The discovery of Uranus was a mere incident of the scheme he had marked out for himself--a fruit, gathered as it were by the way. It formed, nevertheless, the turning-point in his career. From a star-gazing musician he was at once transformed into an eminent astronomer; he was relieved from the drudgery of a toilsome profession, and installed as Royal Astronomer, with a modest salary of £200 a year; funds were provided for the construction of the forty-foot reflector, from the great space-penetrating power of which he expected unheard-of revelations; in fine, his future work was not only rendered possible, but it was stamped as authoritative.[13] On Whit-Sunday 1782, William and Caroline Herschel played and sang in public for the last time in St. Margaret's Chapel, Bath; in August of the same year the household was moved to Datchet, near Windsor, and on April 3, 1786, to Slough. Here happiness and honours crowded on the fortunate discoverer. In 1788 he married Mary, only child of James Baldwin, a merchant of the city of London, and widow of Mr. John Pitt--a lady whose domestic virtues were enhanced by the possession of a large jointure. The fruit of their union was one son, of whose work--the worthy sequel of his father's--we shall have to speak further on. Herschel was created a Knight of the Hanoverian Guelphic Order in 1816, and in 1821 he became the first President of the Royal Astronomical Society, his son being its first Foreign Secretary. But his health had now for some years been failing, and on August 25, 1822, he died at Slough, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and was buried in Upton churchyard. His epitaph claims for him the lofty praise of having "burst the barriers of heaven." Let us see in what sense this is true.