only two men on the terrace or in the Castle concert-room that evening, the King and Dr. Burney; and the important subject talked of was Dr. Burney's poem.
Herschel's friendship with Dr. Wilson,[1] the Professor of Astronomy in Glasgow University, was probably the reason of repeated visits paid by him to Scotland. Of the first of these visits no notice is taken by his sister, a somewhat singular omission. It was paid in the summer of 1792. The second known visit was made eighteen years after, is briefly referred to by his sister, and is confounded by his biographers with that of 1792. It took place in 1810. A third visit, obscurely hinted at by his sister, took place the following year. In a paper read to the Royal Society in 1812, he mentions an observation of the comet of 1811 made by him at Glasgow, and records another which he made at Alnwick on his way south, some weeks later. That Glasgow may have been to Herschel a place of summer pilgrimage more frequently than on these three visits seems not improbable. His friendship with the Wilsons and their families, like that with Dr. Watson, was close and long continued, the friendship of worthy men, holding each other in the highest esteem. As he visited Dr. Watson at Bath and Dawlish, so he appears to have visited the Wilsons at Glasgow. At any rate we know that he "was generally from home" in summer.
When Herschel was in Scotland in the summer of 1792, he was accompanied by a Russian friend. General Komarzewsky. So intimate were the two
- ↑ Alexander Wilson was Professor of Astronomy from 1760 to 1784; his son Patrick from 1784 to 1799.
