Page:Sir William Herschel, his life and works (1881).djvu/92

70 "Scarcely had the star disappeared before Mrs. thought she saw it again, and exclaimed that the star had gone in front of, and not behind the moon. This provoked a short astronomical lecture on the question, but still she would not credit it, because she saw differently. Finally  stepped to the telescope, and in fact he saw a bright point on the dark disc of the moon, which he followed attentively. It gradually became fainter and finally vanished." ... The life at Datchet was not free from its annoyances.

"Much of my brother's time was taken up in going, when the evenings were clear, to the queen's lodge, to show the king, etc., objects through the seven-foot. But when the days began to shorten, this was found impossible, for the telescope was often (at no small expense and risk of damage) obliged to be transported in the dark back to Datchet, for the purpose of spending the rest of the night with observations on double stars for a second catalogue. My brother was, besides, obliged to be absent for a week or ten days, for the purpose of bringing home the metal of the cracked thirty-foot mirror, and the remaining materials from his work-room. Before the furnace was taken down at Bath, a second twenty-foot mirror, twelve inches diameter, was cast, which happened to be very fortunate, for on the 1st of January, 1783, a very fine one cracked by frost in the tube.