The great number of alterations of stars that we are certain have happened within the last two centuries, and the much greater number that we have reason to suspect to have taken place, are curious features in the history of the heavens, as curious as the slow wearing away of the landmarks of our earth on mountains, on river banks, on ocean shores. If we consider how little attention has formerly been paid this subject, and that most of the observations we have are of a very late date, it would perhaps not appear extraordinary were we to admit the number of alterations that have probably happened to different stars, within our own time, to be a hundred. --_William Herschel_ WILLIAM HERSCHEL William Herschell, born Seventeen Hundred Thirty-eight, in the city of Hanover, was the fourth child in a family of ten. Big families, I am told, usually live in little houses, while little families live in big houses. The Herschels were no exception to the rule. Isaac Herschel, known to the world as being the father of his son, was a poor man, depending for support upon his meager salary as bandmaster to a regiment of the Hanoverian Guards. At the garrison school, taught by a retired captain, William was the star scholar. In mathematics he propounded problems that made the worthy captain pooh-pooh and change the subject. At fourteen, he was playing a hautboy in his father's band and practising on the violin at spare times. For music he had a veritable passion, and to have a passion for a thing means that you excel in it--excellence is a matter of intensity. One of the players in the band was a Frenchman, and William made an arrangement to give the "parlez vous" lessons on the violin as payment for lessons in French. This whole brood of Herschel children was musical, and very early in life the young Herschels became self-supporting as singers and players. "It is the only thing they can do," their father said. But his loins were wiser than his head. In Seventeen Hundred Fifty-five William accompanied his father's band to England, where they went to take part in a demonstration in honor of a Hanoverian, one George the Third, who later was to play a necessary part in a symphony that was to edify the American Colonies. America owes much to George the Third. Young Herschel had already learned to speak English, just as he had learned French. In England he spent all the money he had for three volumes of "Locke on the Human Understanding." These books were to remain his lifelong possession and to be passed on, well-thumbed, to his son more than half a century later. At the time of the breaking out of the Seven Years' War, William Herschel was nineteen. His regiment had been ordered to march in a week. Here was a pivotal point--should he go and fight for the glory of Prussia?