Elector's gardens at Dresden, and was afterwards employed, until his death in 1718, at the country-seat of Hohentziatz, in the principality of Anhalt-Zerbst, near Magdeburg. According to the short account of the family given by his illustrious grandson, "he had also a good knowledge of arithmetic, writing, drawing, and music". The last-named talent he bequeathed to his youngest son, Isaac, born at Hohentziatz on 14th January, 1707. In a brief review of his life which he left behind him, Isaac explains that it was the desire of his parents that he should follow in his father's line of life. After the death of his father, his elder brother Eusebius procured for him a situation in the gardens at Zerbst. But he had, in his own words, "lost all interest in gardening". "As I had already at Hohentziatz procured a violin and learned to play it by ear, I took proper lessons at Zerbst from an hautboy-player in the court-band. I also bought an hautboy, and was never so happy as when I could occupy myself with music." At the age of twenty-one, having decided to follow out music as his life-work, he went to Berlin to study. Finding "the Prussian service as a bandsman very bad and slavish," he went to Potsdam and took lessons for a year. From Potsdam he made his way to Brunswick, and thence to Hanover, where in August, 1731, he was engaged as hautboy-player in the Foot-guards. Hanover was destined to be his home, and in 1732 he married Anna Ilse Moritzen, the daughter of a citizen of the neighbouring town of Wenstadt. They had a family of ten, of whom six—four sons and two daughters—reached maturity. Of these, the third, Friedrich Wilhelm, born at Hanover on 15th November, 1738, became one of the greatest astronomers—indeed, one of the greatest men of science of all time.
Isaac Herschel seems to have been not only a man of high musical talent, but also of wide general culture. And despite the mothers dislike to learning and her
