ew planet
became the talk of the town and the subject of much admiring discussion
in the London newspapers. Strange, indeed, that an amateur astronomer
of Bath, a mere German music-master, should have hit upon a planet
which escaped the sight even of the king's own Astronomer Royal at
Greenwich.

Of course there were not people wanting who ascribed this wonderful
discovery of Herschel's to pure chance. If he hadn't just happened to
turn his telescope in that particular direction on that particular
night, he wouldn't have seen this Georgium Sidus they made such a fuss
about at all. Quite so. And if he hadn't built a twenty-foot
telescope for himself, he wouldn't have turned it anywhere at any time.
But Herschel himself knew better. "This was by no means the result of
chance," he said; "but a simple consequence of the position of the
planet on that particular evening, since it occupied precisely that
spot in the heavens which came in the order of the minute observations
that I had previously mapped out for myself. Had I not seen it just
when I did, I must inevitably have come upon it soon after, since my
telescope was so perfect that I was able to distinguish it from a fixed
star in the first minute of observation." Indeed, when once Herschel's
twenty-foot telescope was made, he could not well have failed in the
long run to discover Uranus, as his own description of his method
clearly shows. "When I had carefully and thoroughly perfected the
great instrument in all its parts," he says, "I made a systematic use
of it in my observation of the heaven, first forming a determination
never to pass by any, the smallest, portion of them without due
investigation. This habit, persisted in, led to the discovery of the
new planet (Georgium Sidus)." As well might one say that a skilled
mining surveyor, digging for coal, came upon the seam by chance, as
ascribe to chance the necessary result of such a careful and methodical
scrutiny as this.

Before the year was out, the ingenious Mr. Herschel of Bath was elected
a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was also presented with the Copley
gold medal. From this moment all the distinguished people in Bath were
anxious to be introduced to the philosophical music-master; and,
indeed, they intruded so much upon his time that the daily music
lessons were now often interrupted. He was soon, however, to give up
lessons for ever, and devote himself to his more congenial and natural
wor