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.