less tedious by reading aloud: it is with some feeling of relief that we hear that on these occasions the books read were not on mathematics, optics, or astronomy, but were such as _Don Quixote_, the _Arabian Nights_, and the novels of Sterne and Fielding. 252. After an immense number of failures Herschel succeeded in constructing a tolerable reflecting telescope—soon to be followed by others of greater size and perfection—and with this he made his first recorded observation, of the Orion nebula, in March 1774. This observation, made when he was in his 36th year, may be conveniently regarded as the beginning of his astronomical career, though for several years more music remained his profession, and astronomy could only be cultivated in such leisure time as he could find or make for himself; his biographers give vivid pictures of his extraordinary activity during this period, and of his zeal in using odd fragments of time, such as intervals between the acts at a theatre, for his beloved telescopes. A letter written by him in 1783 gives a good account of the spirit in which he was at this time carrying out his astronomical work:— “I determined to accept nothing on faith, but to see with my own eyes what others had seen before me.... I finally succeeded in completing a so-called Newtonian instrument, 7 feet in length. From this I advanced to one of 10 feet, and at last to one of 20, for I had fully made up my mind to carry on the improvement of my telescopes as far as it could possibly be done. When I had carefully and thoroughly perfected the great instrument in all its parts, I made systematic use of it in my observations of the heavens, first forming a determination never to pass by any, the smallest, portion of them without due investigation.” In accordance with this last resolution he executed on four separate occasions, beginning in 1775, each time with an instrument of greater power than on the preceding, a review of the whole heavens, in which everything that appeared in any way remarkable was noticed and if necessary more carefully studied. He was thus applying to astronomy methods comparable with those of the naturalist who aims at drawing up a complete list of the flora or fauna of a country hitherto little known 253. In the course of the second of these reviews, made with a telescope of the Newtonian type, 7 feet in length, he made the discovery (March 13th, 1781) which gave him a European reputation and enabled him to abandon music as a profession and to devote the whole of his energies to science. “In examining the small stars in the neighbourhood of η _Geminorum_ I perceived one that appeared visibly larger than the rest; being struck with its uncommon appearance I compared it to η _Geminorum_ and the small star in the quartile between _Auriga_ and _Gemini_ and finding it so much larger than either of them, I suspected it to be a comet.”