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Rh in his own case, he was justified by what the world knew of the lives of men of science on the Continent. He could say, as Galileo said before him, "My private lectures and domestic pupils are a great hindrance and interruption to my studies; I wish to be entirely exempt from the former, and in great measure from the latter." Herschel had the same wishes, but not the same success, for Galileo was relieved of all professional duty, except giving lectures on extraordinary occasions to sovereign princes and other strangers of distinction. He was honoured with pensions and rewards from a petty prince in Italy, far superior at first to what Herschel enjoyed from the bounty of the wealthiest monarch and the richest country in the world.

Galileo was only one example out of a multitude. Leibnitz, the contemporary and rival of Newton, was another. He was laden with honours and rewards showered on him from one end of Europe to the other. He left "a fortune of sixty thousand crowns, which were found, after his death, accumulated in sacks in various kinds of specie." Descartes, Euler, the two Bernoullis, Huyghens, and many more are proofs of the encouragement given to science by kings and princes. But the example of Fraunhofer, the contemporary of Herschel, of Dollond, of Wollaston, first a common worker, then a great inventor and discoverer, shows best what George. might have done for Herschel, and what Herschel was justly entitled to expect from a prince who was twofold his sovereign, as Elector of Hanover and King of Great Britain. Of Fraunhofer it is said "his own sovereign, Maximilian Joseph, was his earliest and his latest patron; and by