HERSCHEL, SIR FREDERICK WILLIAM (1738-1822), generally known as Sir William Herschel, English astronomer, was born at Hanover on the 15th of November 1738. His father was a musician employed as hautboy player in the Hanoverian guard. The family had quitted Moravia for Saxony in the early part of the 17th century on account of religious troubles, they themselves being Protestants. Herschel's earlier education was necessarily of a very limited character, chiefly owing to the warlike commotions of his country; but being at all times an indomitable student, he, by his own exertions, more than repaired this deficiency. He became a very skilful musician, both theoretical and practical; while his attainments as a self-taught mathematician were fully adequate to the prosecution of those branches of astronomy which he so eminently advanced and adorned. Whatever he did he did methodically and thoroughly; and in this methodical thoroughness lay the secret of what Arago very properly termed his astonishing scientific success. In 1752, at the age of fourteen, he joined the band of the Hanoverian guard, and with his detachment visited England in 1755, accompanied by his father and eldest brother; in the following year he returned to his native country; but the hardships of campaigning during the Seven Years' War imperilling his health, his parents privately removed him from the regiment, and on the 26th of July 1757 despatched him to England. There, as might have been expected, the earlier part of his career was attended with formidable difficulties and much privation. We find him engaged in several towns in the north of England as organist and teacher of music, which were not lucrative occupations. But the tide of his fortunes began to flow when he obtained in 1766 the appointment of organist to the Octagon chapel in Bath, at that time the resort of the wealth and fashion of the city.