think I see your wonderfully clever and wonderfully amiable brother, upon the news of it, shed a tear of joy. You have immortalised your name, and you deserve such a reward from the Being who has ordered all these things to move as we find them for your assiduity in the business of astronomy, and for your love for so celebrated and so deserving a brother.'

6

To any other woman such a success would have been a subject at least of some exaltation, but she had no thought for herself. On her brother's return she resumed her place as his humble and unknown assistant without a regret for the career of original distinction which she was foregoing. First and last, Caroline Herschel discovered eight comets. Her journals usually contain such an entry as this: August -, 2 A.M., discovered a comet ;' and the letter-book of the next day contains transcripts of communications to the astronomers of her own and other nations, giving its declination and right ascension, and commending it to their protection'-of her own labours or success never one solitary word. Many years afterwards she said, with characteristic modesty, that it was all chance; 'I never called a comet mine till several post-days passed without any account of them coming to hand. And after all, it is only like the children's game, "Wer am ersten kick ruft, soll den Apfel haben.”*

On the 8th of May, 1788, Sir William Herschel married. His wife was a lady of great amiability, and she brought him a fortune which enabled him thenceforth to pursue his scientific career without any anxiety about money matters. Sir William was made happy, but it was the great grief of Caroline Herschel's life. She resigned, as she said, her position as housekeeper, and lived henceforth in lodgings, coming every day to her work, and in all respects continuing the same labours, as her brother's assistant and secretary :

'But,' says the authoress of the 'Memoir,'' it is not to be supposed that a nature so strong and a heart so affectionate should accept the new state of things without much and bitter suffering. To resign the supreme place by her brother's side which she had filled for sixteen years with such hearty devotion could not be otherwise than painful in any case; but how much more so in this where equal devotion to the same pursuit must have made identity of interest and purpose as complete as it is rare! One who could both feel and express herself so strongly was not likely to fall into her new place without some outward expression of what it cost her-tradition confirms the assumpion, and it is easy to understand how this long significant silence † is

*Whoever first calls "kick" shall have the apple.'-Letter to Lady Herschel, July, 1842, p. 326.

† She destroyed all her journals and letters from 1788 to 1798.

due

due to the light of later wisdom and calmer judgment, which counselled the destruction of all record of what was likely to be painful to

survivors.'

It is evident from her diary, which was resumed in 1798– though the entries thenceforward are exceedingly brief and business-like-that she never lived beneath her brother's roof again. During his absence from home she would go to his house and put things in order for him; little passages show that at such times she was always at work for him, polishing the brass-work of his telescopes, making curtains for his bookselves, cataloguing his books and papers; but the day before his expected return she would go back to her lodgings again, whence she would emerge only at nightfall to take her share of the duty of 'minding the heavens,' as she used to call it. Her brother made

her a new telescope, which to the end of his life was her most cherished possession. Letter after letter she used to write during her old age, making arrangements that it should be in safe hands, which would use it tenderly when she was dead. Its ultimate fate is thus spoken of in a letter from Sir John Herschel :

The telescopes are now, I trust, properly disposed of. Mr. Hausmann (who will value it) has the sweeper. The five-feet Newtonian Reflector is in the hands of the Royal Astronomical Society, and it will be preserved by it, as the little telescope of Newton is by the Royal Society, long after I and all the little ones are dead and gone.'

The ten years which succeeded her brother's marriage were among the most laborious of Caroline Herschel's life. The Royal Society published two of her works, namely A Catalogue of 860 Stars, observed by Flamsteed, but not included in the British Catalogue,' and 'A General Index of Reference to every Observation of every Star in the British Catalogue.' But the most laborious, as well as the most valuable, of her works was the Reduction and Arrangement in the form of a Catalogue of all the Star-clusters and Nebulæ observed by Sir William Herschel in his Sweeps.' It was for this that the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society was conferred upon her, and the extraordinary distinction of an Honorary Membership.

We cannot follow Sir William Herschel through the laborious years which followed. They were a time of intense activity. Not a year passed that he did not signalise with some important memoir in the Philosophical Transactions.' He demonstrated what had hitherto been only suspected, that the sun was not the

་

Vol. 141.-No. 282.

* August 10, 1840.
2 B

stable

stable centre of the universe, but that it, together with the planets which form the solar system, was changing its posi tion among the stars. He showed that the direction of our course through space-in company with the sun, our master, and the planets, our companions-is in the direction of the constellation Hercules. It is a fact calculated strongly to impress the imagination, that the sun himself is but a star, among millions brighter, probably, and grander than himself, and that he and all his system of attendant worlds are darting with inconceivable rapidity towards a definite point in space. The establishment of this circumstance in the orderly organisation of the universe would alone have made Herschel's name famous. But it is thrown into the shade by other discoveries still more calculated to strike the mind with awe.

There is no branch of astronomy which Herschel might more justly claim for his own domain than that which relates to clustered stars. The catalogue of Meissier contained but sixty-eight nebula, to which Lacaille afterwards added twenty-eight, and they were looked upon as mere tracts of luminous matter: their real nature was not suspected. But as soon as Herschel applied to them his powerful instruments, his rare penetration and unconquerable perseverance, this branch of science took a rapid stride. In 1796 he published in the Philosophical Transactions' a catalogue of one thousand nebulæ or clusters of stars. Three years later appeared a second catalogue, quite as extensive as the first; and that, again, was followed, in 1802, by a third catalogue of five hundred nebulæ.

Two thousand five hundred nebula!' exclaims Arago; such was the contingent supplied by Herschel to a branch of astronomy which had hardly been touched before him. But he was not content with simple discovery. It was his rare good fortune to demonstrate their true nature.

One single nebula out of the vast contingent' mentioned by Arago, resolved itself under Herschel's telescope into a cluster of fourteen thousand stars! And though not all the nebulæ are resolvable into similar clusters, it is demonstrated by his, and by subsequent observations, that thousands of these beautiful objects are clusters of innumerable stars, so immeasurably distant from us that only their collective light is visible-a dimly luminous point in boundless space.

The immense distance of the planet Uranus, its small angular diameter, and the feebleness of its light, long forbade any hope of discerning from the earth its satellites, if any such existed. It was to the great forty-feet telescope, invented and built by Herschel, that the discovery was due at last. His perseverance

was

was rewarded by a sight of six moons, which revolve around the planet, thus completing, to use the words of Arago, 'the world of a system that belongs entirely to himself.'

Time went on in the Slough Observatory unmarked by any incident external to the scientific labours of its inmates, if we except the birth of his son, Sir John Herschel. Their work, their pleasures, and the events of their lives, were all astronomical. Sir William's position as Astronomer to the King brought a constant succession of guests to the Observatory who were distinguished by their rank, and his own eminence in science attracted those who were best worth knowing in the world of letters, whether Englishmen or foreigners. Miss Herschel, who liked a quiet joke as well as any one, tells some good stories of her visitors. Some of them, it must be acknowledged, asked very remarkable questions; amongst others, one is recorded of the Prince of Orange, who called one day at the Observatory to see Sir William Herschel, but, not finding any one at home, wrote the following note:

'The Prince of Orange has been at Slough to call at Mr. Herschel's, and to ask him, or if he was not at home, to Miss Herschel, if it is true that Mr. Herschel has discovered a new star whose light was not as that of the common stars, but with swallow-tails as stars in embroidery.'

About the time when Sir John Herschel, having arrived at man's estate, took his degree as Senior Wrangler, Sir William's health began to fail. He still pursued his labours, but no longer with his wonted energy, and the journals are filled with remarks which show the bitter grief with which Miss Herschel noted his declining strength. He died in 1822, in the seventysecond year of his age.

The terrible blow of her brother's death seemed to paralyse the energies of his sister, who determined to leave England for ever, as soon as the beloved remains were buried out of her sight. She collected the few things which she desired to keep, and retired to Hanover. Her letters from thence to her nephew, Sir John Herschel, are full of recollections of the past, and abound with anecdotes of the great astronomer with whom she passed so many years.

The reader of the 'Memoir' will be well able to appreciate the efficient service which Miss Herschel gave to her brother during the forty years of his astronomical work; but she herself did not think so. She always said that a well-trained puppydog would have done for her brother everything that she had done; that she was a tool fashioned and polished by him; and

that if the tool performed anything worth doing, he was entitled to the credit of it. Thinking nothing of herself, seeking nothing for herself, with an intense power of sympathy, and a noble love of giving herself for the service of others, she transferred her whole personality to the object of her affection. After her brother's death she transferred that affection to his son; she often said that she would have willingly remained at the old Observatory at Slough to work under the son, as she had doneunder the father, but that her strength and health would no longer serve her.

It is sad to think of her in her old age. She was then seventytwo, going back desolate and broken-hearted to the home of her youth. Still more sad when we remember that she was still removed by twenty-six weary years from her rest. She found everything changed. She had been removed from the old familiar paths, and the authoress of the Memoir' truly applies. to her words borrowed from one of Miss Edgeworth's sisters, 'You don't know the blank of life after having lived within the radiance of genius.'

Caroline Herschel died at Hanover in 1848, at the age of ninety-eight. Her death-bed was attended by the daughter of the Madame Beckedorff, whose acquaintance she had made at the house of the Hanover milliner eighty years before.

One of her nieces, writing to Sir John Herschel an account of her aunt's death, said of her, with true appreciation of her character, I but too well know that even in England she must have felt the same blank. She looked upon progress in science as so much detraction of her brother's fame, and even your investigations would have been a source of estrangement if she had been with you.' A curious illustration of the truth of this remark is found in one of her latest letters.* They talk of nothing in the clubs here but of the great mirror (Lord Rosse's telescope), and the great man who made it; but I have but one answer for all, which is, Der Kerl is ein Narr-the man's a fool."

Her coffin was covered with garlands of laurel and cypress, and palm-branches sent from Herrenhausen, and the service was read over it in the same garrison church in which nearly a century before she had been christened. A lock of her brother's hair, and an old almanack which had been used by her father, were, at her own desire, buried with her.

To Sir John Herschel, June, 1844.

ABT.