this was right, or whether the same rule should hold among the stars as has been allowed to hold on earth, where an adventurer gives his name to a New World, and the real discoverer has to rest content with naming a province of it, perhaps a province of little worth.
In writing this letter to the President of the Royal Society, William Herschel could plead more grounds for justification than we might be disposed, at first sight, to allow. That he was recognised by the King as a discoverer and a leader of thought was a great honour, recommending him at once to the nation and to the whole world. That he was paid a salary out of the King's or the nation's purse, and was placed by the King near the palace and brought into close relations with the Royal Family is also manifest. We are bound to give due weight to these considerations in the mind of an upright and honourable man, who deeply respected his sovereign, and knew best the amount of his own indebtedness. But history tells more than one story, that goes far to justify Herschel's name for the newly discovered star. It was not an uncommon thing to exalt an earthly prince to a throne in earthly skies. Probably we shall all admit that this was a mistake, perhaps a degradation of true science, which knows no distinction between king and beggar, and whose boundaries have been extended, to quote the words of Galileo, a hundred thousand fold by those whom popes and princes despised. But the fact is beyond dispute. The hair of Berenice, the Queen of Egypt and the murderess of the lover by whom she was slighted, was carried off from the temple of Venus, to whom it was vowed, and placed by Conon as a constellation among the stars. Sobieski,
