventh, which proved to be the nearest to the globe of Saturn. It has since received the name of Mimas. It is somewhat remarkable that, notwithstanding his long and repeated scrutinies of this planet, the eighth satellite, Hyperion, and the crape ring should have escaped him.

Herschel married, on the 8th of May 1788, the widow of Mr John Pitt, a wealthy London merchant, by whom he had an only son, John Frederick William. The prince regent conferred a Hanoverian knighthood upon him in 1816. But a far more valued and less tardy distinction was the Copley medal assigned to him by his associates in the Royal Society in 1781.

He died at Slough on the 25th of August 1822, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and was buried under the tower of St Laurence’s Church, Upton, within a few hundred yards of the old site of the 40-ft. telescope. A mural tablet on the wall of the church bears a Latin inscription from the pen of the late Dr Goodall, provost of Eton College.

See Mrs John Herschel,Memoir of Caroline Herschel(1876); E. S. Holden,Herschel, his Life and Works(1881); A. M. Clerke,The Herschels and Modern Astronomy(1895); E. S. Holden and C. S. Hastings,Synopsis of the Scientific Writings of Sir William Herschel(Washington, 1881); Baron Laurier,Éloge historique, Paris Memoirs (1823), p. lxi.; F. Arago,Analyse historique, Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes(1842), p. 249; Arago,Biographies of Scientific Men, p. 167; Madame d’Arblay’sDiary, passim; Public Characters(1798-1799), p. 384 (with portrait); J. Sime,William Herschel and his Work(1900). Herschel’s photometric Star Catalogues were discussed and reduced by E. C. Pickering inHarvard Annals, vols. xiv. p. 345, xxiii. p. 185, and xxiv.

(C. P.; A. M. C.)

HERSCHEL, SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM,Bart.(1792-1871), English astronomer, the only son of Sir William Herschel, was born at Slough, Bucks, on the 7th of March 1792. His scholastic education commenced at Eton, but maternal fears or prejudices soon removed him to the house of a private tutor. Thence, at the early age of seventeen, he was sent to St John’s College, Cambridge, and the form and method of themathematical instruction he there received exercised a material influence on the whole complexion of his scientific career. In due time the young student won the highest academical distinction of his year, graduating as senior wrangler in 1813. It was during his undergraduateship that he and two of his fellow-students who subsequently attained to very high eminence, Dean Peacock and Charles Babbage, entered into a compact that they would “do their best to leave the world wiser than they found it,”—a compact loyally and successfully carried out by all three to the end. As a commencement of this laudable attempt we find Herschel associated with these two friends in the production of a work on the differential calculus, and on cognate branches of mathematical science, which changed the style and aspect of mathematical learning in England, and brought it up to the level of the Continental methods. Two or three memoirs communicated to the Royal Society on new applications of mathematical analysis at once placed him in the front rank of the cultivators of this branch of knowledge. Of these his father had the gratification of introducing the first, but the others were presented in his own right as a fellow.

With the intention of being called to the bar, he entered his name at Lincoln’s Inn on the 24th of January 1814, and placed himself under the guidance of an eminent special pleader. Probably this temporary choice of a profession was inspired by the extraordinary success in legal pursuits which had attended the efforts of some noted Cambridge mathematicians. Be that as it may, an early acquaintance with Dr Wollaston in London soon changed the direction of his studies. He experimented in physical optics; took up astronomy in 1816; and in 1820, assisted by his father, he completed for a reflecting telescope a mirror of 18 in. diameter and 20 ft. focal length. This, subsequently improved by his own hands, became the instrument which enabled him to effect the astronomical observations forming the chief basis of his fame. In 1821-1823 we find him associated with Sir James South in the re-examination of his father’s double stars, by the aid of two excellent refractors, of 7 and 5 ft. focal length respectively. For this work he was presented in 1826 with the Astronomical Society’s gold medal; and with the Lalande medal of the French Institute in 1825; while the Royal Society had in 1821 bestowed upon him the Copley medal for his mathematical contributions to theirTransactions. From 1824 to 1827 he held the responsible post of secretary to that society; and was in 1827 elected to the chair of the Astronomical Society, which office he also filled on two subsequent occasions. In the discharge of his duties to the last-named society he delivered presidential addresses and wrote obituary notices of deceased fellows, memorable for their combination of eloquence and wisdom. In 1831 the honour of knighthood was conferred on him by William IV., and two years later he again received the recognition of the Royal Society by the award of one of their medals for his memoir “On the Investigation of the Orbits of Revolving Double Stars.” The award significantly commemorated his completion of his father’s discovery of gravitational stellar systems by the invention of a graphical method whereby the eye could as it were see the two component stars of the binary system revolving under the prescription of the Newtonian law.

Before the end of the year 1833, being then about forty years of age, Sir John Herschel had re-examined all his father’s double stars and nebulae, and had added many similar bodies to his own lists; thus accomplishing, under the conditions then prevailing, the full work of a lifetime. For it should be remembered that astronomers were not as yet provided with those valuable automatic contrivances which at present materially abridge the labour and increase the accuracy of their determinations. Equatorially mounted instruments actuated by clockwork, electrical chronographs for recording the times of the phenomena observed, were not available to Sir John Herschel; and he had no assistant.

His scientific life now entered upon another and very characteristic phase. The bias of his mind, as he subsequently was wont to declare, was towards chemistry and the phenomena of light, rather than towards astronomy. Indeed, very shortly after taking his degree at Cambridge, he proposed himself as a candidate for the vacant chair of chemistry in that university; but, as he said with some humour, the result of the election was to leave him in a glorious minority of one. In fact Herschel had become an astronomer from a sense of duty, and it was by filial loyalty to his father’s memory that he was now impelled to undertake the completion of the work nobly begun at Slough. William Herschel had searched the northern heavens; John Herschel determined to explore the southern, besides re-exploring northern skies. “I resolved,” he said, “to attempt the completion of a survey of the whole surface of the heavens; and for this purpose to transport into the other hemisphere the same instrument which had been employed in this, so as to give a unity to the results of both portions of the survey, and to render them comparable with each other.” In accordance with this resolution, he and his family embarked for the Cape on the 13th November 1833; they arrived in Table Bay on the 15th January 1834; and proceedings, he says, “were pushed forward with such effect that on the 22nd of February I was enabled to gratify my curiosity by a view of κ Crucis, the nebula about η Argûs, and some other remarkable objects in the 20-ft. reflector, and on the night of the 4th of March to commence a regular course of sweeping.”

To give an adequate description of the vast mass of labour completed during the next four busy years of his life at Feldhausen would require the transcription of a considerable portion of theCape Observations, a volume of unsurpassed interest and importance; although it might perhaps be equalled by a judicious selection from Sir William’s “Memoirs,” now scattered through some thirty volumes of thePhilosophical Transactions. It was published, at the sole expense of the late duke of Northumberland, but not till 1847, nine years after the author’s return to England, for the cogent reason, that as he said, “The whole of the observations, as well as the entire work of reducing, arranging and preparing them for the press, have been executed by myself.” There are 164 pages of catalogues of southern nebulae and clusters of stars. There are then careful and elaborate drawings of the great nebula in Orion, and of the region surrounding the remarkable star in Argo. The labour and the thought bestowed upon some of these objects are almost incredible; several months were spent upon a minute spot in the heavens containing 1216 stars, but which an ordinary spangle, held at a distance of an arm’s length, would eclipse. These catalogues and charts being completed, he proceeded to discuss their significance. He confirmed his father’s hypothesis that these wonderful masses of glowing vapours are not irregularly scattered over the visible heavens, but are collected in a sort of canopy, whose vertex is at the pole of that vast stratum of stars in which our solar system finds itself buried, as Herschel supposed, at a depth not greater than that of the average distance from us of an eleventh magnitude star. Then follows his catalogue of the relative positions and magnitudes of the southern double stars, to one of which, γ Virginis, he applied the beautiful method of orbital determination invented by himself, and he had the satisfaction of witnessing the fulfilment of his prediction that the components would, in the course of their revolution, appear to close up into a single star, inseparable by any telescopic power. In the next chapter he proceeded to describe his observations on the varying and relative brightness of the stars. It has been already detailed how his father began his scientific career by similar observations on stellar light-fluctuations, and how his remarks culminated years afterwards in the question whether the radiative changes of our sun, due to the presence or absence of sun-spots, affected our harvests and the price of corn. Sir John carried speculation still farther, pointing out that variations to the extent of half a magnitude in the sun’s brightness would account for those strange alternations of semi-arctic and semi-tropical climates which geological researches show to have occurred in various regions of our globe.

Herschel returned to his English home in the spring of 1838. As was natural and right, he was welcomed with an enthusiastic greeting. By the queen at her coronation he was created a baronet; and, what to him was better than all such rewards, other men caught the contagion of his example, and laboured in fields similar to his own, with an adequate portion of his success.

Herschel was a highly accomplished chemist. His discovery in 1819 of the solvent power of hyposulphite of soda on the otherwise insoluble salts of silver was the prelude to its use as a fixing agent in photography; and he invented in 1839, independently of Fox Talbot, the process of photography on sensitized paper. He was the first person to apply the now well-known termspositiveandnegativeto photographic images,and to imprint them upon glass prepared by the deposit of a sensitive film. He also paved the way for Sir George Stokes’s discovery of fluorescence, by his addition of the lavender rays to the spectrum, and by his announcement in 1845 of “epipolic dispersion,” as exhibited by sulphate of quinine. Several other important researches connected with the undulatory theory of light are embodied in his treatise on “Light” published in theEncyclopaedia metropolitana.

Perhaps no man can become a truly great mathematician or philosopher if devoid of imaginative power. John Herschel possessed this endowment to a large extent; and he solaced his declining years with the translation of theIliadinto verse, having earlier executed a similar version of Schiller’sWalk. But the main work of his later life was the collection of all his father’s catalogues of nebulae and double stars combined with his own observations and those of other astronomers each into a single volume. He lived to complete the former, to present it to the Royal Society, and to see it published in a separate form in thePhilosophical Transactions, vol. cliv. The latter work he left unfinished, bequeathing it, in its imperfect form, to the Astronomical Society. That society printed a portion of it, which serves as an index to the observations of various astronomers on double stars up to the year 1866.

A complete list of his contributions to learned societies will be found in the Royal Society’s great catalogue, and from them may be gathered most of the records of his busy scientific life. Sir John Herschel met with an amount of public recognition which was unusual in the time of his illustrious father. Naturally he was a member of almost every important learned society in both hemispheres. For five years he held the same office of master of the mint, which more than a century before had belonged to Sir Isaac Newton; his friends also offered to propose him as president of the Royal Society and again as member of parliament for the university of Cambridge, but neither position was desired by him.

In private life Sir John Herschel was a firm and most active friend; he had no jealousies; he avoided all scientific feuds; he gladly lent a helping hand to those who consulted him in scientific difficulties; he never discouraged, and still less disparaged, men younger than or inferior to himself; he was pleased by appreciation of his work without being solicitous for applause; it was said of him by a discriminating critic, and without extravagance, that “his was a life full of serenity of the sage and the docile innocence of a child.”

He died at Collingwood, his residence near Hawkhurst in Kent, on the 11th of May 1871, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, and his remains are interred in Westminster Abbey close to the grave of Sir Isaac Newton.

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