In 1775 he commenced his review of the heavens, but finding his telescope inadequate he began the work of telescope-making afresh. Meanwhile he had much to distract him from astronomy. In 1776 he became director of the Public Concerts at Bath. Yet his enthusiasm was unbounded: he would run to his house between the acts at the theatre to observe the heavens. In 1779, when observing the Moon from the street in front of his house, a gentleman asked permission to see the celestial wonders, a request which Herschel granted. The gentleman, Dr Watson of Bath, introduced Herschel to the Literary Society, and we find him in 1780 contributing two papers to the Royal Society on Mira Ceti and the Moon. In the same year he commenced his second review of the heavens, and during its progress he made his first great discovery. On March 13, 1781, while surveying the constellation Gemini, he discovered a faint object distinguished by a disc, which he concluded to be a tailless comet, but which was soon shown to be a new planet beyond the orbit of Saturn. This was the first planetary discovery made within the memory of man. King George III. summoned Herschel to London, and gave him a pension of £200 a-year, with the title of King’s Astronomer, pardoning him also for his desertion from the army more than twenty years previously. Herschel then named the new planet the “Georgium Sidus,” a title now abandoned and replaced by Uranus. William and Caroline Herschel now moved to Datchet, near Windsor, in 1785 to Clay Hall, and finally, in 1786, to Slough,—“the spot of all the world,” said Arago, “where the greatest number of discoveries have been made.” Here Herschel and his sister worked for nearly forty years. He communicated to the Royal Society paper after paper on astronomy in all its aspects. He also continued the work of telescope-making, and constructed, in 1789, his 40-foot reflector, the wonder of the age. In 1787 his sister was appointed his assistant, and together the Herschels worked from dusk to dawn. Caroline Herschel herself detected eight comets and numerous nebulæ. She relates in her memoirs that on one occasion, while she was acting as assistant, the ink froze in her pen. But such inconveniences mattered not to the Herschels. As Miss Clerke has well remarked, “Every serene dark night was to him a precious opportunity, availed of to the last minute. The thermometer might descend below zero, ink might freeze, mirrors might crack; but, provided the stars shone, he and his sister worked on from dusk to dawn.... On one occasion he is said to have worked without intermission at the telescope and the desk for seventy-two hours.”