that is what I want, I will be no Hanoverian!)"[1] That these sentiments were simply an echo of her brother's, we can scarcely doubt. As far also as is now known, "the bargains" made were not reduced to writing. Everything seems to have been done by word of mouth. In fact, George iii. and his advisers dealt with Herschel, not as an Englishman but as a German. No English honours were bestowed on him, such as were bestowed on younger or less deserving men. Sir Humphry Davy received the honour of knighthood from the Prince Regent in 1812. He was forty years younger than Herschel. Dr. Smith, one of the founders of the Linnean Society, was knighted by the Prince two years afterwards, although he was not specially known as a man of science.[2] Two years later Herschel received a paltry honour, at least as Englishmen counted honours. There must have been reasons for this apparent neglect. But whatever they were, the truth remains that as far as can now be known, the rashness and anxiety of a woman of small capacity saved her son from the life of a musician in a Hanoverian regiment, not to his honour or hers certainly, and made a present of him to the cause of science with results of unspeakable honour to himself and the human race. The lad of nineteen who was induced by his mother to desert an army, led by an incompetent "lump of fat," as they then said, was no coward. He perilled life and limb too often in his work as an astronomer to be counted a poltroon as a soldier.
When George iii. thus resolved to endow research in the person of William Herschel by appointing him Royal Astronomer at a salary of £200 a year, coupled
