be acquired." Herschel cannot well be supposed to have been ignorant of this scientific faith. With the modest boldness of true genius he not only set it aside, but he proved it was entirely wrong. This was at the very beginning of his career. A novice challenged the accuracy of an eminent master and veteran in the art! A novice compelling a veteran to withdraw his prophecies and confess himself in error! Why he thus set aside the refractor and boldly followed to unimagined ends the path of improvement for Newton's reflector he has not told us. Both ways were open; he had perhaps tried both, for he was aware of both; but he preferred the latter.
While still engaged as musical director and teacher at Bath, Herschel formed the design of constructing a 30-feet reflector with a 3-feet mirror. This was about the year 1778, before he was even known to the upper classes of citizens or visitors as an amateur astronomer. The first mirror of this kind which he cast cracked in the cooling. When preparing for a second casting, the furnace, which he had built on purpose in his own house, gave way, the molten metal ran into the fire, overflowed the stone floor, and nearly cost him his life. But his papers in the Philosophical Transactions were making him known, and his discovery of the planet Uranus brought him to the King's notice, and put a stop for a time to the realisation of his cherished idea of a great telescope. From the first he was bent on doing what no other had done before him—carrying out Newton's conception of a great reflector, whether the mirror used were glass or metal, and exploring the heavens with an instrument such as the mind of man had never before imagined.
