of Hanoverian Guards was ordered on service to England for a year.
William Herschel, then seventeen years of age, and already a member
of the band, went together with his father; and it was in this
modest capacity that he first made acquaintance with the land where
he was afterwards to attain the dignity of knighthood and the post
of the king's astronomer. He played the oboe, like his father
before him, and no doubt underwent the usual severe military
discipline of that age of stiff stocks and stern punishments. His
pay was very scanty, and out of it he only saved enough to carry
home one memento of his English experiences. That memento was in
itself a sufficient mark of the stuff from which young Herschel was
compounded. It was a copy of "Locke on the Human Understanding."
Now, Locke's famous work, oftener named than read, is a very tough
and serious bit of philosophical exposition; and a boy of seventeen
who buys such a book out of his meagre earnings as a military
bandsman is pretty sure not to end his life within the four dismal
bare walls of the barrack. It is indeed a curious picture to
imagine young William Herschel, among a group of rough and
boisterous German soldiers, discussing high mathematical problems
with his father, or sitting down quietly in a corner to read "Locke
on the Human Understanding."

In 1757, during the Seven Years' War, Herschel was sent with his
regiment to serve in the campaign of Rossbach against the French.
He was not physically strong, and the hardships of active service
told terribly upon the still growing lad. His parents were alarmed
at his appearance when he returned, and were very anxious to
"remove" him from the service. That, however, was by no means an
easy matter for them to accomplish. They had no money to buy his
discharge, and so, not to call the transaction by any other than