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HERSCHEL
passion of his life. The meagreness of the allowance has been often commented upon, but it must be remembered, in justice to George III, that, firstly, the purchasing power of money was considerably greater then than now, and, secondly, the regular duties attached to the office were at that time very few. There is no doubt that George III, by his creation of this new post, made possible Herschel's long career of investigation and discovery: for no man, not even Herschel, could possibly have stood the strain of a life of professional activity and scientific investigation combined. As one of his biographers has well said, "The astronomer of Slough was the gift to science of the poor mad king".
