oratorios even at Bristol, was a favourite at Court, and was famous throughout Europe. Truly it may be said to Herschel what the passing traveller said to Archytas,
"Nec quidquam tibi prodest
Aërias tentasse domos animoque rotundum
Percurrisae polum morituro."
Still, there can be no doubt that his discoveries became the talk of London and the world. Perhaps, also, many a British patriot, in indignant condemnation of the folly and tyranny which alienated the United States of America from the parent stock, was echoing the words of Horace Walpole, "Mr. Herschel will content me if he can discover thirteen provinces," among his twenty millions of worlds, "well inhabited by men and women, and protected by the law of nations, and can annex them to the crown of Great Britain, in lieu of those it has lost beyond the Atlantic." [1]
- ↑ Letters, vi. 258. On Herschel's life in England, and especially in Bath, see Appendix.
