he world, dearly loved in his own
family, and engrossed with a passionate affection for his chosen
science, the great astronomer and philosopher grew grey in peace under
his own roof, in the course of a singularly placid and gentle old age.
In 1802 he laid before the Royal Society a list of five thousand new
stars, star-clusters, or other heavenly bodies which he had discovered,
and which formed the great body of his personal additions to
astronomical knowledge. The University of Oxford made him Doctor of
Laws, and very late in life he was knighted by the king--a too tardy
acknowledgment of his immense services to science. To the very last,
however, he worked on with a will; and, indeed, it is one of the great
charms of scientific interest that it thus enables a man to keep his
faculties on the alert to an advanced old age. In 1819, when Herschel
was more than eighty, he writes to his sister a short note--"Lina,
there is a great comet. I want you to assist me. Come to dine and
spend the day here. If you can come soon after one o'clock, we shall
have time to prepare maps and telescopes. I saw its situation last
night. It has a long tail." How delightful to find such a living
interest in life at the age of eighty!

On the 25th of August, 1822, this truly great and simple man passed
away, in his eighty-fifth year. It has been possible here only to
sketch out the chief personal points in his career, without dwelling
much upon the scientific importance of his later life-long labours; but
it must suffice to say briefly upon this point that Herschel's work was
no mere mechanical star-finding; it was the most profoundly
philosophical astronomical work ever performed, except perhaps Newton's
and Laplace's. Among astronomers proper there has been none
distinguished by such breadth of grasp, such wide conceptions, and such
perfect clearness of view as the self-taught oboe-player of Hanover.

V.

JEAN FRANCOIS MILLET, PAINTER.

There is no part of France so singularly like England, both in the
aspect of the country itself and in the features and character of the
inhabitants, as Normandy. The wooded hills and dales, the frequent
copses and apple orchards, the numerous thriving towns and villages,
the towers and steeples half hidden among the trees, recall at every
step the very similar scenery of our own beautiful and fruitful
Devonshire. And as the land is, so are the people. Ages ago, about the
same time th