Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

During the next five or six years he became the leading musical authority, and the director of all the chief public musical entertainments at Bath. His circumstances having thus become easier, he revisited Hanover for the purpose of bringing back with him his sister Caroline, whose services he much needed in his multifarious undertakings. She arrived in Bath in August 1772, being at that time in her twenty-third year. She thus describes her brother's life soon after her arrival: "He used to retire to bed with a bason of milk or a glass of water, with Smith's _Harmonics_ and Ferguson's _Astronomy_, &c., and so went to sleep buried under his favourite authors; and his first thoughts on waking were how to obtain instruments for viewing those objects himself of which he had been reading." It is not without significance that we find him thus reading Smith's _Harmonics_; to that study loyalty to his profession would impel him; as a reward for his thoroughness this led him to Smith's _Optics_; and this, by a natural sequence, again led him to astronomy, for the purposes of which the chief optical instruments were devised. It was in this way that he was introduced to the writings of Ferguson and Keill, and subsequently to those of Lalande, whereby he educated himself to become an astronomer of undying fame. In those days telescopes were very rare, very expensive and not very efficient, for the Dollonds had not as yet perfected even their beautiful little achromatics of 2(3/4) in. aperture. So Herschel was obliged to content himself with hiring a small Gregorian reflector of about 2 in. aperture, which he had seen exposed for loan in a tradesman's shop. Not satisfied with this implement, he procured a small lens of about 18 ft. focal length, and set his sister to work on a pasteboard tube to match it, so as to make him a telescope. This unsatisfactory material was soon replaced by tin, and thus a sorry sort of vision was obtained of Jupiter, Saturn and the moon. He then sought in London for a reflector of much larger dimensions; but no such instrument was on sale; and the terms demanded for the construction of a reflecting telescope of 5 or 6 ft. focal length he regarded as too exorbitant even for the gratification of such desires as his own. So he was driven to the only alternative that remained; he must himself build a large telescope. His first step in this direction was to purchase the debris of an amateur's implements for grinding and polishing small mirrors; and thus, by slow degrees, and by indomitable perseverance, he in 1774 had, as he says, the satisfaction of viewing the heavens with a Newtonian telescope of 6 ft. focal length made by his own hands. But he was not contented to be a mere star-gazer; on the contrary, he had from the very first conceived the gigantic project of surveying the entire heavens, and, if possible, of ascertaining the plan of their general structure by a settled mode of procedure, if only he could provide himself with adequate instrumental means. For this purpose he, his brother and his sister toiled for many years at the grinding and polishing of hundreds of specula, always retaining the best and recasting the others, until the most perfect of the earlier products had been surpassed. This was the work of the daylight in those seasons of the year when the fashionable visitors of Bath had quitted the place, and had thus freed the family from professional duties. After 1774 every available hour of the night was devoted to the long-hoped-for scrutiny of the skies. In those days no machinery had been invented for the construction of telescopic mirrors; the man who had the hardihood to undertake polishing them doomed himself to walk leisurely and uniformly round an upright post for many hours, without removing his hands from the mirror, until his work was done. On these occasions Herschel received his food from the hands of his faithful sister. But his reward was nigh.

In May 1780 his first two papers containing some results of his observations on the variable star "Mira" and the mountains of the moon were communicated to the Royal Society through the influential introduction of Dr William Watson. Herschel had made his acquaintance in a characteristic manner. In order to obtain a sight of the moon the astronomer had taken his telescope into the street opposite his house; the celebrated physician happening to pass at the time, and seeing his eye removed for a moment from the instrument, requested permission to take his place. The mutual courtesies and intelligent conversation which ensued soon ripened this casual acquaintance into a solid and enduring regard.

The phenomena of variable stars were examined by Herschel as a guide to what might be occurring in our own sun. The sun, he knew, rotated on its axis, and he knew that dark spots often exist on its photosphere; the questions that he put to himself were--Are there dark spots also on variable stars? Do the stars also rotate on their axes? or are they sometimes partially eclipsed by the intervention of opaque bodies? And he went on to enquire, What are these singular spots upon the sun? and have they any practical relation to the inhabitants of this planet? To these questions he applied his telescopes and his thoughts; and he communicated the results to the Royal Society in no less than six memoirs, occupying very many pages in the _Philosophical Transactions_, and extending in date from 1780 to 1801. It was in the latter year that these remarkable papers culminated in the inquiry whether any relation could be traced in the recurrence of sun-spots, regarded as evidences of solar activity, and the varying seasons of our planet, as exhibited by the varying price of corn. Herschel's reply was inconclusive; nor has a final solution of the related problems yet been obtained.

In 1781 he communicated to the Royal Society the first of a series of papers on the rotation of the planets and of their several satellites. The object which he had in view was not so much to ascertain the times of their rotation as to discover whether those rotations are strictly uniform. From the result he expected to gather, by analogy, the probability of an alteration in the length of our own day. These inquiries occupy the greater part of seven memoirs extending from 1781 to 1797. While engaged on them he noticed the curious appearance of a white spot near to each of the poles of the planet Mars. On investigating the inclination of its axis to the plane of its orbit, and finding that it differed little from that of the earth, he concluded that its changes of climate also would resemble our own, and that these white patches were probably polar snow. Modern researches have confirmed his conclusion. He also discovered that, as far as his observations extended, the times of the rotations of the various satellites round their axes conform to the analogy of our moon by equalling the times of their revolution round their primaries. Here again we perceive that his discoveries arose out of the systematic and comprehensive nature of his investigation. Nothing with such a man is accidental.

In the same year (1781) Herschel made a discovery which completely altered the character of his professional life. In the course of a methodical review of the heavens he lighted on an object which at first he supposed to be a comet, but which, by its subsequent motions and appearance, averred itself to be a new planet, moving outside the orbit of Saturn. The name of Georgium Sidus was by him assigned to it, but has by general consent been laid aside in favour of Uranus. The object was detected with a 7-ft. reflector having an aperture of 6(1/2) in.; subsequently, when he had provided himself with a much more powerful telescope, of 20 ft. focal length, he discovered, as he believed, no less than six Uranian satellites. Modern observations, while abolishing four of these supposed attendants, have added two others apparently not observed by Herschel. Seven memoirs on the subject were communicated by him to the Royal Society, extending from the date of the discovery in 1781 to 1815. A noteworthy peculiarity in Herschel's mode of observation led to the discovery of this planet. He had observed that the spurious diameters of stars are not much affected by increasing the magnifying powers, but that the case is different with other celestial objects; hence if anything in his telescopic field struck him as unusual in aspect, he immediately varied the magnifying power in order to decide its nature. Thus Uranus was discovered; and had a similar method been applied to Neptune, that planet would have been found at Cambridge some months before it was recognized at Berlin.

We now come to the beginning of Herschel's most important series of observations, culminating in what ought probably to be regarded as his capital discovery. A material part of the task which he had set himself embraced the determination of the relative distances of the stars from our sun and from each other. Now, in the course of his scrutiny of the heavens, he had observed many stars in apparently very close contiguity, but often differing greatly in relative brightness. He concluded that, on the average, the brighter star would be the nearer to us, the smaller enormously more distant; and considering that an astronomer on the earth, in consequence of its immense orbital displacement of some 180 millions of miles every six months, would see such a pair of stars under different perspective aspects, he perceived that the measurement of these changes should lead to an approximate determination of the stars' relative distances. He therefore mapped down the places and aspects of all the double stars that he met with, and communicated in 1782 and 1785 very extensive catalogues of the results. Indeed, his very last scientific memoir, sent to the Royal Astronomical Society in the year 1822, when he was its first president and already in the eighty-fourth year of his age, related to these investigations. In the memoir of 1782 he threw out the hint that these apparently contiguous stars might be genuine pairs in mutual revolution; but he significantly added that the time had not yet arrived for settling the question. Eleven years afterwards (1793), he remeasured the relative positions of many such couples, and we may conceive what his feelings must have been at finding his prediction verified. For he ascertained that some of these stars circulated round each other, after the manner required by the laws of gravitation, and thus demonstrated the action among the distant members of the starry firmament of the same mechanical laws which bind together the harmonious motions of our solar system. This sublime discovery, announced in 1802, would of itself suffice to immortalize his memory. If only he had lived long enough to learn the approximate distances of some of these binary combinations, he would at once have been able to calculate their masses relative to that of our own sun; and the quantities being, as we now know, strictly comparable, he would have found another of his analogical conjectures realized.

In the year 1782 Herschel was invited to Windsor by George III., and accepted the king's offer to become his private astronomer, and henceforth devote himself wholly to a scientific career. His salary was fixed at L200 per annum, to which an addition of L50 per annum was subsequently made for the astronomical assistance of his sister. Dr Watson, to whom alone the amount was mentioned, made the natural remark, "Never before was honour purchased by a monarch at so cheap a rate." In this way the great astronomer removed from Bath, first to Datchet and soon afterwards permanently to Slough, within easy access of his royal patron at Windsor.

The old pursuits at Bath were soon resumed at Slough, but with renewed vigour and without the former professional interruptions. The greater part, in fact, of the papers already referred to are dated from Datchet and Slough; for the magnificent astronomical speculations in which he was engaged, though for the most part conceived in the earlier portion of his philosophical career, required years of patient observation before they could be fully examined and realized.

It was at Slough in 1783 that he wrote his first memorable paper on the "Motion of the Solar System in Space,"--a sublime speculation, yet through his genius realized by considerations of the utmost simplicity. He returned to the same subject with fuller details in 1805. It was also after his removal to Slough that he published his first memoir on the construction of the heavens, which from the first had been the inspiring idea of his varied toils. In a long series of remarkable papers, addressed as usual to the Royal Society, and extending from the year 1784 to 1818, when he was eighty years of age, he demonstrated the fact that our sun is a star situated not far from the bifurcation of the Milky Way, and that all the stars visible to us lie more or less in clusters scattered throughout a comparatively thin, but immensely extended stratum. At one time he imagined that his powerful instruments had pierced through this stellar stratum, and that he had approximately determined the form of some of its boundaries. In the last of his memoirs, having convinced himself of his error, he admitted that to his telescopes the Milky Way was "fathomless." On either side of this assemblage of stars, presumably in ceaseless motion round their common centre of gravity, Herschel discovered a canopy of discrete nebulous masses, such as those from the condensation of which he supposed the whole stellar universe to have been formed,--a magnificent conception, pursued with a force of genius and put to the practical test of observation with an industry almost incredible.

Hitherto we have said nothing about the great reflecting telescope, of 40 ft. focal length and 4 ft. aperture, the construction of which is often, though mistakenly, regarded as his chief performance. The full description of this celebrated instrument will be found in the 85th volume of the _Transactions_ of the Royal Society. On the day that it was finished (August 28, 1789) Herschel saw at the first view, in a grandeur not witnessed before, the Saturnian system with six satellites, five of which had been discovered long before by C. Huygens and G. D. Cassini, while the sixth, subsequently named Enceladus, he had, two years before, sighted by glimpses in his exquisite little telescope of 6(1/2) in. aperture, but now saw in unmistakable brightness with the towering giant he had just completed. On the 17th of September he discovered a seventh, which proved to be the nearest to the globe of Saturn. It has since received the name of Mimas. It is somewhat remarkable that, notwithstanding his long and repeated scrutinies of this planet, the eighth satellite, Hyperion, and the crape ring should have escaped him.

Herschel married, on the 8th of May 1788, the widow of Mr John Pitt, a wealthy London merchant, by whom he had an only son, John Frederick William. The prince regent conferred a Hanoverian knighthood upon him in 1816. But a far more valued and less tardy distinction was the Copley medal assigned to him by his associates in the Royal Society in 1781.

He died at Slough on the 25th of August 1822, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and was buried under the tower of St Laurence's Church, Upton, within a few hundred yards of the old site of the 40-ft. telescope. A mural tablet on the wall of the church bears a Latin inscription from the pen of the late Dr Goodall, provost of Eton College.

See Mrs John Herschel, _Memoir of Caroline Herschel_ (1876); E. S.
Holden, _Herschel, his Life and Works_ (1881); A. M. Clerke, _The
Herschels and Modern Astronomy_ (1895); E. S. Holden and C. S.
Hastings, _Synopsis of the Scientific Writings of Sir William
Herschel_ (Washington, 1881); Baron Laurier, _Eloge historique_, Paris
Memoirs (1823), p. lxi.; F. Arago, _Analyse historique, Annuaire du
Bureau des Longitudes_ (1842), p. 249; Arago, _Biographies of
Scientific Men_, p. 167; Madame d'Arblay's _Diary, passim; Public
Characters_ (1798-1799), p. 384 (with portrait); J. Sime, _William
Herschel and his Work_ (1900). Herschel's photometric Star Catalogues
were discussed and reduced by E. C. Pickering in _Harvard Annals_,
vols. xiv. p. 345, xxiii. p. 185, and xxiv. (C. P.; A. M. C.)

HERSCHEL, SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM, BART. (1792-1871), English astronomer, the only son of Sir William Herschel, was born at Slough, Bucks, on the 7th of March 1792. His scholastic education commenced at Eton, but maternal fears or prejudices soon removed him to the house of a private tutor. Thence, at the early age of seventeen, he was sent to St John's College, Cambridge, and the form and method of the mathematical instruction he there received exercised a material influence on the whole complexion of his scientific career. In due time the young student won the highest academical distinction of his year, graduating as senior wrangler in 1813. It was during his undergraduateship that he and two of his fellow-students who subsequently attained to very high eminence, Dean Peacock and Charles Babbage, entered into a compact that they would "do their best to leave the world wiser than they found it,"--a compact loyally and successfully carried out by all three to the end. As a commencement of this laudable attempt we find Herschel associated with these two friends in the production of a work on the differential calculus, and on cognate branches of mathematical science, which changed the style and aspect of mathematical learning in England, and brought it up to the level of the Continental methods. Two or three memoirs communicated to the Royal Society on new applications of mathematical analysis at once placed him in the front rank of the cultivators of this branch of knowledge. Of these his father had the gratification of introducing the first, but the others were presented in his own right as a fellow.

With the intention of being called to the bar, he entered his name at Lincoln's Inn on the 24th of January 1814, and placed himself under the guidance of an eminent special pleader. Probably this temporary choice of a profession was inspired by the extraordinary success in legal pursuits which had attended the efforts of some noted Cambridge mathematicians. Be that as it may, an early acquaintance with Dr Wollaston in London soon changed the direction of his studies. He experimented in physical optics; took up astronomy in 1816; and in 1820, assisted by his father, he completed for a reflecting telescope a mirror of 18 in. diameter and 20 ft. focal length. This, subsequently improved by his own hands, became the instrument which enabled him to effect the astronomical observations forming the chief basis of his fame. In 1821-1823 we find him associated with Sir James South in the re-examination of his father's double stars, by the aid of two excellent refractors, of 7 and 5 ft. focal length respectively. For this work he was presented in 1826 with the Astronomical Society's gold medal; and with the Lalande medal of the French Institute in 1825; while the Royal Society had in 1821 bestowed upon him the Copley medal for his mathematical contributions to their _Transactions_. From 1824 to 1827 he held the responsible post of secretary to that society; and was in 1827 elected to the chair of the Astronomical Society, which office he also filled on two subsequent occasions. In the discharge of his duties to the last-named society he delivered presidential addresses and wrote obituary notices of deceased fellows, memorable for their combination of eloquence and wisdom. In 1831 the honour of knighthood was conferred on him by William IV., and two years later he again received the recognition of the Royal Society by the award of one of their medals for his memoir "On the Investigation of the Orbits of Revolving Double Stars." The award significantly commemorated his completion of his father's discovery of gravitational stellar systems by the invention of a graphical method whereby the eye could as it were see the two component stars of the binary system revolving under the prescription of the Newtonian law.

Before the end of the year 1833, being then about forty years of age, Sir John Herschel had re-examined all his father's double stars and nebulae, and had added many similar bodies to his own lists; thus accomplishing, under the conditions then prevailing, the full work of a lifetime. For it should be remembered that astronomers were not as yet provided with those valuable automatic contrivances which at present materially abridge the labour and increase the accuracy of their determinations. Equatorially mounted instruments actuated by clockwork, electrical chronographs for recording the times of the phenomena observed, were not available to Sir John Herschel; and he had no assistant.

His scientific life now entered upon another and very characteristic phase. The bias of his mind, as he subsequently was wont to declare, was towards chemistry and the phenomena of light, rather than towards astronomy. Indeed, very shortly after taking his degree at Cambridge, he proposed himself as a candidate for the vacant chair of chemistry in that university; but, as he said with some humour, the result of the election was to leave him in a glorious minority of one. In fact Herschel had become an astronomer from a sense of duty, and it was by filial loyalty to his father's memory that he was now impelled to undertake the completion of the work nobly begun at Slough. William Herschel had searched the northern heavens; John Herschel determined to explore the southern, besides re-exploring northern skies. "I resolved," he said, "to attempt the completion of a survey of the whole surface of the heavens; and for this purpose to transport into the other hemisphere the same instrument which had been employed in this, so as to give a unity to the results of both portions of the survey, and to render them comparable with each other." In accordance with this resolution, he and his family embarked for the Cape on the 13th November 1833; they arrived in Table Bay on the 15th January 1834; and proceedings, he says, "were pushed forward with such effect that on the 22nd of February I was enabled to gratify my curiosity by a view of [kappa] Crucis, the nebula about [eta] Argus, and some other remarkable objects in the 20-ft. reflector, and on the night of the 4th of March to commence a regular course of sweeping."

To give an adequate description of the vast mass of labour completed
during the next four busy years of his life at Feldhausen would
require the transcription of a considerable portion of the _Cape
Observations_, a volume of unsurpassed interest and importance;
although it might perhaps be equalled by a judicious selection from
Sir William's "Memoirs," now scattered through some thirty volumes of
the _Philosophical Transactions_. It was published, at the sole
expense of the late duke of Northumberland, but not till 1847, nine
years after the author's return to England, for the cogent reason,
that as he said, "The whole of the observations, as well as the entire
work of reducing, arranging and preparing them for the press, have
been executed by myself." There are 164 pages of catalogues of
southern nebulae and clusters of stars. There are then careful and
elaborate drawings of the great nebula in Orion, and of the region
surrounding the remarkable star in Argo. The labour and the thought
bestowed upon some of these objects are almost incredible; several
months were spent upon a minute spot in the heavens containing 1216
stars, but which an ordinary spangle, held at a distance of an arm's
length, would eclipse. These catalogues and charts being completed, he
proceeded to discuss their significance. He confirmed his father's
hypothesis that these wonderful masses of glowing vapours are not
irregularly scattered over the visible heavens, but are collected in a
sort of canopy, whose vertex is at the pole of that vast stratum of
stars in which our solar system finds itself buried, as Herschel
supposed, at a depth not greater than that of the average distance
from us of an eleventh magnitude star. Then follows his catalogue of
the relative positions and magnitudes of the southern double stars, to
one of which, [gamma] Virginis, he applied the beautiful method of
orbital determination invented by himself, and he had the satisfaction
of witnessing the fulfilment of his prediction that the components
would, in the course of their revolution, appear to close up into a
single star, inseparable by any telescopic power. In the next chapter
he proceeded to describe his observations on the varying and relative
brightness of the stars. It has been already detailed how his father
began his scientific career by similar observations on stellar
light-fluctuations, and how his remarks culminated years afterwards in
the question whether the radiative changes of our sun, due to the
presence or absence of sun-spots, affected our harvests and the price
of corn. Sir John carried speculation still farther, pointing out that
variations to the extent of half a magnitude in the sun's brightness
would account for those strange alternations of semi-arctic and
semi-tropical climates which geological researches show to have
occurred in various regions of our globe.

Herschel returned to his English home in the spring of 1838. As was natural and right, he was welcomed with an enthusiastic greeting. By the queen at her coronation he was created a baronet; and, what to him was better than all such rewards, other men caught the contagion of his example, and laboured in fields similar to his own, with an adequate portion of his success.

Herschel was a highly accomplished chemist. His discovery in 1819 of the solvent power of hyposulphite of soda on the otherwise insoluble salts of silver was the prelude to its use as a fixing agent in photography; and he invented in 1839, independently of Fox Talbot, the process of photography on sensitized paper. He was the first person to apply the now well-known terms _positive_ and _negative_ to photographic images, and to imprint them upon glass prepared by the deposit of a sensitive film. He also paved the way for Sir George Stokes's discovery of fluorescence, by his addition of the lavender rays to the spectrum, and by his announcement in 1845 of "epipolic dispersion," as exhibited by sulphate of quinine. Several other important researches connected with the undulatory theory of light are embodied in his treatise on "Light" published in the _Encyclopaedia metropolitana_.

Perhaps no man can become a truly great mathematician or philosopher if devoid of imaginative power. John Herschel possessed this endowment to a large extent; and he solaced his declining years with the translation of the _Iliad_ into verse, having earlier executed a similar version of Schiller's _Walk_. But the main work of his later life was the collection of all his father's catalogues of nebulae and double stars combined with his own observations and those of other astronomers each into a single volume. He lived to complete the former, to present it to the Royal Society, and to see it published in a separate form in the _Philosophical Transactions_, vol. cliv. The latter work he left unfinished, bequeathing it, in its imperfect form, to the Astronomical Society. That society printed a portion of it, which serves as an index to the observations of various astronomers on double stars up to the year 1866.

A complete list of his contributions to learned societies will be found in the Royal Society's great catalogue, and from them may be gathered most of the records of his busy scientific life. Sir John Herschel met with an amount of public recognition which was unusual in the time of his illustrious father. Naturally he was a member of almost every important learned society in both hemispheres. For five years he held the same office of master of the mint, which more than a century before had belonged to Sir Isaac Newton; his friends also offered to propose him as president of the Royal Society and again as member of parliament for the university of Cambridge, but neither position was desired by him.

In private life Sir John Herschel was a firm and most active friend; he had no jealousies; he avoided all scientific feuds; he gladly lent a helping hand to those who consulted him in scientific difficulties; he never discouraged, and still less disparaged, men younger than or inferior to himself; he was pleased by appreciation of his work without being solicitous for applause; it was said of him by a discriminating critic, and without extravagance, that "his was a life full of serenity of the sage and the docile innocence of a child."

He died at Collingwood, his residence near Hawkhurst in Kent, on the 11th of May 1871, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, and his remains are interred in Westminster Abbey close to the grave of Sir Isaac Newton.

Besides the laborious _Cape Observations_, Sir John Herschel was the
author of several books, one of which at least, _On the Study of
Natural Philosophy_ (1830), possesses an interest which no future
advances of the subjects on which he wrote can obliterate. In 1849
came the _Outlines of Astronomy_, a volume still replete with charm
and instruction. His articles, "Meteorology," "Physical Geography,"
and "Telescope," contributed to the 8th edition of the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, were afterwards published separately. When he was at the
Cape he was more than once assisted in the attempts there made to
diffuse a love of knowledge among men not engaged in literary
pursuits; and with the same purpose he, on his return to England,
published, in _Good Words_ and elsewhere, a series of papers on
interesting points of natural philosophy, subsequently collected in a
volume called _Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects_. Another less
widely known volume is his _Collected Addresses_, in which he is seen
in his happiest and most instructive mood.

See also Mrs John Herschel, "Memoir of Caroline Herschel," _Month.
Notices Roy. Astr. Society_, xxxii. 122 (C. Pritchard); _Proceedings
Roy. Society_, xx. p. xvii. (T. Romney Robinson); _Proceedings Roy.
Society of Edinburgh_ vii. 543 (P. G. Tait); _Nature_ iv. 69; E.
Dunkin, _Obituary Notices_, p. 47; _Report Brit. Association_ (1871),
p. lxxxv. (Lord Kelvin); _The Times_. (May 13, 1871); R. Grant,
_History of Phys. Astronomy_; A. M. Clerke, _Popular Hist. of
Astronomy_; A. M. Clerke, _The Herschels and Modern Astronomy_; J. H.
Madler, _Geschichte der Himmelskunde_, Bd. ii.; _Memoires de la
Societe Physique de Geneve_, xxi. 586 (E. Gautier). Reductions, based
on standard magnitudes of 919 southern stars, observed by Herschel in
sequences of relative brightness, were published by W. Doberck in the
_Astrophysical Journal_, xi. 192, 270, and in _Harvard Annals_, vol.
xli., No. viii. (C. P.; A. M. C.)

HERSCHELL, FARRER HERSCHELL, 1ST BARON (1837-1899), lord chancellor of England, was born on the 2nd of November 1837. His father was the Rev. Ridley Haim Herschell, a native of Strzelno, in Prussian Poland, who, when a young man, exchanged the Jewish faith for Christianity, took a leading part in founding the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews, and, after many journeyings, settled down to the charge of a Nonconformist chapel near the Edgware Road, in London, where he ministered to a large congregation. His mother was a daughter of William Mowbray, a merchant of Leith. He was educated at a private school and at University College, London. In 1857 he took his B.A. degree at the University of London. He was reckoned the best speaker in the school debating society, and he displayed there the same command of language and lucidity of thought which were his characteristics during his official life. The reputation which Herschell enjoyed during his school days was maintained after he became a law-student at Lincoln's Inn. In 1858 he entered the chambers of Thomas Chitty, the famous common law pleader, father of the late Lord Justice Chitty. His fellow pupils, amongst whom were A. L. Smith, afterwards master of the rolls, and Arthur Charles, afterwards judge of the queen's bench division, gave him the sobriquet of "the chief baron" in recognition of his superiority. He subsequently read with James Hannen, afterwards Lord Hannen. In 1860 he was called to the bar and joined the northern circuit, then in its palmy days of undividedness. For four or five years he did not obtain much work. Fortunately, he was never a poor man, and so was not forced into journalism, or other paths of literature, in order to earn a living. Two of his contemporaries, each of whom achieved great eminence, found themselves in like case. One of these, Charles Russell, became lord chief justice of England; the other, William Court Gully, speaker of the House of Commons. It is said that these three friends, dining together during a Liverpool assize some years after they had been called, agreed that their prospects were anything but cheerful. Certain it is that about this time Herschell meditated quitting England for Shanghai and practising in the consular courts there. Herschell, however, soon made himself useful to Edward James, the then leader of the northern circuit, and to John Richard Quain, the leading stuff-gownsman. For the latter he was content to note briefs and draft opinions, and when, in 1866, Quain donned "silk," it was on Herschell that a large portion of his mantle descended.

In 1872 Herschell was made a queen's counsel. He had all the necessary qualifications for a leader--a clear, though not resonant voice; a calm, logical mind; a sound knowledge of legal principles; and (greatest gift of all) an abundance of common sense. He never wearied the judges by arguing at undue length, and he knew how to retire with dignity from a hopeless cause. His only weak point was cross-examination. In handling a hostile witness he had neither the insidious persuasiveness of a Hawkins nor the compelling, dominating power of a Russell. But he made up for all by his speech to the jury, marshalling such facts as told in his client's favour with the most consummate skill. He very seldom made use of notes, but trusted to his memory, which he had carefully trained. By this means he was able to conceal his art, and to appear less as a paid advocate than as an outsider interested in the case anxious to assist the jury in arriving at the truth. By 1874 Herschell's business had become so good that he turned his thoughts to parliament. In February of that year there was a general election, with the result that the Conservative party came into power with a majority of fifty. The usual crop of petitions followed. The two Radicals (Thompson and Henderson) who had been returned for Durham city were unseated, and an attack was then made on the seats of two other Radicals (Bell and Palmer) who had been returned for Durham county. For one of these last Herschell was briefed. He made so excellent an impression on the local Radical leaders that they asked him to stand for Durham city; and after a fortnight's electioneering, he was elected as junior member. Between 1874 and 1880 Herschell was most assiduous in his attendance in the House of Commons. He was not a frequent speaker, but a few great efforts sufficed in his case to gain for him a reputation as a debater. The best examples of his style as a private member will be found in _Hansard_ under the dates 18th February 1876, 23rd May 1878, 6th May 1879. On the last occasion he carried a resolution in favour of abolishing actions for breach of promise of marriage except when actual pecuniary loss had ensued, the damages in such cases to be measured by the amount of such loss. The grace of manner and solid reasoning with which he acquitted himself during these displays obtained for him the notice of Gladstone, who in 1880 appointed Herschell solicitor-general.

Herschell's public services from 1880 to 1885 were of great value, particularly in dealing with the "cases for opinion" submitted by the Foreign Office and other departments. He was also very helpful in speeding government measures through the House, notably the Irish Land