Herschel the Astronomer.
Sir William Herschel was born at Hanover, in Germany, in 1738. At the age of fourteen he entered the Hanoverian Guards, as a musician, and in 1757, proceeded to England in that capacity. Here he became a teacher of music. In 1770, he began to devote himself to the study of astronomy. In 1781, he discovered the planet now called Herschel, but which he called Georgium sidus, or George’s star, in compliment to George III., then king of England. In 1787, he completed his great telescope, the tube of which was forty feet in length, and which was surrounded with machines for turning it in all directions. When observing a heavenly body, he sat at the top of the tube, and looked down to the bottom, where, in a measure, he saw the reflection of the object he wished to notice. In 1789, he discovered the sixth and seventh moons of Saturn. He died in 1822, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. His son is now one of the most famous of living astronomers.