An interesting feature in the younger Herschel’s character was his loving care for his father’s fame.  He was ever most anxious that the full measure of his services to science should be recognized and appreciated.  Thus, in 1823, he writes to his aunt:—­

“I have been long threatening to send you a long letter, but have always been prevented by circumstances and want of leisure from executing my intention.  The truth is, I have been so much occupied with astronomy of late, that I have had little time for anything else—­the reduction of those double stars, and the necessity it has put me under of looking over the journals, reviews, &c, for information on what has already been done, and in many cases of re-casting up my father’s measures, swallows up a great deal of time and labour.  But I have the satisfaction of being able to state that our results in most instances confirm and establish my father’s views in a remarkable manner.  These inquiries have taken me off the republication of his printed papers for the present.

“I think I shall be adding more to his fame by pursuing and verifying his observations than by reprinting them.  But I have by no means abandoned the idea.  Meanwhile, I am not sorry to hear they are about to be translated into German....  I hope this season to commence a series of observations with the twenty-foot reflector, which is now in fine order.  The forty-foot is no longer capable of being used, but I shall suffer it to stand as a monument.”

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In reference to this famous telescope, we may digress to state that its remains have been carefully preserved.

The metal tube of the instrument, carrying at one end the recently cleaned mirror of four feet ten inches in diameter, has been placed horizontally in the meridian line, on solid piles of masonry, in the midst of the circle where the apparatus used in manoeuvring it was formerly placed.  On the 1st of January 1840, Sir John Herschel, his wife, their seven children, and some old family servants, assembled at Slough.  Exactly at noon the party walked several times in procession round the instrument; they then entered the gigantic tube, seated themselves on benches previously prepared, and chanted a requiem with English words composed by Sir John Herschel himself.  Then issuing from the tube, they ranged themselves around it, while its opening was hermetically sealed.

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In March 1821, the younger Herschel, in conjunction with Sir James South, undertook a series of observations on the distances and positions of three hundred and eighty double and triple stars, by means of two splendid achromatic telescopes of five and seven focal length.  These were continued during 1822 and 1823, and have proved of great service to astronomers.

Having pursued with much zeal the study of optics, and experimented largely and carefully on the double refraction and polarization of light, he compiled a treatise on the subject for the “Encyclopaedia Metropolitana” It has been translated into French by M. Quetelet; and both foreign and English men of science have been accustomed to regard it as indicating a new point of departure in the important branch of science to which it is devoted.