The writings of Herschel may be said to be contained in that wonderful repository of science and observation, The Transactions of the Royal Society. He contributed sometimes one, sometimes two or three or four papers in a year between 1780 and 1818, except in the years 1813 and 1816. Few scientific writers were so active with their pen. Everard Home, in a different sphere of research, surpassed him in the number of his contributions; but two thousand quarto passes—to say nothing of valuable and instructive diagrams—filled with wonderful discoveries, rare or useful observations, noble theories, and lofty imaginings formed a life-work of unusual merit. They were written in a language that became familiar to him in a foreign country only after he passed his twentieth year. Titles and text are not unfrequently somewhat prolix, but what was a peculiarity of the age cannot be attributed as a fault to Herschel. His sister, to whom the world is indebted for the form in which not a few of these papers appeared, carefully preserved seventy-two of her brother's in five volumes, which she transferred to his son's keeping in 1830. Only sixty-nine papers were laid before the Royal Society and one before the Royal Astronomical. What the other contents of her bundle were she has not informed us.
In the writings of Herschel and his sister there is a singular silence on the affairs of another world than this material universe, in whose vast surroundings we spend our brief earthly life. However, it is not an unbroken silence. His sister repeatedly refers to a future state, and to a home she longed for, a meeting-place with those she loved and worked with on earth. She left England less than two months after her
