their doors to him; he was elected in 1802 a foreign member of the French Institute. He was created in 1816 a knight of the Royal Hanoverian Guelphic order, received the freedom of the city of Glasgow, and his name stands first on the list of presidents of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Herschel married, on 8 May 1788, Mary, only daughter of Mr. James Baldwin, a London merchant, and widow of Mr. John Pitt, by whom she had one son, who died early. She was of a most amiable character, and her jointure relieved Herschel from all pecuniary care. Their only child, John Frederick William Herschel [q. v.], was born on 7 March 1792.
Herschel was a witness for James Watt [q. v.] in the case of Watt v. Bull in 1793, and paid him a visit at Heathfield in 1810. At Paris, in July 1802, he made acquaintance with Laplace, and had an interview with the First Consul. A severe illness in the spring of 1807 permanently impaired his strength, and he was thenceforth obliged to take frequent intervals of rest at Bath, Dawlish (as the guest of Sir William Watson), London, Yorkshire, and Scotland. At Brighton, in September 1813, he met the poet Campbell, who was charmed with his simplicity, kindness, and readiness to explain. ‘He is seventy-six,’ says Campbell, ‘but fresh and stout. … Speaking of himself, he said, with a modesty of manner which quite overcame me …, “I have looked further into space than ever human being did before me. I have observed stars, of which the light it can be proved must take two millions of years to reach this earth”’ (Beattie, Life of Campbell, ii. 234).
Herschel vainly attempted to repolish the four-foot speculum in 1814. As his physical weakness increased his sunny spirits became overcast, his intellect remaining, however, clear to the end. The long series of his communications to the Royal Society closed in his eightieth year, on 11 June 1818, with a paper on the telescopic sounding of space-depths (Phil. Trans. cviii. 429); but he sent to the Astronomical Society, three years subsequently, the places of 145 additional double stars (Memoirs Royal Astron. Soc. i. 166). The latest of his extant autographs is a note, in tremulous character, to his sister, announcing, on 4 July 1819, the appearance of a great comet. He died of bilious fever, on 25 Aug. 1822, in his eighty-fourth year, and was buried in the church of St. Laurence at Upton, near Slough. A mural tablet is inscribed with an epitaph composed by Dr. Goodall, provost of Eton. Lady Herschel died on 6 Jan. 1832, aged 81.
Dr. Charles Burney (1726–1814) [q. v.] speaks strongly of Herschel's social charm and fidelity to his friendships. One of the few hints to be found as to his religious sentiments occurs in an unpublished letter of 27 Feb. 1794, where he says that ‘it is certainly a very laudable thing to receive instruction from the great workmaster of nature, and for that reason all experimental philosophy is instituted’ (Letter Book, p. 201). Music was his favourite recreation; and the vivid enjoyment with which he presided over the gatherings of performers at his house is still traditionally remembered.
The animated expression of Herschel's countenance is well rendered in Abbott's portrait of him at the age of fifty, now in the National Portrait Gallery. A drawing from it by his granddaughter, Lady Gordon, was published in Mrs. John Herschel's ‘Memoir of Caroline Herschel.’ His bust was taken by Lockie in 1787 for Sir William Watson, and a likeness of him, painted by Artaud in 1819, is in the possession of Herschel's grandson, the present baronet.
Herschel's family affections were unusually strong. He threw aside absorbing pursuits at Bath to seek for a younger brother, who had run away from home. He provided for his sister Caroline, and paid her mother for the loss of her services. He supported, for some years previous to his death, Alexander Herschel, his skilful mechanical assistant. Dr. Burney read aloud to Herschel, in 1797–1799, the whole of his ‘Poetical History of Astronomy,’ which, his ‘aversion to poetry’ notwithstanding, obtained his approval. His literary preference was for the prose of Swift. The prolonged succession of Herschel's discoveries and speculations were laid before the Royal Society in sixty-nine memoirs, forming an aggregate unmatched for originality, inventiveness, and power. In nearly every branch of modern physical astronomy he was a pioneer. He was the virtual founder of sidereal science. As an explorer of the heavens he had but one rival, his son. His ‘reviews of the heavens’ afforded him a harvest of 2,500 nebulæ, where 103 had been previously known. He initiated the classification, and indicated a law of distribution of these objects relative to the Milky Way, distinguished the peculiarities of ‘planetary’ and ‘ring-nebulæ’ and ‘nebulous stars,’ and described the occurrence, with an ‘abundance exceeding all imagination,’ of ‘diffused nebulosities’ covering some 152 square degrees of the heavens (Phil. Trans. ci. 275). His views as to the nature of nebulæ underwent a remarkable change. From the ‘resolving’ effects upon many of them of his great telescopes, he at first concluded all to be ‘com-
