may hazard a natural conjecture respecting the course of
HERSCHEL'S early studies. Music conducted him to mathematics, or,
in other words, impelled him to study SMITH'S _Harmonics_. Now this
ROBERT SMITH was the author of _A Complete System of Optics_,
a masterly work, which, notwithstanding the rapid growth of that
branch of the science, is not yet wholly superseded. It seems to us
not unlikely that HERSCHEL, studying the _Harmonics_, conceived a
reverence for the author, who was at that time still living, so that
from the _Philosophy of Music_ he passed to the _Optics_, a work on
which SMITH'S great reputation chiefly rested; and thus undesignedly
prepared himself for the career on which he was shortly about to
enter with so much glory."[9]

There is no doubt that this conjecture is a true one. The _Optics_ of
Dr. SMITH is one of the very few books quoted by HERSCHEL throughout his
writings, and there is every evidence of his complete familiarity with
its conclusions and methods; and this familiarity is of the kind which a
student acquires with his early text-books. One other work he quotes in
the same way, LALANDE'S _Astronomy_, and this too must have been deeply
studied.

During the years 1765-1772, while HERSCHEL was following his profession
and his studies at Bath, the family life at Hanover went on in much the
same way.

In 1765 his father ISAAC had a stroke of paralysis, which ended his
violin-playing forever, and forced him to depend entirely upon pupils
and copying of music for a livelihood. He died on March 22, 1767,
leaving behind him a good name, and living in the affectionate
remembrance of his children and of all who knew him.

CAROLINA had now lost her best friend, and transferred to her brother
WILLIAM the affection she had before divided between him and her father.

"My father wished to give me something like a polished education,
but my mother was particularly determined that it should be a rough,
but at the same time a useful one; and nothing farther she thought
was necessary but to send me two or three months to a sempstress to
be taught to make household linen. . . . My mother would not consent
to my being taught French, and my brother Dietrich was even denied a
dancing-master, because she would not permit my learning along with
him, though the entrance had been paid for us both; so all my father
could do for me w