"By addressing this letter to you, Sir, as President of the Royal Society, I take the most effectual method of communicating that name to the Literati of Europe which I hope they will receive with pleasure. I have the honour to be, with the greatest respect, etc.,
When Herschel discovered the planet Uranus he had received no favour and no bounty from King or people. Nor did the King extend his patronage to him till fifteen months had elapsed. Galileo was in receipt of a handsome allowance from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, when he discovered the satellites of Jupiter, and called them the Medicean Stars. It was not only pardonable to do this; it was most natural. But science refused to endorse the flattery: and scientific men, especially on the Continent, were equally unwilling to accept the name proposed by Herschel for the newly discovered planet. For many years it continued to be called the Georgian Star, or the Georgium Sidus, in this country, though not without strong protests. While scientific men in Britain allowed that "George the Third has many titles to be remembered by the friends of science, to which few of his contemporaries have any pretensions," they maintained, "We shall therefore do well to anticipate the decision of posterity, by at once adopting a term that must ultimately prevail." No one thinks of perpetuating the name Georgian now. Uranus has displaced it, and justly. The judgment of posterity has gone against the name proposed by the discoverer and that of Herschel, generously proposed by Lalande. Heathenism and antiquity have carried the day. Everyone must decide for himself whether
