Page:Sir William Herschel, his life and works (1881).djvu/128

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Life and Works
with him to the king's concert at night, he having permission to go when he chooses, his five nephews (Griesbachs) making a principal part of the band. 'And,' says he, 'I know you will be welcome.'"

An intimacy was gradually established between Herschel and Dr. Burney. They saw each other often at the meetings of the Royal Society, and Herschel frequently stayed at the doctor's house. "On the first evening Herschel spent at Chelsea, when I called for my Argand lamp, Herschel, who had not seen one of those lamps, was surprised at the great effusion of light, and immediately calculated the difference between that and a single candle, and found it sixteen to one."[1]

In 1793 we find Herschel as a witness for his friend James Watt, in the celebrated case of Watt vs. Bull, which was tried in the Court of Common Pleas. And from Muirhead's Life of Watt, it appears that Herschel visited Watt at Heathfield in 1810.


  1. Memoirs of Dr. Burney, vol. iii., p. 264.