]
After struggling for some thirty minutes against his rapidly increasing
weakness, the great astronomer, bowed by his burden of years and
labours, was forced to retire to his bed, with little hope that he would
ever rise from it again. For ten days and nights his wife and sister
watched by his side in painful suspense, until, on the 25th of August,
the end came. Peacefully closed a life which had passed in a peace and
quietness not often vouchsafed to man.
* * * * *
Herschel, says a brother astronomer, will never cease to occupy an
eminent place in the small group of our contemporary men of genius,
while his name will descend to the most distant posterity. The variety
and the magnificence of his labours vie with their extent. The more they
are studied, the more they are admired. For it is with great men as it
is with great movements in the Arts and in national history,--we cannot
understand them without observing them from different points of view.
What a brilliant roll of achievements is recalled to the mind by the
name of William Herschel! The discovery of Uranus, and of its
satellites; of the fifth and sixth satellites of Saturn; of the many
spots at the poles of Mars; of the rotation of Saturn's ring; of the
belts of Saturn; of the rotation of Jupiter's satellites; of the daily
period of Saturn and Venus; and of the motions of binary sidereal
systems,--added to his investigations into nebulae, the Milky Way, and
double, triple, and multiple stars;--all this we owe to his patient, his
persevering, his daring genius! He may almost be styled the Father of
Modern Astronomy.
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