BARON CUVIER.BARON CUVIER.
As is often the case, a book turned the course of his life, and made him famous. At the Gymnase he found a work of Gesner, the Swiss naturalist, and this, with its colored plates, first turned his attention to natural history. This liking was intensified by finding at the house of a relative the complete works of Buffon, the noted naturalist, who wrote thirty-six volumes in his own brilliant and poetic style, describing the animal kingdom. The boy became intensely interested in the habits of quadrupeds and birds; their form, their color, and their homes. He copied the illustrations in the work, and colored them with paint or pieces of silk. He always carried a volume of Buffon in his pocket to read when he had a moment of leisure. At twelve, he was a well-read naturalist.
In his last year in the Gymnase, when he was fourteen, he chose a certain number of his school-fellows, and formed an Academy. Every Thursday he gathered the lads into his room, and placing them around a table, seated himself upon his bed, and after some book had been read on natural history, philosophy, history, or travels, he asked their opinions of it, and then, being president, summed up the argument in a clear and concise manner. The mother's seed-sowing in the mind of her ardent boy was bearing fruit.
As the family were poor, and had only a soldier's pension to support them, it was decided that Georges should enter the free school at Tübingen, and prepare for the church. But the principal of the Gymnase, who had never forgiven the boy for some playful trick, placed his composition in the third rank. Georges knew that it deserved the first rank, and that this low standard would affect his position in college. He, therefore, resolved not to enter Tübingen, and, though he was thereby lost to the church, he was saved for great scientific work.
A fortunate thing now happened. A woman, a princess, who knew about the bright boy, spoke of him to her brother, Duke Charles of Würtemberg. When the duke visited Montbéliard, he sent for the lad, questioned him as to what he had learned, asked to see his drawings, and ended by sending him free of expense to the University of Stuttgart, to enter his own Academy, called the Academy Caroline. It seemed a little thing for a lady to speak of a boy's studiousness and great love of books, but it proved a great thing for Georges Cuvier and for the scientific world. Thousands of women and men could do more of these little acts of kindness, if they only thought of it. Well said Thomas Hood:—
"Evil is wrought by want of thought,As well as want of heart."
"Evil is wrought by want of thought,As well as want of heart."
The boy of fourteen said good-by to his devoted mother, and started for Stuttgart, seated between the Chamberlain and the Secretary of the Grand Duke. Both spoke German all the way, and the lonesome boy did not understand a word. He entered the Academy May 4, 1784, and for four years studied mathematics, law, philosophy, finance, and the like.
But he lost no opportunity to study natural history. A professor gave him the works of Linnæus, and he gained inspiration from the young man who could travel four thousand miles through the marshes of Lapland, nearly barefoot and half-starved, in his study of plants. Georges now collected a herbarium. When he had leisure, he drew and colored insects, birds, and flowers with great accuracy. He kept a number of living insects in his room, constantly feeding them, and watching their habits. He said years afterward, "If I had not studied insects from choice, when I was at college, I should have done so later, from a conviction of its necessity." He declared that the wonders he met with in the organization of insects always elevated his thoughts.
Nine months after his arrival in Germany, he won the prize at the Academy for excellence in the German language, receiving the order of Chevalerie, an honor given only to five or six out of four hundred pupils. This entitled the recipients to dine at a separate table, and to enjoy many advantages under the immediate patronage of the Grand Duke.
When the four years of college life were over, the father's pension having ceased on account of the disturbed financial condition of France, the youth of eighteen needed to find employment at once. Nothing seemed open to him but the position of tutor in a private family, a thing much deprecated by his school-fellows, who had already built many air-castles for his future.
But young Cuvier had the courage and the wisdom to do what necessity required, and to do it cheerfully. In July, 1788, he entered the family of Count d'Héricy in Caen, Normandy, and for six years taught his only son. He took with him, says a friend, "these admirable foundations for glory: a love of labor, depth of reflection, perseverance, and uprightness of character." While teaching here, he met the nobility of the surrounding country, increasing thereby his polish of manner and tact, for which he was celebrated all his life.
Living by the sea, he was led to study marine animals. The casual dissection of a calamar, a species of cuttle-fish, influenced him to study the anatomy of mollusca, which afterward led to his great classification of the whole animal kingdom. In this obscure corner of Normandy, the young teacher observed, and committed his observations to paper. Some young men would not have found time for such work. Those only succeed who have sufficient force of character to make time for what they wish to do. To allow one's time to be wasted, is to allow one's opportunities for eminence to go by forever.
Nearly every evening Cuvier attended a small society of which he was secretary, which gathered chiefly to discuss agricultural and kindred topics. M. Tessier, living there in exile under an assumed name, the author of several valuable articles in the Encyclopedia, was often present, and between him and the young secretary a warm friendship soon existed. As the friendship of the Marquis Guidubaldo proved valuable to Galileo, so that of M. Tessier proved of great benefit to Cuvier. He led the young and comparatively unknown naturalist, though some of his articles had been published in learned journals, to correspond with Geoffroy St. Hilaire, De Lacépède, and others on scientific subjects. Through their influence he was finally called to Paris, made a member of the Commission of Arts, and professor at the Central School of the Panthéon.
He was only twenty-six, and this was but the beginning of honors. Here he composed his "Elementary Treatise on the Natural History of Animals." His great desire was to be attached to the Museum of Natural History, where he could study the collections and enlarge them. Very soon after his arrival in Paris, M. Mertrud was appointed to the newly created chair of Comparative Anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes. He was advanced in years. And now came the opportunity for friendship to do its work. Geoffroy St. Hilaire and De Lacépède were his colleagues. They urged that their friend Cuvier be appointed assistant, and Mertrud gladly consented. This was indeed an honor, since Daubenton, Buffon, Lamarck, and other European celebrities had filled this position.
Cuvier at once sent for his aged father, now nearly eighty years old, and his only brother, Frédéric, to make their home with him. The precious mother had died two years previously. She did not live to see the fame of her eldest son, but she must have been convinced of his future greatness, and been comforted by the prospect.
From the moment of entering upon his new work, Cuvier began to develop that wonderful collection in comparative anatomy which is now so celebrated. Nothing ever turned him from his purpose of making this the most extensive collection in the world; no sorrow, no legislative duties, no absence. No one who has visited Paris will ever forget the seventy-five acres in the Jardin des Plantes, with trees and flowers from all the world; with thirteen rooms filled with skeletons and anatomical preparations of all kinds; with eleven rooms in the gallery of anthropology containing every variety of the human species, in casts, mummies, and fossils; with the gallery of zoölogy containing over two thousand mammalia, belonging to five hundred species, as many reptiles, ten thousand birds, and over twenty-five hundred fishes; with immense geological, mineralogical, and botanical collections; all a marvel of industry and learning.
Cuvier now worked unceasingly. Sometimes his salary was in arrears, but he bore it cheerfully, as he wrote a friend: "You are not to suppose that Paris is so highly favored; for twelve months' pay are now due at the Jardin des Plantes, and all the national establishments for public instruction, in Paris as well as at Strasburg; and if we envy the elephants, it is not because they are better paid than we are, but because while living on credit, as we do, they are not aware of it, and consequently are insensible to the pain it gives. You know the saying about the French, that when they have no money they sing. We savants, who are not musicians, work at our sciences instead of singing, which comes to the same thing." He is a hero, indeed, who can breast poverty, and work and sing in the midst of hardship. When he published his "Annals of the Museum," he not only drew, but often engraved the plates himself, when he was unable, for lack of means, to hire it done.
The National Institution was founded in 1796, and Cuvier was associated with his friends De Lacépède and Daubenton, in the section of zoölogy, holding the position of Secretary of Natural Sciences till his death.
Four years later, in 1800, the first two volumes of his "Lessons in Comparative Anatomy" were published, and met with great success. The last three volumes were issued five years later.
In this year, 1800, Cuvier received another honor, that of the professorship of Natural Philosophy in the Collège de France. He was now but thirty-one. The following year, Napoleon I., who was usually wise in his selection of men, appointed him one of the six inspectors-general of education, to establish public schools in thirty towns of France.
Every moment now seemed occupied, and yet while the brain was busy perchance the heart was lonely. The father had died two years after the mother. The wife of his brother Frédéric had died, also, and the two brothers were left alone. At thirty-four, Cuvier decided to take into his heart and home the widow of M. Duvaucel, Fermier-Général, who had perished on the scaffold in 1794. The family had lost all their money in the French Revolution, and Madame Duvaucel had four large children to be supported; but Cuvier loved her for her rare mind and sweet disposition, and she blessed the remaining years of his life. An educated man needs companionship in mind; not simply a housekeeper.
Six years later one of her sons was assassinated in Portugal, during the retreat of the French army. Another, while collecting for the Museum of Paris, died in Madras, a young man of great talent and much beloved. A daughter, Mlle. Duvaucel, lived to be the comfort of Cuvier's declining years.
Happy in his home and absorbed with his work, Cuvier went forward to new labors and new honors. M. Mertrud had died, and, instead of being assistant at the Jardin des Plantes, Cuvier was now professor. In 1808 Napoleon made him counsellor for life of the Imperial University. The next year he organized new academies in the Italian States, which were now annexed to France. In 1811 he was sent on a similar mission to Holland and the Hanseatic towns, and was made a chevalier, which rank was assured to his heirs. Though he disliked to be absent from his family, he went where duty called him, and wrote back fond letters to his wife.
"My Tender Friend,—The weather, the road, the horses, and the postilions have proved so excellent that we have reached Porte Sainte Mayence before six o'clock; and I have bitterly regretted the two or three good hours that I might still have passed with thee, without in the least delaying my journey. At least believe that I have passed them in my imagination, and that the remembrance of thy caresses and tender friendship will form the happiness of my whole way." After some words to the children, he added, "We are quite well, my good friend; we have crossed an agreeable country; and we are in a tolerable inn. Our carriage appears to be quite able to bear the journey; thus, up to this moment, all goes well. Pray to God that this may last; thou art so good that he cannot refuse thee. Adieu. A thousand tender kisses. G. C."
This year, 1811, appeared one of his most important works—that on "Fossil Remains," which wrought a revolution in the study of geology. By comparing living and fossil animals, Cuvier showed that huger creatures had lived on the earth and become extinct before the creation of man. In the first epoch he found great reptiles, like the Ichthyosaurus, thirty feet long, and the Megalosaurus, seventy feet long. In the second epoch, he found the Paleotherium; in the third, the Mammoth, Mastodon, and gigantic sloth; and in the fourth epoch, man. So closely had he studied the relations of the organs of animals, that he could reconstruct the extinct fossil from a single bone. He had already prepared, at the request of Napoleon, a brilliant "Report on the Progress of Natural Sciences from the year 1789."
In 1813, though a Protestant, he was sent to Rome to organize a university, and was made Master of Requests in the Council of State. Napoleon also appointed him Commissaire Impérial Extraordinaire, and sent him to endeavor to raise the people on the left bank of the Rhine in favor of France, against the invading troops then marching upon them. But Cuvier was stopped at Nancy by the entrance of the allied armies, and obliged to return.
He was now famous, and his company and counsel were sought by the learned and the great. And he was still a comparatively young man, forty-four.
But life had great sorrows in the midst of this prosperity. His first child, a son, had died a few weeks after his birth. His daughter Annie had died in 1812, at the age of four, and now in 1813, while he was absent in Rome, his only son, Georges, a boy of seven, had been taken from him. The blow was a terrible one. For many years he never saw a boy near that age, without being deeply affected. He would stop on the streets to watch a group of boys playing, and then go on sadly, thinking of the one he had buried.
In 1814, Cuvier was raised to the rank of Counsellor of State, and Chancellor of the University. When Napoleon was asked why he had appointed a savant to a political position, he replied, "that he may be able to rest himself sometimes," knowing that to a man like Cuvier change was the most helpful rest. When Napoleon abdicated his throne, and Louis XVIII. came to power, Cuvier was retained in office, for his rare administrative ability, and upright life.
Three years later, the first edition of his "Animal Kingdom" appeared, and is now to be seen in the British Museum, in seventeen volumes. This work has served as the basis for subsequent zoölogical classification. Cuvier studied minutely the interior structure of animals, and based his classification on this, instead of exterior resemblance.
After this great work was published, Cuvier went with his family to London, for a rest of six weeks. Here he received distinguished attention from Sir William Herschel, and other learned men.
In 1819, he was appointed President of the Committee of the Interior, and in this position, which he held for life, it is believed ten thousand various matters passed through his hands each year, for his examination and decision. He officiated at the crowning of Charles X., as one of the presidents of the Council of State, and received from that monarch the decoration of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor. His former sovereign, the King of Würtemberg, appointed him Commander of the Order of the Crown.
All this time in which he was doing earnest and responsible work for his country, he was writing and lecturing almost constantly. So careful was he of his time, that he always read or wrote as he was riding in his carriage through the streets of Paris. A lamp in the back of his carriage he used at night, till he found that he was injuring his eyes. Even while he was sitting for a portrait, to be used as a frontispiece for his book, "Discourse on the Revolutions of the Globe," his wife's daughter read to him the "Fortunes of Nigel." In the evenings, when he was too tired for scientific research, his wife or daughter read to him general literature.
Every Saturday evening a reception was held at the home of Baron Cuvier, and there one was sure to meet the most brilliant and learned from all parts of Europe, whether rich or poor....
Cuvier delighted everybody by his courtesy and his cordiality. Another person also was the life of these gatherings,—his beautiful daughter Clementine, his only remaining child. Never strong in body, she had been reared with the tenderest care. Devoted to all good work, reading to aged women, visiting the poor, educated, and of extreme loveliness of character, she was the idol of her family and of society. On the 25th of August, 1828, she was to have been married, but, while in the midst of the preparations, she fell ill of consumption, and died the following month, September 28.
The effect on both parents was crushing. Cuvier's light hair grew white, and lines gathered in his face. After two months he took his place again at the head of the Committee of the Interior. He listened attentively to all the discussions, but when it came his turn to speak, he burst into tears, and covered his bowed face in his hands, and sobbed bitterly. Finally he raised his head and said, "Pardon me, gentlemen, I was a father, and I have lost all!" and then with a violent effort he resumed the business of the day, with his usual calmness.
He devoted himself now more than ever to his books, as though he must use every moment, or be prostrated with grief. This same year, 1828, the first book in a series of twenty volumes, beautifully illustrated, appeared, on the "Natural History of Fishes, containing more than five thousand species of those animals, described after nature, and distributed according to their affinities, with observations on their anatomy, and critical researches on their nomenclature, ancient as well as modern."
In 1832, he was created a Peer of France, by Louis Philippe. Every honor had come that could be asked or desired. His books were eagerly read; crowds attended his lectures; he was loved, honored, and revered; but death had robbed him of the sweetest things in life.
On Tuesday, May 8, 1832, he lectured as usual before the Collège de France, on the "History and Progress of Science in all Ages." In the evening he felt a numbness in his right arm. It was the beginning of the end. Paralysis soon developed.
He said to M. Pasquier, President of the Chamber of Peers, "Behold a very different person to the man of Tuesday—of Saturday. Nevertheless, I had great things still to do. All was ready in my head; after thirty years of labor and research, there remained but to write; and now the hands fail, and carry with them the head."
M. Pasquier tenderly expressed the universal interest felt for M. Cuvier. "I like to think so," said the dying man; "I have long labored to render myself worthy of it." He is to be pitied, indeed, who does not care whether the world loves him.
On May 13, the nomination of Cuvier to the presidency of the whole Council of State was taken to the sovereign for his signature, but it came too late. Cuvier died that day. Four hours before his death he had asked to be taken into the room where he had met and talked with so many of the renowned of earth, and where his Clementine had charmed them by her presence. And there he died.
He was buried in Père la Chaise, by his own request, under the tombstone which covered Clementine, and whose death had virtually caused his own. His coffin was borne by the pupils of the different colleges in which he had taught, thousands following it to the cemetery. His library of nineteen thousand volumes was purchased by the government for the Jardin des Plantes. There was no child left to bear his titles.
Not only do the books of such a man live; his whole life, with its untiring energy, its promptness, its order, its unfaltering purpose, its high aims, as well as its tenderness and nobility of heart, is a constant inspiration.
In Hanover, Germany, in the year 1732, Isaac Herschel and a plain, industrious girl, Anna Ilse Moritzen, began their home life together. The young man did not like the calling of his father, the cultivating of the royal gardens, and learned to play the oboe in the royal band.
He became skilled in music, and, as, one after another, ten children were born into the little home, he taught them to play on the violin and oboe, and such other branches of knowledge as he possessed. After a time his health became impaired with exposure in the Seven Years' War, and then he earned his living by lessons in music, given to scholars at his home.
The children attended the garrison school in Hanover, and learned the ordinary rudiments, besides French and German. Though the father sometimes copied music half the night to eke out his scanty living, he spared no pains to teach them all he could of his favorite art.
SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL.SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL.
The fourth son, William, born November 15, 1738, not only learned French and English rapidly, but studied Latin and arithmetic with the teacher, after hours. He became passionately fond of books, reading their own little store with avidity. The mother, who could not even write, viewed with alarm this intellectual development, feeling that her children, if they became learned, would go away from home—possibly from Germany. Poor, ignorant heart! She cooked and sewed, and prevented her daughters from learning French or drawing; but her weak hand could not stay the power of a mind like William's, bent on acquiring knowledge.
Caroline, the eighth child, born in 1750, twelve years younger than William, looked upon this brother as a marvel; and shy, plain, and silent herself, watched the boy with pride, who, perchance, would be somebody by and by. Alexander, a little older than Caroline, was skilled on the violoncello, and both the boys became members of the Hanover foot guards.
Years later, Caroline gave this picture of that early life: "My brothers were often introduced as solo performers and assistants in the orchestra of the court, and I remember that I was frequently prevented from going to sleep by the lively criticism on music, on coming from a concert; or by conversations on philosophical subjects, which lasted frequently till morning, in which my father was a lively partaker and assistant of my brother William, by contriving self-made instruments....
"Often I would keep myself awake that I might listen to their animating remarks, for it mademe so happy to see them so happy. But generally their conversation would branch out on philosophical subjects, when my brother William and my father often argued with such warmth that my mother's interference became necessary; when the names Leibnitz, Newton, and Euler sounded rather too loud for the repose of her little ones, who ought to be in school by seven in the morning. But it seems that on the brothers retiring to their own room, where they shared the same bed, my brother William had still a great deal to say; and frequently it happened that when he stopped for an assent or reply, he found his hearer was gone to sleep, and I suppose it was not till then that he bethought himself to do the same.
"The recollection of these happy scenes confirms me in the belief, that had my brother William not then been interrupted in his philosophical pursuits, we should have had much earlier proofs of his inventive genius. My father was a great admirer of astronomy, and had some knowledge of that science; for I remember his taking me, on a clear frosty night, into the street, to make me acquainted with several of the most beautiful constellations, after we had been gazing at a comet which was then visible. And I well remember with what delight he used to assist my brother William in his various contrivances in the pursuit of his philosophical studies, among which was a neatly turned four-inch globe, upon which the equator and ecliptic were engraved by my brother."
When William was seventeen, the guards went to England for a year, and on their return home he brought one precious memento of the country, Locke "On the Human Understanding." Such a boy would not remain in the foot guards forever. He was delicate in health, so that his parents removed him from the army.
At nineteen, he determined to try his fortune in England. He said good-by to the culture-loving and warm-hearted father, to the poor mother who knew "no other wants than good linen and clothing," and started out to make his way in the world. For three years nothing is known of him, save that he passed through many hardships. He played in military bands whenever and wherever he could find a situation, or at concerts, and led probably a cramped and obscure life.
There was little prospect then that he would become, as Prof. Edward S. Holden says in his admirable life, "the greatest of practical astronomers, and one of the world's most profound philosophers." What the poor German youth thought and felt in those years of trial, we do not know. He had one resource in his loneliness, the reading of useful books.
After about three years, a fortuitous circumstance occurred. It proved "fortuitous" only because young Herschel had studied music faithfully, and had made himself ready to fill a fine position, if, poor and without influence, such a position could be obtained.
As Dr. Miller, a noted organist, "was dining at Pontefract with the officers of the Durham militia, one of them, knowing his love of music, told him they had a young German in their band, as a performer on the oboe, who was also an excellent performer on the violin. The officer added that if Miller would come into another room, this German should entertain him with a solo. The invitation was gladly accepted, and Miller heard a solo of Giardini's executed in a manner that surprised him.
"He afterwards took an opportunity of having some private conversation with the young musician, and asked him whether he had engaged himself for any long period to the Durham militia. The answer was, 'Only from month to month.'
"'Leave them, then,' said the organist, 'and come and live with me. I am a single man, and think we shall be happy together; and doubtless your merit will soon entitle you to a more eligible situation.'
"The offer was accepted as frankly as it was made, and the reader may imagine with what satisfaction Dr. Miller must have remembered this act of generous feeling, when he heard that this young German was Herschel, the astronomer. 'My humble mansion,' says Miller, 'consisted at that time but of two rooms. However, poor as I was, my cottage contained a library of well chosen books.'
"He took an early opportunity of introducing his new friend at Mr. Cropley's concerts. The first violin was resigned to him, 'and never,' says the organist, 'had I heard the concertos of Corelli, Geminiani, and Avison, or the overtures of Handel, performed more chastely, or more according to the original intention of the composers, than by Mr. Herschel.'
"'I soon lost my companion; his fame was presently spread abroad; he had the offer of pupils, and was solicited to lead the public concerts both at Wakefield and Halifax. A new organ for the parish church of Halifax was built about this time, and Herschel was one of the seven candidates for the organist's place. They drew lots how they were to perform in succession. Herschel drew the third; the second fell to Dr. Wainwright, of Manchester, whose finger was so rapid that old Snetzler, the organ-builder, ran about the church exclaiming, "He run over te keys like one cat; he will not give my piphes room for to shpeak."
"'During Mr. Wainwright's performance,' says Miller, 'I was standing in the middle aisle with Herschel. "What chance have you," said I, "to follow this man?" He replied, "I don't know, I am sure fingers will not do." On which he ascended the organ loft, and produced from the organ so uncommon a fulness, such a volume of slow, solemn harmony, that I could by no means account for the effect. After this shortextemporeeffusion, he finished with the Old Hundredth psalm-tune, which he played better than his opponent.
"'"Ay, ay," cried old Snetzler, "tish is very goot, very goot inteet. I will hef tish man, for he gives my piphes room for to shpeak." Having afterwards asked Mr. Herschel by what means, in the beginning of his performance, he produced so uncommon an effect, he replied, "I told you fingers would not do!" and, producing two pieces of lead from his waistcoat pocket, "One of these," said he, "I placed on the lowest key of the organ, and the other upon the octave above; thus, by accommodating the harmony, I produced the effect of four hands, instead of two."'"
Herschel was the successful candidate among the seven. He was now twenty-seven years old. Only once do we learn of his going home to Germany, and that in the year previous. Of this visit, Caroline, now grown to fourteen, says, "Of the joys and pleasures which all felt at this long-wished-for meeting with my, let me say mydearestbrother, but a small portion could fall to my share; for with my constant attendance at church and school, besides the time I was employed in doing the drudgery of the scullery, it was but seldom I could make one in the group when the family were assembled together.
"In the first week, some of the orchestra were invited to a concert, at which some of my brother William's compositions—overtures, etc.—and some of my eldest brother, Jacob's, were performed, to the great delight of my dear father, who hoped and expected that they would be turned to some profit by publishing them, but there was no printer who bid high enough."
After a year at Halifax, Herschel obtained a position as organist at the Octagon Chapel in Bath, a fashionable city of England. This was another and higher step on the road to fame. He now gave nearly forty lessons a week to pupils. He composed music, and wrote anthems, chants, and psalm-tunes for the cathedral choir where he played. He became so popular from his real ability, coupled with pleasing manners, that he was occupied in teaching from fourteen to sixteen hours daily.
But he did more than this. As his hopes brightened, he determined to devote every minute to the pursuit of knowledge, in which he found his greatest happiness. He studied Greek and Italian. He wouldunbend his mind, after he retired, with Maclaurin's "Fluxions," or Robert Smith's "Complete System of Optics," and Lalande's Astronomy.
What if he had devoted this time to ease or amusement! Would he have become learned or distinguished? Every young man and woman is obliged to decide the matter for himself and herself. We cannot idle away life and be great.
In 1767, the fond father, Isaac, died of paralysis. Caroline, who loved him tenderly, was desolate. He had taught her the violin when the prosaic mother "was either in good humor, or out of the way." It is quite possible that music, like inventions, did not bring an adequate support for ten children, and that the practical mother wished her daughter to learn something whereby she could earn a living. She thereupon sent her two or three months to a seamstress to be taught to make household linen. After a time a delightful proposition came from the organist at Bath. He would take her to England, and see if she "could not become a useful singer for his winter concerts and oratorios." If she did not succeed, after two years, he would carry her back to Germany.
CAROLINE HERSCHEL.CAROLINE HERSCHEL.
In 1772, William came to Hanover and took his sister to Bath, at 7 New Kings Street. She was now twenty-two; an untutored girl, with a bright, eager mind, and a heart that went out to her brother in the most rapt devotion. History does not show a more complete, single-hearted, subservient affection, nor a sadder picture of a woman's sorrow in later years, in consequence of it.
At once Caroline began her work of voice culture, lessons in arithmetic, English, and in keeping accounts, from her brother, and in managing the house. Alexander, now in England, boarded with William, and he and Caroline occupied the attic. The first three winter months were lonely, as she saw little of William.
"The time," she says, "when I could hope to receive a little more of my brother's instruction and attention was now drawing near; for after Easter, Bath becomes very empty, only a few of his scholars, whose families were residents in the neighborhood, remaining. But I was greatly disappointed, for, in consequence of the harassing and fatiguing life he had led during the winter months, he used to retire to bed with a basin of milk or glass of water, and Smith's Harmonics and Optics, Ferguson's Astronomy, etc., and so went to sleep buried under his favorite authors; and his first thoughts on rising were how to obtain the instruments for viewing those objects himself of which he had been reading.
"There being in one of the shops a two-and-a-half-foot Gregorian telescope to be let, it was for some time taken in requisition, and served not only for viewing the heavens, but for making experiments on its construction.... It soon appeared that my brother was not contented with knowing what former observers had seen, for he began to contrive a telescope eighteen or twenty feet long.... I was much hindered in my musical practice by my help being continually wanted in the execution of the various contrivances, and I had to amuse myself with making the tube of pasteboard for the glasses, which were to arrive from London, for at that time no optician had settled at Bath. But when all was finished, no one besides my brother could get a glimpse of Jupiter or Saturn, for the great length of the tube would not allow it to be kept in a straight line. This difficulty, however, was soon removed by substituting tin tubes."
Herschel had attempted to buy a telescope, but found the price far beyond his means. But he was not discouraged. Caroline soon saw "almost every room turned into a work-shop. A cabinet-maker making a tube and stands of all descriptions in a handsomely furnished drawing-room;" this could be so occupied when the music scholars had left Bath in their vacation; "Alex putting up a huge turning machine in a bedroom, for turning patterns, grinding glasses, and turning eye-pieces, etc."
The longed-for time to see more of her brother never came to Caroline, except as she finally grew into his life-work, and became his second self.
He had one unalterable purpose, the study of the construction of the heavens. Nothing ever drew him from it. Nothing ever could draw him. And herein lay one of the elements of his great power. As an English writer has well said: "So gentle and patient a follower of science under difficulties scarcely occurs in the whole circle of biography." Yes, he was "gentle and patient," but with an untiring and never ending perseverance. Too poor to buy telescopes, he made them. With no time to read books during the day, he took the hours from sleep. With little opportunity for education, he educated himself.
In 1774, the music teacher made for himself a five-and-one-half-foot Gregorian telescope; and a year later, a Newtonian, with a four-and-a-half-inch aperture, which magnified two hundred and twenty-two times. The making of these instruments showed great mechanical skill and accurate knowledge. He began now to study the heavens in earnest, but the teaching must go on to provide daily bread. He directed an orchestra of nearly one hundred pieces, and Caroline copied the scores and vocal parts. So absorbed was he in his astronomical work, however, that at the theatre, between the acts, he would run from the harpsichord to look at the stars. This boyish eagerness and naturalness he kept through life.
He soon made a seven-foot reflector, then a ten-foot reflector. The mirrors for these telescopes were all made by hand, machines for the purpose not being invented till ten or more years later. Alexander, with his mechanical skill, assisted, and Caroline was always busy at the work. She says, "My time was taken up with copying music and practising, besides attendance on my brother when polishing; since, by way of keeping him alive, I was constantly obliged to feed him, by putting his victuals by bits into his mouth. This was once the case, when, in order to finish a seven-foot mirror, he had not taken his hands from it for sixteen hours together. In general he was never unemployed at meals, but was always at those times contriving or making drawings of whatever came in his mind. Generally I was obliged to read to him while he was at the turning-lathe, or polishing mirrors, 'Don Quixote,' 'Arabian Nights' Entertainment,' the novels of Sterne, Fielding, etc.; serving tea and supper without interrupting the work with which he was engaged."...
So busy that he could not find time to eat or sleep! Rare devotion of a rare mind! He now began to study every star of the first, second, third, and fourth magnitudes in the sky. He carefully observed the moon, and measured the height of about one hundred of her mountains. Her extinct volcanoes, and her unpeopled solitudes, without clouds or air, were an impressive study.
He was now forty years old,—not young to begin the study of a new and illimitable science, but not too old, for one is never too old to begin a great or a noble work.
Through Dr. William Watson, Fellow of the Royal Society, who happened—if anything everhappensin this world—to see Herschel at his telescope, he became a member of the Philosophical Society of Bath, and soon in 1780 sent two papers to the Royal Society, the one on the periodical star inCollo Ceti, and the other on the mountains of the moon, which were read by Dr. William Watson, Jr.
When he was forty-three, he says, "I began to construct a thirty-foot aërial reflector, and, having made a stand for it, I cast the mirror thirty-six inches in diameter. This was cracked in cooling. I cast it a second time, and the furnace I had built in my house broke." But he persevered. This same year, 1781, after he had lived in Bath nine years, on the night of Tuesday, March 13, having removed to a larger house, 19 New King Street, he says, "In examining the small stars in the neighborhood ofH. GeminorumI perceived one that appeared visibly larger than the rest; being struck with its uncommon appearance, I compared it toH. Geminorumand the small star in the quarter between Auriga and Gemini, and, finding it so much larger than either of them, I suspected it to be a comet."
The orbit of this "comet" was computed and its distance from the sun found to be eighteen hundred million miles! The world soon awoke to the fact that a new planet had been found, the greatest astronomical discovery since Galileo invented the telescope, and the unknown musician at Bath had become famous! So little was Herschel known at this time, that one journal called him Mersthel, another Herthel, and still another Hermstel.
In December of the same year, 1781, Herschel was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and received the Copley gold medal. He was no longer the poor German youth playing the oboe among the guards; he was the renowned discoverer. He called the planet Georgium Sidus, in honor of his sovereign, George III., but it was decided later to call it Uranus, from Urania the muse of astronomy.
Herschel went eagerly on with his work. Fame did not change his simple nature. The truly great are never ostentatious. He erected in his garden a stand for his twenty-foot telescope, and perfected his mirrors. "Though at times," says Caroline, "much harassed with business, the mirror for the thirty-foot reflector was never out of his mind, and if a minute could but be spared in going from one scholar to another, or giving one the slip, he called at home to see how the men went on with the furnace, which was built in a room below, even with the garden."
The next year, 1782, Herschel went to London, and met with a gracious reception from George III. He wrote back to his devoted sister: "Dear Lina: All my papers are printing, with the postscript and all, and are allowed to be very valuable. You see, Lina, I tell you all these things. You know vanity is not my foible, therefore I need not fear your censure. Farewell.
"I am your affectionate brother,
"Wm. Herschel."
Again he wrote,—
"I pass my time between Greenwich and London, agreeably enough, but am rather at a loss for work that I like. Company is not always pleasing, and I would much rather be polishing a speculum.... I am introduced to the best company. To-morrow I dine at Lord Palmerston's, next day with Sir Joseph Banks, etc., etc. Among opticians and astronomers nothing now is talked of butwhat they callmy great discoveries. Alas! this shows how far they are behind, when such trifles as I have seen and done are calledgreat. Let me but get at it again! I will make such telescopes, and see such things—that is, I will endeavor to do so."
And this great ambition nerved him for action, continued and laborious, as long as he lived. He was never satisfied; always achieving. Little can be expected from those who are easily satisfied.
George III. wisely appointed Herschel Royal Astronomer, though with the too small salary of one thousand dollars yearly. He came back to Bath only to perform the last musical duty on Whit Sunday, 1782, the anthem for the day being his own composition, and to say good-by to his pupils.
He moved to Datchet in 1782, and set up his twenty-foot telescope. In 1783 he had made three reviews of the heavens. In 1784 he made a fourth review with his twenty-foot telescope. Caroline says: "My brother began his sweeps when the instrument was yet in a very unfinished state, and my feelings were not very comfortable when every moment I was alarmed by a crash or a fall, knowing him to be elevated fifteen feet or more on a temporary crossbeam, instead of a safe gallery. The ladders had not even their braces at the bottom; and one night, in a very high wind, he had hardly touched the ground before the whole apparatus came down.... I could give a pretty long list of accidents which were near proving fatal to my brother as well as myself."
A gentleman who visited him at Datchet wrote: "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 has 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 protects himself against the weather by putting on more clothing. He has an excellent constitution, and thinks about nothing else in the world but the celestial bodies."
But, occupied as Herschel was about "celestial bodies," he yet found time to think about earthly things, for we find him at forty-five, May 8, 1783, marrying Mary, the wealthy widow of John Pitt, Esq., a lady of much intelligence and amiability.
The sad feature of the new relationship was the misery it brought to Caroline. Her whole life had centred in William. For eleven years she had devoted every moment, every wish, every thought to him. She had watched all night among the stars with him, month after month, and year after year, in cold and in heat, and superintended his home by day. His every desire was her law. She loved no other, and he was her all. Perhaps she ought to have known that another might come into his life, but she trusted blindly, and did not question the future.
When the wife came into the home, Caroline went out of it forever. For more than twenty years she lived in lodgings, always "cheerless and solitary," her only happiness found in coming day by day to help her brother in his great work. Sometimes, when the wife was absent, Caroline came back for a few days and lived over the old unalloyed life, and then went back to her lonely lodgings.
For ten years following this marriage, she probably told her heart-aches in her journal; but before her death she destroyed the record of these years, that the feelings of those who were alive might not be pained. In later days she became more reconciled to Lady Herschel, as "a dear sister, for as such I now know you," and idolized their only son, the renowned Sir John Herschel, born nine years after their marriage.
In 1785, Herschel began to construct his great forty-foot telescope, and the next year removed to Slough, not far from Windsor. "In the whole of the apparatus," he said, "none but common workmen were employed, for I made drawings of every part of it, by which it was easy to execute the work, as I constantly inspected and directed every person's labor; though sometimes there were not less than forty different workmen employed at the same time. While the stand of the telescope was preparing, I also began the construction of the great mirror, of which I inspected the casting, grinding, and polishing; and the work was in this manner carried on with no other interruption than that occasioned by the removal of all the apparatus and materials from where I then lived, to my present situation at Slough." He had his first view through the telescope February 19, 1787. George III. gave twenty thousand dollars for the building of this instrument, and one thousand dollars yearly for its maintenance.
A half-century afterwards, the woodwork having become decayed, it was taken down, the great tube laid horizontally, and, after Sir John Herschel and his family had passed through it, a poem written by Sir John having been read, it was sealed January 1, 1840, and placed on piers.
With this great telescope, Herschel discovered two satellites of Saturn, Mimas and Enceladus; one on August 27, 1789, and the other on September 17 of the same year. Two years before this, January 11, 1787, he discovered two satellites of Uranus, Oberon and Titania. Sixty years afterwards, Mr. Lassell, of England, discovered the remaining two satellites of Uranus, called Ariel and Umbriel.
From this time his work went forward grandly. He had already completed more than two hundred seven-foot, one hundred and fifty ten-foot, and eighty twenty-foot mirrors. For many of the telescopes sent abroad he made no stands, but provided the drawings. He wrote much about Saturn and its rings, and showed that its most distant satellite, Japetus, turns once on its axis in each revolution about its primary, as our moon does about the earth.
He studied carefully the nature of the sun, its probable gaseous surface, and its spots, and was the first to suspect their periodic character. What would Herschel have said to the wonderful photographic representations of these spots given by Professor Langley, in his New Astronomy; spots which are one billion square miles in size; more than five times the surface of the land and water on the earth? He saw, as astronomers to-day see, that heat cannot be produced without expenditure of force; and that the sun is probably cooling, even though scarcely perceptibly for ages to come. He saw what science now generally concedes, the rise and fall of the solar system; its gradual fitness for the coming of man, through almost countless centuries; and its final unfitness, when his generations shall have gone forever.
He wrote much about the Milky Way, believing at first that it could be completely resolved into stars, about eighteen millions of them; but later he changed his theory, having found so much nebulous matter—in a state of condensation as though new worlds were forming, possibly to be the homes of some new race, or of man in the ages to come.
His study of the variable stars attracted wide attention. He found that the starMira Cetiwas for several months invisible to the naked eye; then it grew brighter and brighter, and finally disappeared for months, as before. He saw that other stars are periodic, and came to the conclusion that this is occasioned by the rotation of the star upon its axis, by which different parts of its surface are presented to us periodically.
He made a catalogue of double stars, and found by laborious calculations that such stars have a common centre of gravity; that one sun revolves about another. He found that our solar system has a motion of its own; a grand orbit round some as yet unknown centre, and that other systems have a like motion.
What this centre may be, whether a great sun like Sirius, one hundred times larger than ours, with unknown powers and unknown uses, is of course only conjecture.
Herschel gave much attention to nebulæ, discovering and describing twenty-five hundred new nebulæ and clusters. He gave his life to the study of the construction of the heavens. Concerning his statement of the general construction, Professor Holden, himself a brilliant astronomer, says: "It is the groundwork upon which we have still to build.... As a scientific conception it is perhaps the grandest that has ever entered into the human mind. As a study of the height to which the efforts of one man may go, it is almost without a parallel.... As a practical astronomer he remains without an equal. In profound philosophy he has few superiors. By a kindly chance he can be claimed as the citizen of no one country. In very truth his is one of the few names which belong to the whole world."
The distinguished man, though unassuming and gentle in manner, must have had a realizing sense of the greatness of his work, for he said, "I have looked further into space than ever human being did before me. I have observed stars of which the light takestwo millionsof years to travel to this globe."
He gave much study to light and heat. So boundless was his knowledge believed to be, that a farmer called one day to ask the proper time for cutting his grass.
"Look at that field," said the scientist, "and when I tell you it is mine, I think you will not need another proof to convince you that I am no more weatherwise than yourself or the rest of my neighbors."
He worked earnestly till he was seventy-six, always depending upon his faithful and inseparable Caroline for aid in his labors. He made a telescope for her, with which she swept the heavens for comets, finding eight, five of which she discovered for the first time.
At seventy-six his health began to fail. He had worked incessantly from his struggling boyhood, but brain work does not wear us out; care and anxiety bring the marks of age upon us. He now took little journeys away from Slough for change of scene and air, while Caroline stayed at home to copy his papers for the Royal Society, and to arrange his manuscripts. In 1816, he was made a knight of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic Order, by the Prince Regent, and in 1821 was the first president of the Royal Astronomical Society, his son being its first foreign secretary.
In February, 1818, Caroline spent twelve precious days with her brother, "not in idleness," she says, "but in sorrow and sadness. He is not only unwell, but low in spirits." Later he went to Bath with Lady Herschel. "The last moments before he stepped into the carriage," says the loving Caroline, "were spent in walking with me through his library and workrooms, pointing with anxious looks to every shelf and drawer, desiring me to examine all and to make memorandums of them as well as I could. He was hardly able to support himself, and his spirits were so low, that I found difficulty in commanding my voice so far as to give him the assurance he should find on his return that my time had not been misspent.
"When I was left alone I found that I had no easy task to perform, for there were packets of writings to be examined which had not been looked at for the last forty years. But I did not pass a single day without working in the library as long as I could read a letter without candle-light, and taking with me papers to copy, etc., which employed me for thebest part of the night, and thus I was enabled to give my brother a clear account of what had been done at his return."
On the 4th of July, 1819, Herschel sent a note to his dear co-worker. "Lina,—There is a great comet. I want you to assist me. Come to dine and spend the day here. If you can come soon after one o'clock we shall have time to prepare maps and telescopes. I saw its situation last night,—it has a long tail."
Caroline wrote on this small slip of yellow paper: "I keep this as a relic! Every linenowtraced by the hand of my dear brother becomes a treasure to me."
Every day hereafter she spent the forenoon with Sir William. On the 15th of August she went as usual and found that he was confined to his room. "I flew there immediately," she says. "As soon as he saw me, I was sent to the library to fetch one of his last papers and a plate of the forty-foot telescope. But for the universe I could not have looked twice at what I had snatched from the shelf, and when he faintly asked if the breaking up of the Milky Way was in it, I said 'Yes!' and he looked content. I cannot help remembering this circumstance, it was the last time I was sent to the library on such an occasion. That the anxious care for his papers and workroom never ended but with his life was proved by his frequent whispered inquiries if they were locked and the key safe, of which I took care to assure him that they were, and the key in Lady Herschel's hands.
"After half an hour's vain attempt to support himself, my brother was obliged to consent to be put to bed, leaving no hope ever to see him rise again. For ten days and nights we remained in the most heart-rending situation till the 25th of August, when not one comfort was left to me but that of retiring to the chamber of death, there to ruminate without interruption on my isolated situation. Of this last solace I was robbed on the 7th of September, when the dear remains were consigned to the grave."
Faithful and devoted watcher over his dead body, to the last! When he had been buried in the little church at Upton, Windsor, at the age of eighty-four, honored by all Europe and America, Caroline could live no longer where remembrance of him made it intolerable.
She went back to Hanover, "a person," she said, sadly, "that has nothing more to do in this world," to live with her brother Dietrich. She had come to England, a girl of twenty-two; she went back an elderly woman, seventy-two. The home in Germany did not prove a happy one, but how could it without William? She lived simply, not spending half of the five hundred dollars a year left her by her dead brother.
She had already published "A Catalogue of eight hundred and sixty Stars, observed by Flamsteed, but not included in the British Catalogue," and "A General Index of Reference to every Observation of every star in the above mentioned British Catalogue." She also prepared "The Reduction and Arrangement, in the form of a Catalogue in Zones, of all the Star Clusters and Nebulæ observed by Sir William Herschel in his Sweeps," "a work," said Sir David Brewster, "of immense labor; an extraordinary monument of the unextinguished ardor of a lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science."
For this the Royal Astronomical Society voted her the gold medal, and gave her the unusual distinction of honorary membership.
Sixteen years after her return to Hanover, Sir John Herschel, her nephew, who had made his wonderful review of the southern heavens, discovering as many new nebulæ as his father, took his only boy, Willie, to see her.
She was now eighty-eight. The visit was overwhelming to her affectionate heart. She watched the child with the most intense delight. Fearing the results if she knew the time of their departure for England, Sir John, with mistaken kindness, went away at four o'clock in the morning, without saying good-by. But the anguish of separation was thereby rendered greater.
The years went by slowly. On her ninety-sixth birthday the King of Prussia sent her a gold medal, Alexander von Humboldt writing her a letter from Berlin to accompany it.
January 14, 1848, at the age of almost ninety-eight, Caroline Herschel died, and was buried from the same garrison church where nearly a century before she had been christened. In her coffin was placed, by her desire, a lock of her brother's hair. Beautiful affection! great co-workers in their immortal study of unnumbered worlds!
The great Agassiz, in his eloquent address, in Boston, on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Humboldt, said: "All the fundamental facts of popular education in physical science, beyond the merest elementary instruction, we owe to him. We are reaping daily in every school throughout the broad land, where education is the heritage of the poorest child, the intellectual harvest sown by him.
"There is not a text-book of geography, or a school atlas in the hands of our children to-day, which does not bear, however blurred and defaced, the impress of his great mind. But for him our geographies would be mere enumerations of localities and statistics. He first suggested the graphic methods of representing natural phenomena which are now universally adopted. The first geological sections, the first sections across an entire continent, the first averages of climate illustrated by lines, were his. Every school-boy is familiar with his methods now, but he does not know that Humboldt is his teacher...."
Naturally we ask how such a man rose to fame, and what incited him to stand among the few intellectual leaders of the world.