in all their undertakings to the day
of the great astronomer's death.

About this time Herschel had been reading Ferguson's "Astronomy," and
felt very desirous of seeing for himself the objects in the heavens,
invisible to the naked eye, of which he there found descriptions. For
this purpose he must of course have a telescope. But how to obtain one?
that was the question. There was a small two-and-a-half foot
instrument on hire at one of the shops at Bath; and the ambitious
organist borrowed this poor little glass for a time, not merely to look
through, but to use as a model for constructing one on his own account.
Buying was impossible, of course, for telescopes cost much money: but
making would not be difficult for a determined mind. He had always
been of a mechanical turn, and he was now fired with a desire to build
himself a telescope eighteen or twenty feet long. He sent to London
for the lenses, which could not be bought at Bath; and Carolina amused
herself by making a pasteboard tube to fit them in her leisure hours.
It was long before he reached twenty feet, indeed: his first effort was
a seven-foot, attained only "after many continuous determined trials."
The amateur pasteboard frame did not fully answer Herschel's
expectations, so he was obliged to go in grudgingly for the expense of
a tin tube. The reflecting mirror which he ought to have had proved
too dear for his still slender purse, and he thus had to forego it with
much regret. But he found a man at Bath who had once been in the
mirror-polishing line; and he bought from him for a bargain all his
rubbish of patterns, tools, unfinished mirrors and so forth, with which
he proceeded to experiment on the manufacture of a proper telescope. In
the summer, when the season was over, and all the great people had left
Bath, the house, as Carolina says ruefully, "was turned into a
workshop." William's younger brother Alexander was busy putting up a
big lathe in a bedroom, grinding glasses and turning eyepieces; while
in the drawing-room itself, sacred to William's aristocratic pupils, a
carpenter, sad to relate, was engaged in making a tube and putting up
stands for the future telescopes. Sad goings on, indeed, in the family
of a respectable music-master and organist! Many a good solid
shopkeeper in Bath must no doubt have shaken his grey head solemnly as
he passed the door, and muttered to himself that that young German
singer fellow was clearly going on t