The only son of Sir William, was born at Slough, 7th March 1792, and educated at Eton and St. John’s, Cambridge, where in 1813 he was senior wrangler and first Smith’s prizeman. His first publication was on the Calculus of finite differences (1820). In 1822 he applied himself especially to astronomy, and helped to re-examine the nebulæ and clusters of stars in his father’s catalogues. The results were given in 1833 to the Royal Society along with observations on 525 nebulæ and clusters of stars not noticed by his father, and on a great number of double stars—in all between 3000 and 4000. His treatises on Sound and Light appeared in the “Encyclopædia Metropolitana” (1830–31); his Astronomy (1831) and Natural Philosophy in Lardner’s “Cyclopædia.” In 1834 he visited the Cape to examine the Southern hemisphere; the results published in 1847 completed a survey of the heavens begun in 1825. He was made a knight (1831), a baronet (1838), and a D.C.L. of Oxford (1839), and was Master of the Mint (1850–55). His articles on Meteorology, Physical Geography, and Telescope, contributed to the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” were published separately; and his “Popular Lectures” and “Collected Addresses” are well-known works. Herschel was a distinguished chemist, and attained important results in photography. His researches on the undulatory theory of light were very valuable. He had also a profound interest in poetry, and made translations from Schiller and from the “Iliad.” He died at Collingwood near Hawkhurst, Kent, 12th May 1871, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. See Miss Clerke’s “The Herschels” (1896).

Personal

  At Captain Kater’s breakfast yesterday we met Greenough, Captain Beaufort, Warburton, and young Herschel, a man of great abilities, to whom Sir Humphry Davy paid an elegant compliment the other day in a speech as President to the Royal Society. “His father must rejoice in such a son, who secures to him a double immortality.”

  It has been said that distance of place confers the same privilege as distance of time, and I should gladly avail myself of the privilege which is thus afforded me by Sir John Herschel’s separation from his country and friends, to express my admiration of his character in stronger terms than I should otherwise venture to use; for the language of panegyric however sincerely it may flow from the heart, might be mistaken for that of flattery, if it could not thus claim somewhat of an historical character; but his great attainments in almost every department of human knowledge, his fine powers as a philosophical writer, his great services and his distinguished devotion to science, the high principles which have regulated his conduct in every relation of life, and, above all, his engaging modesty, which is the crown of all his other virtues, presenting such a model of an accomplished philosopher as can rarely be found beyond the regions of fiction, demand abler pens than mine to describe them in adequate terms, however much inclined I might feel to undertake the task.

  I dined with the Geological Club, and afterwards attended a meeting of the Geological Society … and especially Sir John Herschel, just returned from the Cape of Good Hope, and decidedly at this moment the lion of London. I sat between Sir John and Babbage, and had an excellent time. Sir John is a small man, and, I should think, a little more than fifty years old, and growing gray; very quiet and unpretending in his manner, and though at first seeming cold, getting easily interested in whatever is going forward.

  A very striking-looking man, with a face older than his age, but full of fire, and very intellectual. He asked me to pay him a visit in the country, and perhaps I shall, some day. Science is what I can least penetrate in the intellectual world, and I appreciate scientific greatness merely as a person who has no ear for music would appreciate the greatness of Handel, knowing it without understanding it. But it would still be interesting to me to see what a great philosopher is like.

  He is womanly in his nature, not a tyrant like Whewell. Sir John is a better listener than any man I have met in England. He joins in all the chit-chat, is one of the domestic circle, and tells funny little anecdotes.

  Personally, the character of Sir John Herschel was extremely lovable. A fast friend, without jealousy, or self-seeking, or littleness, he neither disparaged the work of his rivals, nor neglected the labors of his juniors. As Master of the Mint, a member of nearly every scientific society in the world, and the greatest savant of his later years, he possessed an enormous amount of influence, which he exercised to the advantage of the nation…. In brief, what Humboldt was in Germany, Herschel was for many years in England, only Herschel was rather the larger-minded of the two men. Every opportunity of life was open to both of them, and it is not saying anything to the disparagement of the great German to affirm that the great Englishman accepted the position in which he found himself, with equal wisdom, patience, moderation, and high purpose.

  His return to England after five years of absence was naturally an occasion for much rejoicing among the lovers of astronomy. He was entertained at a memorable banquet, and the Queen, at her coronation, made him a baronet. His famous aunt Caroline, at the time aged eighty, was still in the enjoyment of her faculties, and was able to estimate at its true value the further lustre which was added to the name she bore. But there is reason to believe that her satisfaction was not quite unmixed with other feelings. With whatever favour she might regard her nephew, he was still not the brother to whom her life had been devoted. So jealous was this vigorous old lady of the fame of the great brother William, that she could hardly hear with patience of the achievements of any other astronomer, and this failing existed in some degree even when that other astronomer happened to be her illustrious nephew.

General

  Mr. Herschel has contributed to “Lardner” a discourse on Natural Philosophy, the finest work of philosophical genius in our age, or perhaps (as I exclude the sciences) the finest since Bacon, who, though the greatest of philosophers, has properly no science. I firmly believe no other man in Europe could have written Herschel’s discourse.

  Without doing more than alluding to the delight with which this work—“Natural Philosophy”—has been several times perused by the writer of these pages, he can assure the reader that he has frequently heard the most eminent scientific men speak of it as a singularly beautiful, accurate, and masterly performance. Its author will be universally admitted to be consummately qualified for such an undertaking,—as far as the union of exact and profound science with elegant and varied accomplishments and refined taste can be considered as constituting such qualification. The style is severely chaste, and not obscured by technicalities.

  Sir John Herschel, in his admirable “Discourse on Natural Philosophy,” has added a greater number of illustrations from still more recent discoveries, and has also furnished such a luminous development of the difficulties of the “Novum Organum” as had been vainly hoped for in former times.

  Sir J. Herschel has done all that genius could do to rescue English hexameter verse from the reproach of Roger Ascham, that “it doth rather trot and hobble than run smoothly in our tongue.” It may well be kept in mind in this case [translation of “The Iliad”] that it was the same genius which successfully accosted so many of the most profound problems in physical science. I have already mentioned Sir J. Herschel as one of the very few whom I have known, blending high literary attainments and a strong poetic feeling with these sterner pursuits.

  On Thursday, May 11, 1871, the greatest astronomer of our day passed from amongst us. In so characterizing Sir John Herschel we are not forgetting that others in our time have surpassed him in their mastery of special departments of astronomical science. But, as an astronomer in the true sense of the term, Sir John Herschel stood before all his contemporaries. Nay, he stood almost alone. Others in our day have worked right skilfully and well in advancing astronomy. By abstruse mathematical calculations, by laborious or by most delicate observations, by profound physical researches, or by the ingenious employment of various physical processes, they have added so much to our knowledge that the astronomy of the last generation seems altogether meagre by comparison with that of our own time. But how few have there been who have had, like Herschel, a real insight into the grandeur of astronomical truths, how few who, like him, could so touch the dry bones of fact that they become clothed at once with life and beauty!… Where, then, was the secret of Herschel’s success—for successful he undoubtedly was—in attracting to the study of astronomy hundreds who but for him would have cared little for that science? There can be no question, we believe, that the answer must be sought in the considerations touched upon in the beginning of this paper. His soul was so thoroughly imbued with the sense of the sublimity of the lessons taught by the celestial depths, that his descriptions, despite all faults of style, are irresistibly impressive. Here by a word, there by a happy turn of expression, now by some strikingly poetical conception, anon by a grand array of noble thoughts, he forces his readers to share his own enthusiasm. There are some passages in his writings which for grandeur and sublimity are surpassed by nothing that has been written in the English language, save, perhaps, some few portions of the “Paradise Lost.”

  Profoundly versed in almost every branch of physics, Sir John Herschel occasionally sported with the Muses, but in the garb of the ancients—in hexameter and pentameter verses…. The abstruse studies and triumphs of Sir John Herschel—his work on the Differential Calculus, his Catalogues of Stars and Nebulæ, and his Treatises on Sound and Light are well known; but perhaps the most striking instance of his pure devotion to science was his expedition to the Cape of Good Hope, and his sojourn there for four years, solely at his own expense, with the view of examining under the most favourable circumstances the southern hemisphere. This completed a telescopic survey of the whole surface of the visible heavens, commenced by Sir William Herschel above seventy years ago, assisted by his sister Caroline and his brother Alexander, and continued by him almost down to the close of a very long life.

  It is not likely that the name of Sir John Herschel, a gifted member of a gifted family, would be forgotten by any one taking even the hastiest glance at the science of our time—a family of whom it may truly be said, as the German prose-poet says of his dreaming hero, that their eyes were among the stars and their souls in the blue ether.

  It is no small virtue to have furnished the basis for the thoughts of the whole intelligent world. This, Sir John Herschel has done in more than one direction. His “Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy” and his “Outlines of Astronomy” will always remain as classic expositions of our certain knowledge and as eloquent suggestions for future progress. The chemical principles on which photography rests are his discovery, and it was undoubtedly only his intense occupation in other directions that prevented his anticipating the invention of Daguerre by many years. His public usefulness was very great. As a member of the Royal Society, as one of the founders of the Royal Astronomical Society, as a member of nearly every scientific society in the world, his authority was to England what Humboldt’s authority was to Germany.

  Herschel was, however, not only a physicist and astronomer, he was also a man of letters, and possessed of none of the narrow intellectual prejudices of the specialist. His addresses to the Astronomical Society are models of elegant composition, and his “Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,” and “Outlines of Astronomy,” must always remain classics, even after the data in their pages become more or less obsolete. Much of his time was spent in the useful work of simplifying his store of information. In this he was even more successful than his contemporary, Brewster, and was the forerunner of the eminent men who in later years displayed a laudable activity in the same direction. His “Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects” and his “Collected Addresses” are models at once of profound knowledge and of simple exposition, while his treatises on “Meteorology,” “Physical Geography,” and the “Telescope,” are still among the best text-books.

  Herschel, without the soaring genius of his father, had a wider range and a more catholic mind. He was led to astronomy by filial piety, in opposition to a spontaneous preference for chemistry and optics. “Light,” he used to say, “was his first love.” Yet his position as a celestial explorer is unique. He was an unsurpassed observer, and his breadth of knowledge and power of vividly describing what he saw added incalculably to the value of his observations. His books hence take high rank among the elevating influences of this century. He … was in his element with children, loved gardening, and took interest in all technical arts. His unpublished correspondence on scientific subjects is of historic interest; his letters to intimate friends are full of genial and tender sentiments.