From an Engraving in the Possession of His Granddaughter, Mrs. F. Winthrop White of New Brighton, S. I.
After solemnly dwelling on the awe which mortal man must feel upon peering into the secrets of the sky, the article declared that Sir John “paused several hours before he commenced his observations, that he might prepare his own mind for discoveries which he knew would fill the minds of myriads of his fellow men with astonishment.” It continued:
And well might he pause! From the hour the first human pair opened their eyes to the glories of the blue firmament above them, there has been no accession to human knowledge at all comparable in sublime interest to that which he has been the honored agent in supplying. Well might he pause! He was about to become the sole depository of wondrous secrets which had been hid from the eyes of all men that had lived since the birth of time.
At the end of a half-column of glorification, the writer got down to brass tacks:
To render our enthusiasm intelligible, we will state at once that by means of a telescope, of vast dimensions and an entirely new principle, the younger Herschel, at his observatory in the southern hemisphere, has already made the most extraordinary discoveries in every planet of our solar system; has discovered planets in other solar systems; has obtained a distinct view of objects in the moon, fully equal to that which the unaided eye commands of terrestrial objects at the distance of one hundred yards; has affirmatively settled the question whether this satellite be inhabited, and by what orders of beings; has firmly established a new theory of cometary phenomena; and has solved or corrected nearly every leading problem of mathematical astronomy.
And where was the Journal of Science getting this mine of astronomical revelation for its supplement? The mystery is explained at once:
We are indebted to the devoted friendship of Dr. Andrew Grant, the pupil of the elder, and for several years past the inseparable coadjutor of the younger Herschel. The amanuensis of the latter at the Cape of Good Hope, and the indefatigable superintendent of his telescope during the whole period of its construction and operations, Dr. Grant has been able to supply us with intelligence equal in general interest at least to that which Dr. Herschel himself has transmitted to the Royal Society. For permission to indulge his friendship in communicating this invaluable information to us, Dr. Grant and ourselves are indebted to the magnanimity of Dr. Herschel, who, far above all mercenary considerations, has thus signally honored and rewarded his fellow laborer in the field of science.
Regarding the illustrations which, according to the implications of the text, accompanied the supplement, the writer was specific. Most of them, he stated, were copies of “drawings taken in the observatory by Herbert Home, Esq., who accompanied the last powerful series of reflectors from London to the Cape. The engraving of the belts of Jupiter is a reduced copy of an imperial folio drawing by Dr. Herschel himself. The segment of the inner ring of Saturn is from a large drawing by Dr. Grant.”
A history of Sir William Herschel’s work and a description of his telescopes took up a column of the Sun, and on top of this came the details—as the Journal printed them—of Sir John’s plans to outdo his father by revolutionary methods and a greater telescope. Sir John, it appeared, was in conference with Sir David Brewster:
After a few minutes’ silent thought, Sir John diffidently inquired whether it would not be possible to effect a transfusion of artificial light through the focal object of vision! Sir David, somewhat startled at the originality of the idea, paused a while, and then hesitatingly referred to the refrangibility of rays and the angle of incidence. Sir John, grown more confident, adduced the example of the Newtonian reflector, in which the refrangibility was corrected by the second speculum and the angle of incidence restored by the third.