The garden and workrooms
swarmed with labourers and workmen--smiths and carpenters speeding to
and fro between the forge and the forty-foot machinery; and so incessant
was the vigilance of Herschel, that not a screw-bolt in the whole
apparatus was fixed except under his eye. "I have seen him," writes his
sister, "lying stretched many an hour in the burning sun, across the top
beam, whilst the iron-work for the various motions [of the great
telescope] was being fixed." At one time no fewer than twenty-four men,
in relays of twelve each, were engaged in grinding and polishing day and
night; and Herschel never left them, taking his food without allowing
himself time to sit down to table.
"In August 1787," writes the diarist, "an additional
man-servant was engaged, who would be wanted at the handles of
the motions of the forty-foot,"--that is, to raise or lower it,
or move it from side to side, as might be required,--"for which
the mirror in the beginning of July was so far finished as to
be used for occasional observations on trial.
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