flippant."

One is almost ashamed to give space and currency to a forgotten attack,
but it yields a kind of perspective; and it is instructive and perhaps
useful to view HERSCHEL'S labors from all sides, even from wrong and
envious ones.

The study of the original papers, together with a knowledge of the
circumstances in which they were written, will abundantly show that
HERSCHEL'S ideas sprung from a profound meditation of the nature of
things in themselves. What the origin of trains of thought prosecuted
for years may have been we cannot say, nor could he himself have
expressed it. A new path in science was to be found out, and he found
it. It was not in his closet, surrounded by authorities, but under the
open sky, that he meditated the construction of the heavens. As he says,
"My situation permitted me not to consult large libraries; nor, indeed,
was it very material; for as I intended to view the heavens myself,
Nature, that great volume, appeared to me to contain the best
catalogue."

His remarkable memoirs on the invisible and other rays of the solar
spectrum were received with doubt, and with open denial by many of the
scientific bodies of Europe. The reviews and notices of his work in this
direction were often quite beyond the bounds of a proper scientific
criticism; but HERSCHEL maintained a dignified silence. The discoveries
were true, the proofs were open to all, and no response was needed from
him. He may have been sorely tempted to reply, but I am apt to believe
that the rumors that reached him from abroad and at home did not then
affect him as they might have done earlier. He was at his grand
climacteric, he had passed his sixty-third year, his temper was less
hasty than it had been in his youth, and his nerves had not yet received
the severe strain from whose effects he suffered during the last years
of his life.

* * * * *

We have some glimpses of his personal life in the reminiscences of him
in the _Diary and Letters_ of Madame D'ARBLAY, who knew him well:

"1786.--In the evening Mr. HERSCHEL came to tea. I had once seen
that very extraordinary man at Mrs. DE LUC'S, but was happy to see
him again, for he has not more fame to awaken curiosity than sense
and modesty to gratify it. He is perfectly unassuming, yet openly
happy, and happy in the success of those studies which would render
a mind less excellently formed presumptuous and arrogant