We now propose to furnish a brief sketch of the life of Sir John Frederick William Herschel, the only son of Sir William, and not less illustrious as a man of science.

He was born at Slough, in the year 1792.  Evincing considerable talents at a very early age, he received a careful private education under Mr. Rogers, a Scottish mathematician of distinguished merit; and afterwards was sent to St. John’s College, Cambridge, always famous as a nursery of mathematical and scientific prodigies!  Here he pursued his studies with remarkable success, suffering no obstacles to daunt him, and wasting no opportunities of improvement.  His fellow-collegians regarded him as one who would add to the high repute of the college, and rejoiced at the brilliant ease with which he passed every examination.  In 1813 he took his degree of B.A., and consummated a long series of successes by becoming “senior wrangler,” and “Smith’s prizeman;” these being the two highest distinctions to which a Cambridge scholar can attain.

In the same year, when he was hardly twenty-one, he published a work entitled, “A Collection of Examples of the Application of the Calculus to Finite Differences.”  To our young readers such a title will convey no meaning; and we refer to it here only to illustrate the industry and careful thought of the young student, which had rendered possible such a result.

Returning to Slough, he continued his studies in mathematics, chemistry, and natural philosophy, and in various publications exhibited that faculty of observation and analyzation, that intelligence and scrupulousness in collecting facts, and that boldness in deducing new inferences from them, which were characteristic of his illustrious father.  The subjects he took up were so abstruse, that we could not hope to make our readers understand what he accomplished, or how far he excelled his predecessors in his grasp and comprehension of them.  For instance:  if we tell them that in 1820 he wrote a paper “On the Theory and Summation of Series;” communicated to the Cambridge Philosophical Society his discovery that the two kinds of rotatory polarization in rock crystal were related to the plagihedral faces of that mineral; and issued an able treatise “On Certain Remarkable Instances of Deviation from Newton’s Tints in the Polarized Tints of Uniaxal Crystals,”—­they will gain no very distinct idea of the significance or value of these researches.  Again:  it will not be very intelligible to them to be informed that, in 1822, he communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh a paper “On the Absorption of Light by Coloured Media”, in which he enunciated a new method of measuring the dispersion of transparent bodies by stopping the green, yellow, and most refrangible red rays, and thus rendering visible the rays situated rigorously at the end of the spectrum.  But they will understand that these results could have been attained only by the most assiduous industry and the most unflinching perseverance.  And it is on account of this industry and this perseverance that we recommend Herschel as an example to our readers.  They may not make the same progress in science, or achieve the same reputation.  It is not necessary they should.  Humble work is not less honourable, if it be done conscientiously, and with a sincere desire to do the best that it is in our power to do.