when railways and steamboats have so altered the face of the world, the
most wealthy and fashionable English society resorts a great deal to
continental pleasure towns like Cannes, Nice, Florence, Vichy, Baden,
Ems, and Homburg; but in the eighteenth century it resorted almost
exclusively to Bath. The Octagon Chapel was in one sense the centre of
life in Bath; and through his connection with it, Herschel was thrown
into a far more intelligent and learned society than that which he had
left behind him in still rural Yorkshire. New books came early to Bath,
and were read and discussed in the reading-rooms; famous men and women
came there, and contributed largely to the intellectual life of the
place; the theatre was the finest out of London; the Assembly Rooms were
famous as the greatest resort of wit and culture in the whole kingdom.
Herschel here was far more in his element than in the barracks of
Hanover, or in the little two-roomed cottage at rustic Doncaster.

He worked very hard indeed, and his work soon brought him comfort and
comparative wealth. Besides his chapel services, and his later
engagement in the orchestra of the Assembly Rooms, he had often as many
as thirty-eight private pupils in music every week; and he also composed
a few pieces, which were published in London with some modest success.
Still, in spite of all these numerous occupations, the eager young
German found a little leisure time to devote to self-education; so much
so that, after a fatiguing day of fourteen or sixteen hours spent in
playing the organ and teaching, he would "unbend his mind" by studying
the higher mathematics, or give himself a lesson in Greek and Italian.
At the same time, he was also working away at a line of study, seemingly
useless to him, but in which he was afterwards to earn so great and
deserved a reputation. Among the books he read during this Bath period
were Smith's "Optics" and Lalande's "Astronomy." Throughout all his own
later writings, the influence of these two books, thoroughly mastered by