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At this stage of the undertaking it became the fashion with visitors to use the empty tube as a promenade. Dr. and Miss Burney called, in July, 1786, “to see, and take a walk through the immense new telescope.” “It held me quite upright,” the authoress of “Evelina” related, “and without the least inconvenience; so would it have done had I been dressed in feathers and a bell-hoop.”

George III. and the Archbishop of Canterbury followed the general example; and the prelate being incommoded by the darkness and the uncertain footing, the King, who was in front, turned back to help him, saying: “Come, my lord bishop, I will show you the way to heaven.” On another occasion “God save the King” was sung and played within the tube by a large body of musicians; and the rumour went abroad that it had been turned into a ball-room!

The University of Oxford conferred upon Herschel, in 1786, an honorary degree of LL.D.; but he cared little for such distinctions. Miss Burney characterised him as a “man without a wish that has its object in the terrestrial globe;” the King had “not a happier subject.” The royal bounty, she went on “enables him to put into execution all his wonderful projects, from which his expectations of future discoveries are so sanguine as to make his present existence a state of almost perfect enjoyment.” Nor was it possible to “admire his genius more than his gentleness.” Again, after taking tea in his company in the Queen’s lodge: “this very extraordinary man has not more fame to awaken curiosity than sense and modesty to gratify it. He is perfectly unassuming, yet openly happy; and happy in the success of those studies which would render a mind less excellently formed presumptuous and arrogant.” Mrs. Papendick, another court chronicler, says that “he was fascinating in his manner, and possessed a natural politeness, and the abilities of a superior nature.”