k in astronomy. In May, 1782, he went up to London, to be formally
admitted to his Fellowship of the Royal Society. There he stayed so
long that poor Carolina was quite frightened. It was "double the time
which my brother could safely be absent from his scholars." The
connection would be broken up, and the astronomy would be the ruin of
the family. (A little of good old dame Herschel's housewifely leaven
here, perhaps.) But William's letters from London to "Dear Lina" must
soon have quieted her womanly fears. William had actually been
presented to the king, and "met with a very gracious reception." He had
explained the solar system to the king and queen, and his telescope was
to be put up first at Greenwich and then at Richmond. The Greenwich
authorities were delighted with his instrument; they have seen what
Herschel calls "MY fine double stars" with it. "All my papers are
printing," he tells Lina with pardonable pride, "and are allowed to be
very valuable." But he himself is far from satisfied as yet with the
results of his work. Evidently no small successes in the field of
knowledge will do for William Herschel. "Among opticians and
astronomers," he writes to Lina, "nothing now is talked of but WHAT
THEY CALL my great discoveries. Alas! this shows how far they are
behind, when such trifles as I have seen and done are called GREAT.
Let me but get at it again! I will make such telescopes and see such
things!" Well, well, William Herschel, in that last sentence we get
the very keynote of true greatness and true genius.

But must he go back quietly to Bath and the toils of teaching? "An
intolerable waste of time," he thought it. The king happily relieved
him from this intolerable waste. He offered Herschel a salary of 200
pounds a year if he would come and live at Datchet, and devote himself
entirely to astronomical observations. It was by no means a munificent
sum for a king to offer for such labour; but Herschel gladly accepted
it, as it would enable him to give up the interruption of teaching, and
spend all his time on his beloved astronomy. His Bath friend, Sir
William Watson, exclaimed when he heard of it, "Never bought monarch
honour so cheap." Herschel was forty-three when he removed to Datchet,
and from that day forth he lived almost entirely in his observatory,
wholly given up to his astronomical pursuits. Even when he had to go
to London to read his papers before the Royal Society, he chose a