musician; so Herschel was called up, and made to go through a solo for
the visitor's gratification. The organist was surprised at his admirable
execution, and asked him on what terms he was engaged to the Durham
militia. "Only from month to month," Herschel answered. "Then leave them
at the end of your month," said Miller, "and come to live with me. I'm a
single man; I think we can manage together; and I'm sure I can get you a
better situation." Herschel frankly accepted the offer so kindly made,
and seems to have lived for much of the next five years with Miller in
his little two-roomed cottage at Doncaster. Here he took pupils and
performed in the orchestra at public concerts, always in a very quiet
and modest fashion. He also lived for part of the time with a Mr. Bulman
at Leeds, for whom he afterwards generously provided a place as clerk to
the Octagon Chapel at Bath. Indeed, it is a very pleasing trait in
William Herschel's character that to the end he was constantly engaged
in finding places for his early friends, as well as for the less
energetic or less fortunate members of his own family.

During these years, Herschel also seems to have given much attention to
the organ, which enabled him to make his next step in life in 1765, when
he was appointed organist at Halifax. Now, there is a great social
difference between the position of an oboe-player in a band and a church
organist; and it was through his organ-playing that Herschel was finally
enabled to leave his needy hand-to-mouth life in Yorkshire. A year
later, he obtained the post of organist to the Octagon Chapel at Bath,
an engagement which gave him new opportunities of turning his mind to
the studies for which he possessed a very marked natural inclination.
Bath was in those days not only the most fashionable watering-place in
England, but almost the only fashionable watering-place in the whole
kingdom. It was, to a certain extent, all that Brighton, Scarborough,
Buxton, and Harrogate are to-day, and something more. In our own time,