LIFE AT COLLINGWOOD.
Herschel’s career as an observing astronomer came to a virtual end with
his departure from the Cape. He was then forty-six, two years younger
than his father when he began his course of prodigious activity at
Slough. Sir William’s craving to see and to know was insatiable; Sir
John’s was appeased by the accomplishment of one grand enterprise. His
was a many-sided mind; dormant interests of sundry kinds revived on the
first opportunity; new ones sprang up; and curiosity to interrogate the
skies ceased to “prick the sides of his intent.” So the instruments
taken down at Feldhausen in 1838 were not remounted in England; and
their owner is never again recorded to have used a telescope. One
cannot but regret that, in the plenitude of his powers, and instructed
by rare experience, he should have put by his weapons of discovery.[H]
The immense stock of observations with which they had furnished him
remained, it is true, in their primitive, rough-hewn state; and he may
have considered that wise husbandry required him to save one harvest
before planting another. This, at any rate, was the course that he
pursued.
[H] The three specula of the twenty-foot are in the possession
of Sir William J. Herschel; the tube remains in good
preservation at Collingwood.
But it was often and in many ways interrupted. The demands on his
time and thoughts were innumerable. Having settled his family
for the season in London, he paid his third and last visit to his
venerable aunt, and, in returning, dined with Dr. Olbers, the
physician-astronomer of Bremen, then in his eightieth year. A fortnight
later he was on his way to Newcastle, where the British Association
met, August 20th. He was received with acclamation, but overwhelmed
by scientific exactions. The proceedings were to him “a dreadful wear
and tear,” and they left behind “mixed and crowded recollections.” No
wonder. Besides acting as President of the Mathematical Section, he
found himself involved in varied responsibilities. He was placed on a
Committee for bringing down to date the places of Lacaille’s 10,000
southern stars; on another for revising stellar nomenclature. The
reduction of a body of meteorological observations made on a plan of
his devising was entrusted to him; above all, he was charged with the
development of Humboldt’s international scheme for securing systematic
and world-wide observations on terrestrial magnetism. He drew up a
memorial to the Government; compiled the Instructions for Sir James
Clark Ross’s Antarctic expedition; and elaborately reported progress
at several successive meetings of the British Association. His heart
was in the work. He contributed an article dwelling on its importance
to the _Quarterly Review_ for June, 1840; and in 1845 he expressed the
opinion that “terrestrial physics form a subject every way worthy to be
associated with astronomy as a matter of universal interest and public
support.”
The constellations gave him still more trouble than the vagaries of
poised needles. They were in a riot of disorder. Celestial maps had
become “a system of derangement and confusion”--of confusion “worse
confounded.” New asterisms carved out of old existed precariously,
recognised by some, ignored by others; waste places in the sky had
been annexed by encroaching astronomers as standing-ground for their
glorified telescopes, quadrants, sextants, clocks; a chemical apparatus
had been set up by the shore of the river Eridanus, itself a meandering
and uncomfortable figure; while serpents and dragons trailed their
perplexing convolutions through hour after hour of right ascension.
There were constellations so large that Greek, Roman, and Italic
alphabets had been used up in designating the included stars; there
were others separated by debatable districts, the stars in which often
duplicated those situated within the authentic form of one of the
neighbouring celestial monsters. Identification was thus in numberless
cases difficult; in some, impossible.
In conjunction with Francis Baily, Herschel undertook the almost
hopeless task of rectifying this intolerable disorder. After much
preliminary labour, he submitted to the Royal Astronomical Society,
in 1841, a drastic scheme of constellational reform--a stellar
redistribution-bill, framed on radical principles. Its alarming
completeness, however, caused it to be let drop; and he finally
proposed, in his report of 1844 to the British Association, a less
ambitious but more practicable measure. Although not adopted in its
entirety, it paved the way for ameliorations. The boundaries of
the constellations have since been defined; interlopers have been
ejected; one--the Ship Argo--especially obnoxious for its unwieldy
dimensions, has been advantageously trisected. Nevertheless, individual
star-nomenclature grows continually more perplexed; partial systems
have become intermingled and entangled; double stars are designated in
one way, variables in another, quick-moving stars in a third, red stars
in a fourth, while any one of many catalogue-numbers may be substituted
at choice; palpable blunders, unsettled discrepancies, anomalies of
all imaginable kinds, survive in an inextricable web of arbitrary
appellations, until it has come to pass that a star has often as many
aliases as an accomplished swindler.
In the spring of 1840 Herschel removed from Slough to Collingwood,
a spacious country residence situated near Hawkhurst, in Kent. Here
he devoted himself, in good earnest, to the preparation of his Cape
results for the press. It was no light task. The transformation of
simple registers of sweeps into a methodical catalogue is a long and
irksome process; and Herschel was in possession of the “sweepings”
of nearly four hundred nights. He executed it single-handed, being
averse to the employment of paid computers. This was unfortunate.
Monotonous drudgery was not at all in his line; as well put Pegasus
between shafts. He had always found in himself “a great inaptitude”
for numerical calculations; and he now acknowledged to Baily that
attention to figures during two or three consecutive hours distressed
him painfully. Whewell lamented in the _Quarterly Review_ the lavish
expenditure of his time and energy upon “mere arithmetic”--computations
which a machine would have been more competent to perform than a
finely organised human brain. At last, however, in November, 1842, the
necessary reductions were finished; and the letterpress to accompany
the catalogues of double stars and nebulæ left his hands a couple of
years later. The preparation of the plates occasioned further vexatious
delays; and it was not until 1847 that the monumental work entitled
“Results of Astronomical Observations at the Cape of Good Hope” issued
from the press. The expenses of its production were generously defrayed
by the Duke of Northumberland. In sending a copy to his aunt, then in
her ninety-eighth year, he wrote: “You will have in your hands the
completion of my father’s work--‘The Survey of the Nebulous Heavens.’”
The publication was honoured with the Copley Medal by the Royal
Society, and with a special testimonial by the Astronomical Society.
Bessel, the eminent director of the Königsberg observatory, made
Herschel’s personal acquaintance at the Manchester meeting of the
British Association in 1842, and paid him a visit at Collingwood. The
subject of a possible trans-Uranian planet was discussed between them.
The German astronomer regarded its existence as certain, and disclosed
the plot he had already formed for waylaying it on its remote path. The
premonition stirred Herschel deeply. “There ought to be a hue and cry
raised!” he exclaimed in a letter to Baily. And in resigning the Chair
of the British Association, September 10, 1846, he spoke with full
assurance of the still undiscovered body. “We see it,” he declared,
“as Columbus saw America from the shores of Spain. Its movements have
been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis, with
a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.” Within a
fortnight, Neptune, through Le Verrier’s indications, was captured at
Berlin.
“I hope you agreed with me,” he wrote, November 19, 1846, to Sir
William Hamilton, “that it is perfectly possible to do justice to
Adams’s investigations without calling in question M. Le Verrier’s
_property_ in his discovery. The fact is, I apprehend, that the
Frenchmen are only just beginning to be aware _what a narrow escape Mr.
Neptune had of being born an Englishman_. Poor Adams aimed at his bird,
it appears, first, and as well as Le Verrier, but his gun hung fire,
and the bird dropped on the other side of the fence!”
It is well known that Le Verrier and Adams personally ignored
controversy as to their respective claims to the planetary _spolia
opima_. They were together at Collingwood in July, 1847, with Struve as
their fellow-guest. During those few days King Arthur (in the person of
Sir John Herschel) “sat in hall at old Caerleon.”
He was elected President of the Royal Astronomical Society for the
usual biennial term in 1828, 1840, and 1847; on the last occasion
through the diplomatic action of Professor De Morgan. The Society
was passing through a crisis; he apprehended its dissolution, and
judged that it could only be saved by getting Herschel’s consent to
become its nominal head. “The President,” he wrote to Captain Smyth,
“must be a man of brass (practical astronomer)--a micrometer-monger,
a telescope-twiddler, a star-stringer, a planet-poker, and a
nebula-nabber. If we give bail that we won’t let him do anything if he
would, we shall be able to have him, I hope. We must all give what is
most wanted, and his name is even more wanted than his services. We can
do without his services, not without loss, but without difficulty. I
see we shall not, without great difficulty, dispense with his name.”
And to Herschel himself: “We have been making our arrangements for
the Society for the ensuing year; and one thing is that you are not
to be asked to do anything, or wished to do anything, or wanted to do
anything. But we want your _name_.” It was lent; and its credit seems
to have had the desired effect.
Dr. Whewell vainly tried to inveigle him, in November, 1838, into
accepting the presidentship of the Geological Society; but he had to
submit, in 1842, to be elected Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen;
and he consented to preside over the meeting of the British Association
at Cambridge in June, 1845. His dignity on the occasion was not allowed
to interfere with his usefulness. He wrote home June 22: “We have been
on the Magnetic Committee working hard all the morning, in a Babel of
languages and a Babylonian confusion of ideas, which crystallised into
something like distinctness at last.” By that time the long-desired
particulars regarding terrestrial magnetism were rapidly accumulating.
_Facts_, as Herschel announced from the Presidential Chair, were
plentifully at hand. “What we now want is _thought_, steadily directed
to single objects, with a determination to avoid the besetting evil
of our age--the temptation to squander and dilute it upon a thousand
different lines of inquiry.”
Herschel observed the great comet of 1843 from the roof of his house
at Collingwood, on March 17, the first evening of its visibility in
England. All that could be seen was “a perfectly straight narrow band
of considerably bright, white cloud, thirty degrees in length, and
about one and a half in breadth.” It was not until the following night
that he recognised in this strange “luminous appearance” “the tail of
a magnificent comet, whose head at the times of both observations was
below the horizon.”
In December, 1850, he was appointed Master of the Mint--a position
rendered especially appropriate to him by Newton’s prior occupation of
it. The duties connected with it were just then peculiarly onerous.
Previously of a temporary and political character, the office now
became permanent, and simply administrative. Many other changes
accompanied this fundamental one. “The whole concern,” he said, “is in
process of reorganisation.” This fresh start demanded much “personal
and anxious attendance.” Notwithstanding his anxious regard for the
interests of subordinates, the reconstruction could not but be attended
by serious friction. No amount of oiling will get rusty wheels to
revolve smoothly all at once. “Things progress rather _grumpily_,” he
reported privately, “owing to the extreme discontent of some parties.”
Further contentious business devolved upon him as a member of the
jury on scientific instruments at the Great Exhibition. His time was
fully and not agreeably occupied. Rising at six, he worked at home
until half-past nine, then hurried to the Mint, which he exchanged
between three and four o’clock for the Exhibition, and there, until the
closing of its doors, examined the claims, and appeased the quarrels of
rival candidates for distinction. He also sat on the Royal Commission
appointed in 1850 to inquire into the University system. Its
recommendations, agreed to by him in 1855, greatly disgusted Whewell;
but their friendship remained unaltered by this discordance of opinion.
These accumulated responsibilities were too much for Herschel’s
sensitive nature; and the burthen was made heavier by a partial
separation from his family. He was never alone in Harley Street, but
the joyous life of Collingwood could not be transported thither;
and the arid aspect of a vast metropolis, suggesting business and
pleasure in excess, but little of enjoyment in either, oppressed him
continually. His health suffered, and in 1855 he withdrew definitively
into private life. His resignation of the Mint was most reluctantly
accepted.
“I find,” playfully remarked De Morgan, “that Newton and Herschel added
each one coin to the list: Newton, the gold quarter-guinea, which was
in circulation until towards the end of the century; Herschel, the gold
quarter-sovereign, which was never circulated.”
It was not the repose of inaction that Herschel sought at Collingwood.
“Every day of his long and happy life,” Professor Tait said truly,
“added its share to his scientific services.” Thenceforward he devoted
himself chiefly to the formidable task of collecting and revising
his father’s results and his own. His “General Catalogue of Nebulæ,”
published in the _Philosophical Transactions_ for 1864, was in itself
a vast undertaking. It comprised 5,079 nebulæ and clusters, to which
it served as a universal index of reference. It averted the mischief
of duplicate discoveries, settled the sidereal status of many a
pseudo-comet, and quickly became the authoritative guide of both
comet- and nebula-hunters. In the enlarged form given to it by Dr.
Dreyer in 1888, it is likely long to hold its place. Herschel next, in
1867, amalgamated into a regular catalogue of 812 entries his father’s
various classed lists of double stars (Memoirs, Royal Astronomical
Society, xxxv.). A far more comprehensive work was then taken in hand.
He desired to do for double stars what he had done for nebulæ--to
compile an exhaustive register of them in the shape of a catalogue,
accompanied by a short descriptive account of each pair. But he was not
destined to put this coping-stone to the noble monument erected by his
genius. Strength failed him to digest and dispose the immense mass of
materials he had collected. Nor was it possible for another to gather
up the loose threads of his unfinished scheme. All that could be done
was to preserve the imposing fragment as he left it. An ordered list
of the 10,320 multiple stars he had proposed to treat was accordingly
published in the fortieth volume of the same Society’s _Memoirs_ under
the care of Professor Pritchard and Mr. Main. But it hardly possesses
more than a commemorative value.
Maria Edgeworth was an old friend of Sir John Herschel’s. In March,
1831, she paid him a three days’ visit at Slough, which, she told a
friend in Ireland, “has far surpassed my expectations, raised as they
were, and warm from the fresh enthusiasm kindled by his last work” (the
“Preliminary Discourse”). Mrs. Herschel she described as “very pretty,”
sensible, and sympathetic, and possessed of the art of making guests
happy without effort. On Sunday, after service, the philosopher showed
off the dazzling colour-effects of polarised light, and at night,
with the twenty-foot, “Saturn and his rings, and the moon and her
volcanoes.”
After twelve years, she came again, this time to Collingwood. “I should
have written before,” Herschel assured Sir William Hamilton, December
1st, 1843, “but Miss Edgeworth has been here, and that, among all
people who know how to enjoy her, is always considered an excellent
reason for letting correspondence and all other worldly things ‘gang
their ain gate.’ She is more truly admirable now, I think, than at any
former time, though in her seventy-fifth year.”
Maria herself wrote from Collingwood in the following spring: “Here are
Lord and Lady Adare, Sir Edward Ryan, and ‘Jones on Rent.’ Jones and
Herschel are very fond of one another, always differing, but always
agreeing to differ, like Malthus and Ricardo.”
Sir William Hamilton spent a week under the same hospitable roof in
1846. He was delighted, and, as was his wont, compressed the expression
of his pleasure “within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground.” In the
first of a pair entitled “Recollections of Collingwood,” he celebrated
the “thoughtful walk” with his host, and the “social hours” in a family
circle,
“Where all things graceful in succession come;
Bright blossoms growing on a lofty stalk,
Music and fairy-lore in Herschel’s home.”[I]
[I] The lines are quoted in Graves’s “Life of Hamilton,” vol.
ii. p. 525.
The second dealt with “high Mathesis,” and
“dimly traced Pythagorean lore;
A westward-floating, mystic dream of FOUR.”
Although not, like his friend, an incorrigible and impenitent
sonnetteer, Herschel was “very guilty” of at least one specimen of the
art. They were staying together, in June, 1845, at Ely, in the house of
Dean Peacock. Hamilton’s inevitable sonnet came duly forth, and “next
morning,” he related to De Morgan, “as my bedroom adjoined Herschel’s,
and thin partitions did my madness from his great wit divide, I easily
heard what Burns might have called a ‘crooning,’ and was not much
surprised (being familiar with the symptoms of the attack)[J] when,
before we sat down to breakfast at the Deanery, Lady Herschel handed
me, in her husband’s name and her own, a sonnet of _his_ to _me_,
which, unless the spirit of egotism shall seize me with unexpected
strength, I have no notion of letting you see.”
[J] “Aut insanit, aut versos facit.”
The circulation of Herschel’s fervid eulogy would assuredly have put
his modesty to the blush. Headed “On a Scene in Ely Cathedral,” it runs
as follows:--
“The organ’s swell was hushed, but soft and low
An echo, more than music, rang; when he,
The doubly-gifted, poured forth whisperingly,
High-wrought and rich, his heart’s exuberant flow
Beneath that vast and vaulted canopy.
Plunging anon into the fathomless sea
Of thought, he dived where rarer treasures grow,
Gems of an unsunned warmth and deeper glow.
O born for either sphere! whose soul can thrill
With all that Poesy has soft or bright,
Or wield the sceptre of the sage at will
(That mighty mace which bursts its way to light),
Soar as thou wilt!--or plunge--thy ardent mind
Darts on--but cannot leave our love behind.”
Of Hamilton’s abstruse invention, the method of “Quaternions” (here
alluded to), Herschel was, from the first, an enthusiastic admirer.
He characterised it in 1847 as “a perfect cornucopia, from which, turn
it on which side you will, something rich and valuable is sure to drop
out.” The “power and pregnancy” of the new calculus were supremely
delightful to him, and he advised every mathematician to gain mastery
over it as a “working tool.” As such it has not yet been brought into
ordinary use, yet it remains in the armoury of science, ready for
emergencies.
Miss Mitchell of Nantucket, the discoverer of a comet, and a professor
of astronomy, published in 1889 (in the _Century_ magazine) her
reminiscences of a short stay at Collingwood in 1858. Her host “was
at that time sixty-six, but he looked much older, being lame and much
bent in his figure. His mind, nevertheless, was full of vigour. He
was engaged in re-writing the ‘Outlines of Astronomy.’” “Sir John’s
forehead,” she says, “was bold but retreating; his mouth was very good.
He was quick in motion and in speech. He was remarkably a gentleman;
more like a woman in the instinctive perception of the wants and wishes
of a guest.”
“In the evening,” she relates, “we played with letters, putting out
charades and riddles, and telling anecdotes, Sir John joining the
family party and chatting away like the young people.” He propounded
the question: If one human pair, living in the time of Cheops, had
doubled, and their descendants likewise, once every thirty years, could
the resulting population find room on the earth? The company thought
not. “But if they stood closely, and others stood on their shoulders,
man, woman, and child, how many layers would there be?” “Perhaps
three,” replied Miss Mitchell. “How many feet of men?” he insisted.
“Possibly thirty.” “Enough to reach to the moon,” said his daughter.
“To the sun,” exclaimed another. “More, more!” cried Sir John, exulting
in the general astonishment. “To Neptune,” was the next bid. “Now you
burn,” he allowed. “_Take one hundred times the distance of Neptune,
and it is very near._” “That,” he added, “is my way of whitewashing
war, pestilence, and famine.”
He further entertained his American guest with accounts of the
paradoxical notions communicated to him by self-taught or would-be
astronomers. One had inferred the non-existence of the moon from
Herschel’s chapters on lunar physics and motions. Another enclosed
half-a-crown for a horoscope. A third wrote, “Shall I marry, and have
I seen her?” In reference to the efforts then being made to introduce
decimal coinage into England, he remarked, “We stick to old ways, but
we are not cemented to them.”
The portrait of Caroline Herschel, painted by Tielemann in 1829,
which she herself declared to “look like life itself,” hung in the
drawing-room. (It is that reproduced in this volume.) “You would say in
looking at it,” Miss Mitchell wrote, ‘she must have been handsome when
she was young.’ Her ruffled cap shades a mild face, whose blue eyes
were even then full of animation. But it was merely the beauty of age.”
Herschel was no exception to the rule that astronomers love music
and flowers. He was never tired of gardening, and--to quote James
Nasmyth--“his mechanical and manipulative faculty enabled him to take a
keen interest in all the technical arts which so materially aid in the
progress of science.” The manufacture of specula naturally came home
to him, and he watched with genuine pleasure Nasmyth’s grinding and
polishing operations. He spent several days with him at Hammerfield in
1864. “Of all the scientific men I have had the happiness of meeting,”
Nasmyth wrote in his “Autobiography,” “Sir John stands supremely at
the head of the list. He combined profound knowledge with perfect
humility. He was simple, earnest, and companionable. He was entirely
free from assumptions of superiority, and, still learning, would listen
attentively to the humblest student. He was ready to counsel and
instruct, as well as to receive information.”
Herschel’s correspondence with De Morgan extended over nearly forty
years, and became latterly of an intimate character. “Looking back on
our long friendship,” he wrote to the widow shortly after De Morgan’s
death in the spring of 1871, “I do not find a single point on which we
failed to sympathise; and I recall many occasions on which his sound
judgment and excellent feeling have sustained and encouraged me. Many
and very distinct indications tell me that I shall not be long after
him.”
It fell out as he had predicted. The obituary memoirs of the two are
printed close together in the Astronomical Society’s “Monthly Notices.”
After a prolonged decline of strength, Sir John Herschel died at
Collingwood, in his seventy-ninth year, May 5th, 1871, his intellect
remaining unclouded to the last. He was buried in Westminster Abbey,
near the grave of Newton. The words engraven above his resting-place,
“Coelis exploratis, hic prope Newtonum requiescit,” tell what he did,
and what he deserved.
His death created an universal sense of sorrow and of loss. He left
vacant a place which could never be filled. His powers, his qualities,
and his opportunities made a combination impossible to be reproduced.
His genius showed curious diversities from his father’s. He lacked
his profound absorption, his penetrating insight, his unaccountable
intuitions. A tendency to discursiveness, happily kept in check
by strength of will and devotion to an elevated purpose, replaced
in him his father’s enraptured concentration. On the other hand,
his appreciative instinct for the recondite beauty of mathematical
conceptions was wanting to his father. William Herschel possessed fine
mathematical abilities; but he cultivated them no further than was
necessary for the execution of his designs; and elementary geometry
served his turn. But Sir John might have taken primary rank as a pure
mathematician. Possibly his inventive faculty would have developed
in that line more strongly than in any other. The grasp of his mind
was indeed so wide that many possibilities of greatness were open
to him. That he chose rightly the one to make effective, no one
can doubt. The neglect on his part of astronomy would have been a
scientific delinquency. His splendid patrimony of telescopic results
and facilities was inalienable. It was a talent entrusted to him,
which he had not the right to bury in the ground. He laboured with it
instead to the last farthing. Not for his own glory. He aspired only
to fill up, for the honour of his father’s name, the large measure of
his achievements. In doing so he performed an unparalleled feat. He
swept from pole to pole the entire surface of the hollow sphere of the
sky. It is unlikely to be repeated. The days of celestial pioneering
are past. Nothing on the scale of a general survey will in future
be undertaken except with photographic help. The use of the direct
telescopic method tends to become more and more restricted. This is
a loss as well as a gain. A _hortus siccus_ is to a blooming garden
very much what a collection of photographs is to the luminous flowers
of the sky. They are depicted more completely, more significantly,
more conveniently for purposes of investigation, than they can be
seen; but the splendour of them is gone. Their direct contemplation
has an elevating effect upon the mind, which indirect study, however
diligent and instructive, is incapable of producing. The sublimity of
the visions drawn from the abyss of space cannot be reasoned about. It
strikes home to the spectator’s inner consciousness without waiting for
the approval of his understanding. Thus to Herschel, no less expressly
than to the Psalmist three thousand years earlier, “the heavens told
the glory of God.” He lived at his telescope a life apart, full of
incommunicable experiences.
“To Herschel,” as Mr. Proctor expressed it, “astronomy was not a
matter of right ascension and declination; of poising, clamping, and
reading-off; of cataloguing and correcting.” “It was his peculiar
privilege,” Dean Stanley remarked in his funeral sermon, “to combine
with those more special studies such a width of view and such a power
of expression as to make him an interpreter, a poet of science, even
beyond his immediate sphere.” Hence the popularity of his books, and
the favoured place he occupied in public esteem.
His character was of a more delicate fibre than his father’s. It was
also, by necessary consequence, less robust. Sir William Herschel
surmounted adversity. Sir John would have endured it, had his lot been
so appointed. But it never came his way. He was one of those rarest of
rare individuals--
“Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full,
Out of their choicest and their whitest wool.”
His life was a tissue of felicities. For him there was no weary
waiting, no heart-sickening disappointment, no vicissitudes of
fortune, no mental or moral tempests. Success attended each one of
his efforts; he could look back without regret; he could look forward
with confident hope; his family relations brought him unalloyed
happiness. He suffered, indeed, one bereavement in the untimely death
of his daughter, Mrs. Marshall, the wife of a nephew of Dr. Whewell;
but Christian resignation sweetened his sorrow. His religion was
unpretending and efficacious. No duty was left by him unfulfilled; and
he wore, from youth to age, “the white flower of a blameless life.”
A discriminating onlooker said of him, that his existence “was full
of the serenity of the sage and the docile innocence of a child.”
He was retiring almost to a fault, careless of applause, candid
in accepting criticism. Although habitually indulgent, he was no
flatterer, “Anyone,” Mr. Proctor said, “who objected to be set right
when in error, might well be disposed to regard Sir John Herschel as
a merciless correspondent, notwithstanding the calm courtesy of his
remarks. He set truth in the first place, and by comparison with her,
neither his own opinions, nor those of others, were permitted to have
any weight whatever.” Beginners invariably met with his sympathy and
encouragement. He felt for difficulties which he himself had never
experienced.
Being thus constituted, he could not but inspire affection. The French
physicist, Biot, when asked by Dr. Pritchard, after the death of
Laplace, who, in his opinion, was his worthiest successor, replied,
“If I did not love him so much, I should unhesitatingly say, John
Herschel.” His own attachments were warm and constant; and the few
scientific controversies in which he engaged, were carried on with his
habitual gentleness and urbanity.
Herschel left eight daughters and three sons, of whom the eldest, Sir
William James Herschel, succeeded him in the baronetcy, while the
second, Professor Alexander Stewart Herschel, has earned celebrity
by his meteoric researches. The election of the third, Colonel John
Herschel, to a Fellowship of the Royal Society, in recognition of his
spectroscopic examination of southern nebulæ, threw a gleam of joy over
his father’s deathbed. Lady Herschel survived her husband upwards of
thirteen years.
The learned societies of Europe vied with each other in enrolling
the name of Sir John Herschel; and he was nominated, in 1855, on the
death of Gauss, one of the eight foreign members of the French Academy
of Science. As we have seen, he received the Copley Medal from the
Royal Society twice, their Royal Medal thrice, and from the Royal
Astronomical Society, two Gold Medals and a testimonial. Compliments
and homage, however, left him as they found him--quiet, intent, and
unobtrusive.
Several portraits of him are in existence. One was executed in oils
by Pickersgill for St. John’s College, Cambridge, at a comparatively
early period of his life. It is here (page 142) reproduced from an
admirable engraving. His later aspect is finely represented in a
painting by his eldest daughter, Lady Gordon. The eyes in it are
sunken, though brilliant; the shape of the head is concealed by a
mane of grey hair. There is about it something of leonine grandeur,
disjointed from leonine fierceness. It perpetuates, indeed, the
countenance of a man replete with human tenderness.