s, but without
result.

On the 13th of August, 1596, David Fabricius, an unprofessional
astronomer in East Friesland, saw in the neck of the Whale a star of the
third magnitude, which by October had disappeared. It was, nevertheless,
visible in 1603, when Bayer marked it in his catalogue with the Greek
letter Omicron, and was watched, in 1638-39, through its phases of
brightening and apparent extinction by a Dutch professor named
Holwarda.[6] From Hevelius this first-known periodical star received the
name of "Mira," or the Wonderful, and Boulliaud in 1667 fixed the length
of its cycle of change at 334 days. It was not a solitary instance. A
star in the Swan was perceived by Janson in 1600 to show fluctuations of
light, and Montanari found in 1669 that Algol in Perseus shared the same
peculiarity to a marked degree. Altogether the class embraced in 1782
half-a-dozen members. When it is added that a few star-couples had been
noted in singularly, but it was supposed accidentally, close
juxtaposition, and that the failure of repeated attempts to measure
stellar parallaxes pointed to distances _at least_ 400,000 times that of
the earth from the sun,[7] the picture of sidereal science, when the
last quarter of the eighteenth century began, is practically complete.
It included three items of information: that the stars have motions,
real or apparent; that they are immeasurably remote; and that a few
shine with a periodically variable light. Nor were these scantily
collected facts ordered into any promise of further development. They
lay at once isolated and confused before the inquirer. They needed to be
both multiplied and marshalled, and it seemed as if centuries of patient
toil must elapse before any reliable conclusions could be derived from
them. The sidereal world was thus the recognised domain of far-reaching
speculations, which remained wholly uncramped by systematic research
until Herschel entered upon his career as an observer of the heavens.

The greatest of modern astronomers was born at Hanover, November 15,
1738. He was the fourth child of Isaac Herschel, a hautboy-player in the
band of the Hanoverian Guard, and was early trained to follow his
father's profession. On the termination, however, of the disastrous
campaign of 1757, his parents removed him from the regiment, there is
reason to believe, in a somewhat unceremonious manner. Technically,
indeed, he incurred the penalties of desertion, remitted--accordin