this interesting object was a new planet. This important discovery at
once raised Herschel to a position of eminence and distinction, and from
a star-gazing musician he became a famous astronomer. A new planet named
Uranus was added to our system, which completes a revolution round the
Sun in a little over eighty-four years, and at a distance of near 1,000
millions of miles beyond the orbit of Saturn. Herschel's name became a
household word. George III. invited him to Court in order that he might
obtain from his own lips an account of his discovery of the new planet;
and so favourable was the impression made by Herschel upon the King,
that he proposed to create him Royal Astronomer at Windsor, and bestow
upon him a salary of 200_l._ a year. Herschel decided to accept the
proffered appointment, and, with his sister Caroline, removed from Bath
to Datchet, near Windsor, in 1782, and from there to Slough in 1786. In
1788 he married the wealthy widow of a London merchant, by whom he had
one son, who worthily sustained his father's high reputation as an
astronomer. Herschel was created a Knight in 1816, and in 1821 was
elected first President of the Royal Astronomical Society. He died at
Slough on August 25, 1822, when in the eighty-fourth year of his age,
and was buried in Upton Churchyard.

It is inscribed on his tomb, that 'he burst the barriers of heaven;' the
lofty praise conveyed by this expression is not greater than what
Herschel merited when we consider with what unwearied assiduity and
patience he laboured to accomplish the results described in the words
which have been quoted. By a method called 'star-gauging' he
accomplished an entire survey of the heavens and examined minutely all
the stars in their groups and aggregations as they passed before his eye
in the field of the telescope. He sounded the depths of the Milky Way,
and explored the wondrous regions of that shining zone, peopled with
myriads of suns so closely aggregated in some of its tracts as to
suggest the appearance of a mosaic of stars. He resolved numerous nebulae
into clusters of stars, and penetrated with his great telescope depth
after depth of space crowded with 'island universes of stars,' beyond
which he was able to discern luminous haze and filmy streaks of light,
the evidence of the existence of other universes plunged in depths still
more profound, where space verges on infinity. In his exploration of the
starry heavens Herschel's labours wer