As we close the record of Miss Herschel’s residence in England, we may pause for a moment to look back over the space she had traversed while following, with unvarying diligence and humility, the path her brother marked out for her, first in blessed hourly companionship, when she was as necessary in his home as in his library, or among his instruments; and latterly, when with saddened heart but unflagging determination she continued to work for him, but saw his domestic happiness pass into other keeping.

While they toiled together through those first ten years of ever-deepening interest and marvellous activity, during which the rapid juxtaposition of mirror-grinding, concerts, oratorios, music lessons,^[30] and frequent papers written for philosophical societies, almost takes the breath away as we read,—the brother had abundant opportunity of learning how far he could trust to his companion’s readiness, as well as capability, to accept of duties as utterly remote from all that her previous life had prepared her for as if he had asked her to accompany him on a pilgrimage to Mecca. And thus, of all of whom he had made trial, it was not the brilliant Jacob, nor the gifted Alexander, but the little quiet, home-bred Caroline, of whom nothing had been expected but to be up early and to do the work of the house, and to devote her leisure to knitting and sewing, in whom he found that steady devotion to a fixed purpose which he felt it was possible to link with his own. “I did nothing for my brother,” she said, “but what a well-trained puppy-dog would have done: that is to say, I did what he commanded me. I was a mere tool which he had the trouble of sharpening.” Such was always her own modest self-estimate. It is hardly too much to say that, to have worked as she had worked, and to have done all that she had accomplished, and to claim no more than the credit due to passive obedience to orders, is a depth of humility of that rare and noble kind which is in itself a form of greatness. It must not be forgotten, that the progress of astronomical science since Sir William Herschel’s great reflector startled the world, has not been greater than has been the change, both in opinion and practice, on the subject of female employments and education. The appointment of a young woman as an assistant astronomer, with a regular salary for her services, was an unprecedented occurrence in England. She had watched and shared in every effort and every failure from the first seven-foot telescope to the construction of the ponderous machinery that was to support the mighty tube of which she herself made the first crude model in pasteboard. When, finally, her brother was summoned to the King, and wrote to tell her how he fared at Court, she accepted the decision, by which he exchanged a handsome income for the sake of obtaining the command of his own time, and £200 a-year from his gracious sovereign, with only a passing expression of regret from the housekeeper’s point of view, and threw herself heart and soul into the new life at Datchet. One all-sufficing reward sweetened her labours—“I had the comfort to see that my brother was satisfied with my endeavours in assisting him.” When the dignity of original discovery gave her a distinct and separate claim to the respect of the astronomical world, she must have found out that she was something better than a mere tool. The requisite knowledge of algebra and mathematical formulÆ for calculations and reductions she had to gather when and how she could: chiefly at meals, and at any odd moments when her brother could be asked questions, and the answers were carefully entered in her Commonplace Book, where examples of taking equal altitudes, and how to convert sidereal time into mean time, follow upon pages of problems, oblique plain triangles, right-angled spherical triangles, how to find the logarithm of a number given, and theorems for making tables of motion. With this slender store of attainment she accomplished a vast amount of valuable work, besides the regular duties of assistant to so indefatigable an observer as Sir William Herschel. He was invariably accustomed to carry on his telescopic observations till daybreak, circumstances permitting, without any regard to season; it was the business of his assistant to note the clocks and to write down the observations from his dictation as they were made. Subsequently she assisted in the laborious numerical calculations and reductions, so that it was only during his absences from home, or when any other interruption of his regular course of observation occurred, that she was able to devote herself to the Newtonian sweeper, which she used to such good purpose. Besides the eight comets discovered by her, she detected several remarkable nebulÆ and clusters of stars previously unnoticed, especially the superb nebula known as No. 1, Class V., in Sir William Herschel’s Catalogue. Long practice taught her to make light of her work. “An observer at your twenty-foot when sweeping,” she wrote many years after, “wants nothing but a being who can and will execute his commands with the quickness of lightning; for you will have seen that in many sweeps six or twice six objects have been secured and described in one minute of time.”

The ten years from 1788 to 1798, although a blank as regards her personal history—the Recollections cease with her brother’s marriage—were among the busiest of her life, and in the year last mentioned 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 above-mentioned British Catalogue.” It is in reference to these that she wrote the very interesting letter to the Astronomer Royal, which is given among others, in its place, in the Journal. But another work, which was not published, was the most valuable, as it was the most laborious of all her undertakings. This was “The Reduction and Arrangement in the form of a Catalogue, in Zones, of all the Star-clusters and NebulÆ observed by Sir W. Herschel in his Sweeps.” It supplied the needful data for Sir John Herschel when he undertook the review of the nebulÆ of the northern hemisphere; and it was for this that the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society was voted to her in 1828, followed by the extraordinary distinction of an Honorary Membership. This Catalogue was not completed until after her return to Hanover, and Sir David Brewster wrote of it as “a work of immense labour,” and “an extraordinary monument of the unextinguished ardour of a lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science.”

Although the Recollections cease in 1788, there are some volumes recording the nature and results of her nightly “sweepings,” which Miss Herschel kept very regularly, and, as an unique example of a lady’s journal, a few of the entries may be of interest.

1788. Sept. 9th.—My brother showed me the five satellites of Saturn. He made me take notice of a star, which made a double star last night with the fifth satellite.

Dec. 8th.—I swept for a comet which was announced in the papers as having been discovered the 26th of November by Mr. Messier. According to the observations of that date, it should have been within a few degrees of the Pole star (by my brother’s calculation), but though I swept with great attention a space of at least ten or twelve degrees all around the pole over repeatedly, I could find nothing.

Another night of unavailing search, with thermometer 20°.^[31]

1790. Jan. 7th.—I have swept all this evening for my [third] comet in vain. My brother showed me the G. Sidus in the twenty-foot telescope, and I saw both its satellites very plainly.

1791. Aug. 2nd.—I began to sweep at 1.30, from the horizon through the Pleiades up as high as the head of Medusa. Left off with Tauri. Afterwards I continued with horizontal sweeps till daylight was too strong for seeing any longer.

1792. May 3rd.—My brother having desired me by way of practice to settle the stars a Persei and Castor, and a Virginis, by some neighbouring stars in Wollaston’s Catalogue, I made last night an attempt to take their places. The moon was near the full, therefore no sweeping could be done.

1795. May 1st.—Mem. In the future when any great chasms appear in my journals, it may be understood that sweeping for comets has not been neglected at every opportunity which did offer itself. But as I always do sweep according to the precept my brother has given me, and as I often am in want of time, I think it is very immaterial if the places where I have seen nothing are noted down.

Nov. 7th.—0.40 sidereal time. About an hour ago I saw the comet [seventh] which is marked in the annexed field of view [diagrams drawn with extreme neatness illustrate the entries when necessary]. When I perceived it first the two small stars were entirely covered by it, and it appeared to be a cluster of stars mixed with nebulosity; but not knowing of such an object in that place, I kept watching it, and perceived it to be a comet by its having moved from the two small stars, so as to leave them entirely free from haziness.

1797. Aug. 14th.—C. H.’s comet. At 9.30 common time, being dark enough for sweeping, I began in the usual manner with looking over the heavens with the naked eye, and immediately saw a comet nearly as bright as that which was discovered by Mr. Gregory, January 8, 1793. I went down from the observatory to call my brother Alexander, that he might assist me at the clock. In my way into the garden I was met and detained by Lord S. and another gentleman, who came to see my brother and his telescopes. By way of preventing too long an interruption, I told the gentlemen that I had just found a comet, and wanted to settle its place. I pointed it out to them, and after having seen it they took their leave.

These entries were continued with great regularity to the year 1819, at which time, as the Diary shows, Sir William’s increasing feebleness made her close daily attendance more necessary, and her pen was in greater request than the “sweeper.” The last volume concludes with a carefully drawn eye-draft of the situation of a comet visible at Hanover, January 31st, 1824. Thenceforth the instrument which had done such good service in her hands for forty years of steady work, became the chief ornament of her sitting-room, until her disquieting fears for its ultimate fate led her to send it back to England.

Sad as is the story of those last years of declining old age, while the beloved brother lived we know that his sister’s life was full of occupation. It is not until the cruel hour comes, and she knows that death and the grave will soon claim him, that she allows the sense of her own bitter desolation to find expression. When all was over, her only desire seems to have been to hurry away. Hardly was he laid in his grave than she collected the few things she cared to keep, and left for ever the country where she had spent fifty years of her life, living and toiling for him and him only. “If I should leave off making memorandums of such events as affect, or are interesting to me, I should feel like—what I am, namely, a person that has nothing more to do in this world.” Mournful words: doubly mournful when we know that the writer had nearly half an ordinary lifetime still between her and that grave which she made haste to prepare, in the hope that her course was nearly run. Who can think of her, at the age of seventy-two, heart-broken and desolate, going back to the home of her youth in the fond expectation of finding consolation, without a pang of sympathetic pity? She found everything changed. In addition to those changes, for which she might have been in some measure prepared, there were others of a kind to admit of neither cure nor alleviation. The life she had led for fifty years had removed her, she little guessed how much, from the old familiar paths: her thoughts, her habits, all her ideas had been formed and moulded in a totally different world: more bitter still, she found herself alone in her great sorrow and quenchless love; pride in the distinction reflected on themselves from relationship to the illustrious astronomer was a miserable substitute for the reverential affection she had looked to find for one of the kindest and most generous of brothers. But the bitterest suffering of all was from a source which was, and ever remained, beyond the reach of help. “You don’t know,” wrote one of Miss Edgeworth’s sisters, “the blank of life after having lived within the radiance of genius;” and this was the blank in which Miss Herschel doomed herself not only to live, but to try to begin anew, when past three score and ten. The extracts from her letters bear strong testimony to the gallant struggle she made to find interests and occupations in what those about her, as well as she herself, looked upon as a kind of exile, and “Why did I leave happy England?” was often her cry, more especially as time went on, and interest in her nephew and his family came mercifully to fill the heart still so yearning and ready for affection. When she heard the news of Sir John Herschel’s intended departure for the Cape, she wrote, “Ja! if I was thirty or forty years junger and could go too? in Gottes nahmen!” her interest in the science to which she had devoted her best years never ceased, though she persisted to the end in ridiculing the bare suggestion that the Rosse telescope could by any possibility be so good as the forty-foot. The homage paid to her as a savante amused as well as gratified her. “You must give me leave to send you any publication you can think of,” she wrote to her nephew, “without mentioning anything about paying for them. For it is necessary I should every now and then lay out a little of my spare cash in that for the sake of supporting the reputation of being a learned lady (there is for you!), for I am not only looked at for such a one, but even stared at here in Hanover!” Her deprecation of the membership of the Irish Academy, conferred on one who for so many years had “not even discovered a comet,” was thoroughly sincere as well as characteristic, but she found pleasure in receiving the homage which was naturally paid to her; no man of any scientific eminence passed through Hanover without visiting her; from the Royal Family she received the most kind and graceful attentions; and it became a matter of public concern to note the presence of the well-known tiny figure at the Theatre, where her constant appearance in extreme old age was in itself a marvel. The frugal simplicity of her habits made it a positive perplexity to dispose of her income; she protested that £50 a-year was all she could manage to spend on herself, and she pertinaciously resisted receiving the pension of £100 per annum left to her by her brother, often devoting the quarterly or half-yearly payment to the purchase of some handsome present for her nephew or niece. She wrote full instructions and made the most careful arrangements for every detail of business in connection with her own burial and the disposal of her property—that is of the little she reserved, for her generosity towards her relations was as great as the expenditure on herself was small.

In these last remarks I have anticipated events, and must now return to the year 1822, when the correspondence begins.

Dear Lady Herschel,—

At this present moment I have nothing to wish for, besides the means of convincing myself by one look of your and my dear nephew’s health. After a very troublesome passage of forty-eight hours, we find ourselves almost restored to our former condition and composure, with only the difference that we have no more hunting after our trunks from Custom-house to Custom-house, and can proceed on our way to Hanover in peace after one night’s rest here in a very good inn. But the last night was truly dismal, for the sailors themselves confessed that it was what is called a high sea. At one time a spray conveyed a bucket-full of water into my bed, which was regarded as nothing in comparison to the evils with which I was surrounded. I was the most sick of all on board, and the poor old lady was pitied by all who enquired after her, but I had four ladies in the same cabin with me, who encouraged me to hold out, which at one time I thought would have been impossible. Something happened to the vessel for want of a good pilot in the Thames, and at Blackwall we laid still three hours, then we hobbled on to near Gravesend, and there lay in a high sea at anchor all night, whilst they were hatching and thumping to mend the vessel we were to go in. In consequence of this, we could not reach the spot where a pilot could meet us time enough on Sunday evening, and lay again at anchor. At half past eleven I set foot on shore, where so many people were assembled to gaze on us that it set me a crying, and now I am glad to be shut up once more in a room by myself and where I can make proper preparations for travelling further, which hitherto I have not had the opportunity of doing. All my clothes which I had prepared for the ship or sleeping on the road were locked up at the Custom-house, and I could not get hold of them again till we entered this house. So much for our adventures at present, and I beg and hope you will soon and often let us know how you are with my nephew, and how and where you can pass the following winter months in the most comfortable way.

My brother is gone into the street to look about him. The weather is fine, and I wish my dear nephew was with him, for it looks very tempting and new all about me, and I think he would enjoy seeing the bustle on the water with which this house is surrounded. My brother has charged me with millions of compliments and thanks to yourself and our nephew, but I cannot afford him quite so many, as else there would be no room for all those I owe to my dear Lady H. and my nephew, who took last Friday so long a walk to see us once more. My fears for what was to come and regret for what I left behind were so stupifying that it made me almost insensible to all what was passing about me, only this I shall remember, with satisfaction, that his looks were better than I have seen for a long time past.

I am now going to direct the little parcel for Professor Swinden, and likewise to Mr. Crommelin, jun., and to Professor Moll, at Utrecht, and Gauss will not be forgotten as we go along.

I beg you will remember me to Miss Baldwin (who I hope is with you), and particularly to Mr. Beckwith, whom I shall never be able to thank sufficiently for the friendly care he has shown to me on all, and especially on the last occasion of helping me on with my packages.

Farewell, my dear Lady Herschel, and let me hear soon that you and my nephew are well.

Miss Baldwin will write, and of course she will inform me of her own and all friends’ health, &c.

My dear Lady Herschel,—

We arrived here at noon, on the 28th, without the least accident, but not without the utmost exertion and extreme fatigue to both my brother and myself, from which it will be some time before I shall get the better, on account of the many visits of our friends, who come to convince themselves of our safe arrival, of which I hope you will have been informed long before this can reach you, as Mr. Quintain has promised me to send you a line the moment he reaches London. He left Hanover yesterday. I had wrote a letter in hopes he would have taken it, but that was impossible, and the post from here has been changed from Tuesday to Monday.

Mr. Hausmann called also here yesterday, and you may easily imagine that many inquiries are made after you and my dear nephew by all those who come near me, and I hope you will soon enable me, by a few lines, to inform them of your welfare and health, and give me the comfort to know that you have regained some of your former composure, after the late melancholy change and unsettled state in which we all were involved.

I found Mrs. H. in personal appearance so different from what I had imagined, that I can hardly believe her to be the same; she is just sixty-three years of age, and suffers much from rheumatism, which has taken away partially the use of her hands, but she is still of so cheerful a disposition and so active by way of overcoming disease by exercise, that I cannot wonder enough, and her reception of me was truly gratifying; the handsomest rooms, three or four times larger than what I have been used to, from which I can step in her own apartments, have been prepared for me and furnished in the most elegant style. But I cannot say that I feel well enough to enjoy all these good things nor be able to show myself to those who wish to see me, at least not at present.

Mrs. Beckedorff sent to enquire after me when I had been hardly two hours arrived. Miss B. is confined with a severe cold. My brother went yesterday to see them, and we have postponed our meeting till Saturday, when she will come to town for the winter.

From Rotterdam I sent a letter which I hope you have received, and by which you will have seen that our passage was not of the most agreeable kind.

The papers to Professor Van Swinden, Crommelin jun., at Amsterdam, and Professor Moll, at Utrecht, have been delivered, but that to Gauss, I am sorry to say, is either lost or mislaid, for I cannot find it anywhere, and I am vexed to give my dear nephew so bad a sample of my willingness to be of use to him. Perhaps through Mr. Quintain he might get one over when the Duke of Cambridge returns, else the next conveyance I know of is at Christmas, by Goltermann.

I beg my love to my nephew and Miss Baldwin, who, I hope, will soon let me know how you are, &c.

My dear Lady Herschel,—

I hope you have received the letter which I sent by the first post which went from here after my arrival, dated 31st October, and also one I wrote in Rotterdam, by which you will have seen what a disagreeable passage we had at sea, but all those frights and fears, and the troubles and fatigues of the journey we afterwards experienced by land appear now to have been nothing but a dream, and my waking thoughts are for ever wandering back to the scenes of sorrows which embittered the afflicting and final parting from my revered brother. If I could but be assured that you and my dear nephew at this present moment were in tolerable health and otherwise exempted from vexation, I should feel myself much more comfortable, but it is hard to live for months without knowing what may have happened to those with whom one has been for so many years immediately connected and in the habit of keeping up a daily intercourse.

I have hitherto not been able to overcome a dislike to going abroad, and what little I have seen of Hanover (in my way to the families of my two nieces and Mrs. Beckedorff, who live all close by) I do not like! And though some streets have been enlarged (as I am told), they appear to me much less than I left them fifty years ago. But a total seclusion from society will not do for a continuance, for I will not be ungrateful, I must call on the Delmerings, &c.,—who have been here. Mrs. D. is grown quite fat and very handsome, her daughter is a head taller and a very pretty young woman; the eldest son is already in the service with the Erz Herzog of Strelitz, and there has been no increase in the family since they left England. Mrs. D. made many inquiries after you and my nephew’s health, and gratefully remembers the kindly treatment she received at all times from you.

Nov. 18th.—Mrs. Beckedorff and Miss B. and myself have been laid up with severe colds, and I am still unable to go into company, but Mrs. B. sent Dr. MÜhry to make her excuse for not returning my visit. The first time I went to them, Mrs. B. made all her ten grandchildren stand up before me according to their ages, and a fine healthy family it is. But all the little folks I am introduced to are disappointed at finding me to be only a little old woman; which I suppose must be owing to having been told the Great Aunt Caroline from England was coming.

From the family of my eldest niece I have seen nothing as yet, and probably shall not before next summer, as her affairs must remain for some time in an unsettled state. I did not know till we were within sight of Hanover how greatly I was obliged to my brother for coming to fetch me, for I find he was but barely recovered from a serious illness when he left home, which had been occasioned by travelling to and fro to his daughter, who was in need of the support of both her parents on losing her husband after a few days’ illness; in the same week she had given birth to a son, and was made a widow with nine children in her 38th year. But, happily, she is blessed with an uncommon share of understanding and fortitude, besides the means of seeing them well educated and improving their fortunes.

Nov. 27th.—You will see, my dear Lady H., by the above, that at different times I have been employed in giving a circumstantial account of all what concerns that part of my family amongst whom I came to end my days; but I would not conclude, nor send off my letter, till I should have received some satisfactory account of your well-being, and the arrival of the last post has given a most agreeable turn to the dismal impression the parting scenes of the 17th and 18th October had left on my mind. To Miss Baldwin I feel greatly obliged for her comforting letter, and hope she will be able to write me many more equally consoling; my brother is going to speak for himself, and if I would leave a little room for a few words to my nephew, I must conclude with saying that I am

My dear Nephew,—I thank you for the few lines in the P.S., for by them I see you were thinking of me when you procured some indexes to Flamsteed’s obs. But I will not trouble you to send any; I only wished you to have some for your own friends, Mr. South, Major Kater, &c., for as they were not members of the R. Society at the time of publication, they may perhaps not be possessed of that necessary Appendix.

The next messenger will take the book Mr. Babbage wishes for, and I want very much to send you some of the numerous philosophical productions in which this country my nephew Groskopf says abounds, but I am at a loss on what to fix my choice. I wish you would let me know if any of the works of Schelling are known in England? Of him it is said that his philosophy is entirely new, and beyond all what goes before, and so profound, that nobody here can understand him, &c.

My dear Lady Herschel,—

At last I am enabled to inform you of the safe arrival of my boxes and trunks, which only came the day before yesterday, and then I was obliged to wait till the keys were sent by to-day’s post, but I have the satisfaction to find that every article is exactly as I had packed them with my own hands. For the last three weeks, I was despairing of ever seeing them again, for the vessel had been no less than three weeks at sea, and then had been obliged to unload six German miles beyond Bremen for want of water in the Weser. The country is in general much distressed for want of water; our large rivers may be passed on foot, &c. But of these things you are perhaps informed by the newspapers, and of many other circumstances; such as the mice eating the corn as soon as sowed, so that sowing it three times over was without effect, till the mice were destroyed by a pest coming among them.

I would give anything if I at this moment could see with my own eyes how you and my dear nephew are; tell him that on the day after Christmas (Dec. 26th) the messenger will leave Hanover, and will take the book for Mr. Babbage, and one in two volumes for my nephew; also two or three letters of his father’s which I have found among some papers of my brother Alex.

I know not if I mentioned it in my last that I selected all his last receipts when he left England, and shall keep them yet a little longer.

As yet I lead but a dull sort of life; the town is much too gay for me—plays, concerts, card parties, walking, &c. I cannot take part in any; my cold in my head is still very bad, and my poor brother is frequently unwell, and for want of my trunks I could not accept Mrs. Beckedorff’s invitation to meet Madam Zimmermann, &c., in an evening, on account of not having clean things; but she is so kind as to call on me sometimes among all the hurry she is engaged in at present with the Princess Augusta.

Mr. Gisewell came a few days ago to see me; he lives a little way out of town, and poor Mrs. G. keeps her bed, and is hardly ever well; their eldest daughter is happily situated with the Queen of WÜrtemberg, and Mr. Gisewell enjoys a very lucrative situation.

I wish you could conveniently acquaint my nephew, H. Griesbach, as soon as possible, that my brother has received an answer to the letter he sent to Antwerp to the sister of H. Griesbach, and that in the parcel which the messenger will bring will be enclosed her letter to Mr. H. G.

I hope you will make Miss Baldwin write me soon a long account how yourself and all around and with you are, but pray let it be a favourable one, and remember me to all (who are so good as to inquire after me) most cordially, and believe me,

P.S.—We have had a few days’ very severe frost; to-morrow I shall unpack my thermometer; I suppose I shall find the difference between a German and an English winter, though they make the rooms hot enough with their stoves; but then I am afraid of firing their chimneys, and we have no water, though the police have demanded that every housekeeper shall be provided with eight buckets of water in their kitchen; besides, the price of fuel is enormous, owing to the French having destroyed all the forests.

My dear Nephew,—

The parcel I am packing up contains so many odds and ends, that I think it will be necessary to give you an inventory of them. The most interesting to you, I think, will be the three letters from your dear father (which I found among my brother Alexander’s papers), both on account of the handwriting and their containing some accounts of the busy life of the times in which they were written.

Of the philosophical work, I will say nothing further than that I am curious to know if I have sent you sense, or nonsense, that I may know in future how to trust my informer; I am only sorry I could not send them bound, but they came too late from Leipsic for that purpose. In the small cover (with your little man looking through the telescope) is a shade of your Uncle Alex., which you will be so good as to give to your mother, who (if I remember right) wished for the same, after it had been packed up, and she will perhaps be so good as to send the letter to Mr. Henry Griesbach the first time anybody goes to Windsor.

So much for business, and on the other side I will talk a little of myself. But it is a poor account I can give of myself at present, and the worst of it is that I cannot hope for better times. I am still unsettled, and cannot get my books and papers in any order, for it is always noon before I am well enough to do anything, and then visitors run away with the rest of the day till the dinner hour (which is two o’clock). Two or three evenings in each week are spoiled by company. And at the heavens is no getting, for the high roofs of the opposite houses.

But within my room I am determined nothing shall be wanting that can please my eye. Exactly facing me is a bookcase placed on a bureau, to which I will have some glass doors made, so that I can see my books. Opposite this, on a sofa, I am seated, with a sofa-table and my new writing-desk before me, but what good I shall do there the future must tell.

Many more of such like transactions I was going to communicate to you, but I am interrupted by the carpenter (our Andrews), who is come to do some jobs for me, so for this once you will be released from my nonsense.

But one thing I must yet add, which is that you will accept my heartfelt wishes for your health, happiness, and prosperity throughout the coming year and for many more hereafter, in which my brother and sister are joining most sincerely, to yourself and Lady Herschel, and believe me, my dear nephew,

My dearest Nephew,—

I take the earliest opportunity I have to acquaint you with having received a letter from Mr. H. Goltermann, accompanied with a draft for £2 4s. 6d., which is already received and safely deposited in my writing-desk. But the information that he had had the pleasure of seeing you in good health afforded me the greatest satisfaction, and he further promised me to forward the parcel to you in Downing Street, which was particularly pleasing to me, as I wished to avoid the sending backward and forward by blundering coachmen.

On the 5th of this month I received your letter without date, but conclude it was written about the same time with those of your dear mother and cousin Mary, dated the 9th and fifteenth of January. I delayed answering them (and must do so still for the present) because I knew that all mails were detained this side of the sea.

One passage in your letter affected me much, it was gratifying to me and unexpected: “... speaks of your English life, &c.... But now that you have left the scene of your labours you have the satisfaction of knowing that they are duly appreciated by those you leave behind.” But I can hardly hope that those favourable impressions should be lasting, or rather not be effaced by my hasty departure; but believe me I would not have gone without at least having made the offer of my service for some time longer to you, my dear nephew, had I not felt that it would be in vain to struggle any longer against age and infirmity, and though I had no expectation that the change from the pure country air in which I had lived the best part of my life, to that of the closest part of my native city, would be beneficial to my health and happiness, I preferred it to remaining where I should have had to bewail my inability of making myself useful any longer.

I hope you and Lady H. have not suffered by the severity of the weather; to me it has certainly done no good. I am grown much thinner than I was six months ago; when I look at my hands they put me so in mind of what your dear father’s were, when I saw them tremble under my eyes, as we latterly played at backgammon together. Good night! dear nephew, I will say the rest to-morrow.

By way of postscript I only beg you will give my love and many thanks to your dear mother and cousin for their kind letters; and if the latter will continue from time to time to inform me of all your well-being, I shall equally feel gratified, for it is no matter from which hand I receive the comfortable information.

My dearest Nephew,—

I hasten to send this sheet, which is but this moment come to hand, and the post within an hour of leaving Hanover. I begin to fear that I shall not hear from you till you send me an acknowledgment of having received the certificate, which we are not able to obtain till after the 10th of April and 10th of October, but January and July it is the 5th. I assure you I would rather go without the money than be so long without hearing from you, or have a line to express your pleasure for the present I offered you and Mr. Babbage by sending the books by the Christmas messenger, of which I, at this moment, have no information that they have been delivered. By the Easter messenger I have sent some mettwurst [a Hanoverian delicacy], which I hope you and your dear mother will find good, but when they are once cut they must be eaten soon, else they are dry and lose all their flavour.

The Germans are very busy about the fame of your dear father; there does not pass a month but something appears in print, and Dr. Groskopf saw in den gelehrten Zeitungen that Professor Pfaff had translated all your dear father’s papers from the Phil. Trans. into German, and which will be published in Dresden. I wish he had left it for some good astronomer to do the same. Pray let me know how you and your dear mother are in health; I am not well, but have a severe cold at present, but am always and still your affectionate aunt,

The following letter from the Princess Sophia of Gloucester is a pleasing memorial of the kindness and amiability of which Miss Herschel experienced so many proofs while she lived at Slough:—

My dear Miss Herschel,—

Your obliging attention in sending the Astronomical Almanack to me I am very sensible of, and at the same time that I return my best thanks for this flattering mark of your recollection, I must express my regret that I am not possessed of more knowledge and leisure, that I might profit sufficiently by your kindness in endeavouring to instruct me. I was very happy to learn that you had reached your native land in safety, and I sincerely form every wish that your health may be long preserved to you!

May I request you to remember me kindly to Mr. and to Miss Beckedorff, and to be assured yourself of the true esteem and regard with which I remain, my dear Miss Herschel,

London, June 16, 1823.

My dearest Nephew,—

I had intended to write you a long and very learned epistle, but I am just now informed that the messenger will leave Hanover within a very few hours, and I must content myself with giving you the outlines of what I would have said.

I believe I have mentioned in a former letter to your mother that a Professor Pfaff has announced his intention of giving a translation of your father’s papers. It runs in my head that this professor is but a Jackanapes,^[32] who will spoil the broth,^[32] and I wished he would not meddle with what he cannot understand. But I thought it but right to inform you of what is come to my knowledge, particularly as I was told it had been announced again that the translation would appear with corrections and explanations. Dr. Luthmer (in the “Ast. Jahrbuch” for this year you may see a paper by this gentleman) told me since there were two professors of that name (brothers), one an astrologer, and if it was the latter he would make nonsense of it.

Miss Baldwin mentioned you were at Cambridge on the business of having your father’s papers printed. I think it could not be amiss if something of your intention could be mentioned in the Edinburgh Quarterly Review, which appears here at Hanover, and of course throughout Germany, that it may be known that your father’s labours are in yours and of course in the most able hands to make remarks on them. I only wish to draw your attention this way, but say nothing.

I have mentioned it over and over again that I was so unlucky as to lose the paper on my journey you entrusted to my care for Prof. Gauss. If you have another copy to spare give it to Mr. Goltermann for the return of the messenger; for he has heard of your good intention, and laments my negligence; I shall be introduced to him shortly, when he comes through Hanover again, where he passed through about a fortnight ago on a journey of observation, tending to establish some new discovery of his own, of which we are soon to know more. The theodolite has something to do with it; so much I snapt up in a company of learned ladies who, within these last two months, have taken me into their circle. But I am imitating Robinson Crusoe, who kept up his consequence by keeping out of sight as much as possible when he acted the governor, and when they want to know anything of me, I say I cannot tell!... I did nothing for my brother but what a well-trained puppy dog would have done, that is to say, I did what he commanded me.

I send you a small publication which I think must interest you, but if it contains anything which is new to you I cannot tell. I shall, however, obtain what I very much long for, viz., to see your handwriting, for surely you will write me a line of thanks?

I am in general too unwell to sit much at the writing-table, and have not been able to do anything which could be of use to you. The letters which you will receive under cover to you I hope you will do me the favour to cause them to be safely delivered. They are sealed already, else I should have added a P.S. to your dear mother of the following, viz., that I was agreeably surprised by a letter this morning from the Princessin Sophia of Gloucester, and that my brother’s family are all well at present; my brother in particular makes work for the tailor to let out his waistcoats, and they are happy to have their eldest daughter for a fortnight with them on a visit; she is a truly interesting little delicate creature just turned of forty, and has one daughter fit to be married, two sons preparing for the university, and the youngest weaned a month ago; she is to me a wonder when I look at her, she reads English fluently, French she was used to speak like her mother tongue from her infancy.

I am interrupted, and must seal up the packet.

My dearest Nephew,—

As a proof of my being still among the number of the living, you will perhaps not dislike to see my own handwriting added to that of the three gentlemen who signed my certificate. But I am at a loss for a subject which should be interesting to you, because, hearing so seldom from you, I begin to fear my correspondence may turn out to be troublesome. But still I long to hear a little oftener that you and your dear mother are well; for since April eleventh (date of Lady H.’s letter) I have had no assurance of the same on which I could depend.

I wish often that I could see what you were doing, that I might give you a caution (if necessary) not to overwork yourself like your dear father did. I long to hear that the forty-foot instrument is safely got down; your father, and Uncle A. too, have had many hair-breadth escapes from being crushed by the taking in and out of the mirror; but God preserve you, my dear nephew, says

P.S.—My brother and family join me in many compliments to you and your dear mother. They are all well; I am the only one who is complaining, but I think I have a right to that preference, for I am the oldest.

Dear 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 these 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. There is a Mr. Pfaff, a respectable mathematician, and I hope it is he who undertakes the work. If you can learn more particulars, pray send them to me. 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.

I am much obliged to you for the book on temperaments you were so kind as to send me, which seems interesting, but I have not had time to read it through....

P.S.—Your books on animal magnetism, and that for Babbage, arrived safe.... I wish you would procure and send me Pfaff’s translation of my father’s papers as soon as published. Write as often as you can. Your letters are very interesting. I wish I were a better correspondent, but my time is so occupied, I know not where to turn.

P.P.S.—Babbage has had £1,500 granted him by Government to enable him to execute his engine, which is very curious. A report is strongly current of Captain Parry’s successful arrival at Valparaiso; it comes in a very probable form.

My dearest Nephew,—

I thank you most heartily for your kind care and punctuality in sending my remittance, and am only sorry to trouble you so often; I might have acknowledged the receipt thereof by the last post, but I wished first to enable myself to give the following information. Johann Wilhelm Pfaff, professor, in Erlangen, is the same who intends to translate your father’s papers, but those only which he can get a copy of. The Philosophical Transactions, I am told, are not within his reach. You may depend on my sending you whatever may come out as soon as it makes its appearance.

I can easily imagine how little time you can have to spare for writing to me when once you have entered on that mass of your father’s observations contained in his journals, &c.... I think the temporary index (such as it is) will in many instances be of service to you, but I wish to point out here that about the year 1800 there was a change made in the titles of some of the books. The first volume of miscellaneous observations was then called Journal No. 10, &c., ... so if the index directs you to January 24th, 1797 M. (for M. read J.) I think a memorandum of this will be found in the cover or beginning of the index, but I am not certain.

You have truly gratified me by sending the inscription of the monument,^[33] for such subjects only are capable of interesting my waking thoughts and nightly dreams. I was going to give you an idea of what they are; but why should I communicate grief?

The paper for Gauss is gone to GÖttingen. I have directed it to Professor Harding, who is the next to Gauss in the astronomical department, as Gauss is not yet returned from his journey of measurements. I made a few extracts from the paper^[34] by way of having something to be delighted with, but am glad such a thing was not invented fifty years ago, for then my existence would have been of no use at all at all.

I am amusing myself with having the seven-foot mounted by Hohenbaum, though I have not even a prospect of a window for a whole constellation, but it shall stand in my room and be my monument—as the forty-foot is yours. When Hohenbaum comes for a trifling direction, we generally do not separate till dinner, or some other interruption puts a stop to our conversation; for this man is never tired when speaking of your father’s inventful imaginations and the readiness with which everything was executed.

I have not above six hours’ tolerable ease out of the twenty-four, and not one hour’s sleep, and yet I wish to live a little longer, that I might make you a more correct catalogue of the 2,500 nebulÆ, which is not even begun, but hope to be able to make it my next winter’s amusement.

I was much pleased with the partial success of Mr. Babbage in having something granted towards going on with his grand ideas.

Dear Aunt,—

The last time I wrote to you from Slough I little expected that my next would be dated from the foot of Etna—but I mean this to be the farthest point of my wanderings, and from hence to turn my steps northwards. I am not without some hopes that my time will so far serve as to enable me to pay you a visit at Hanover, as I long very much to see you among your and my Hanoverian friends.... My mother will have told you of my arrangements,—of the alteration which my plans of life have undergone (and for which I see every day more reason to be thankful), and of my present excursion, so that the date of this will not surprise you. To-morrow I hope to see the sun set from the top of Etna, and will keep this open to give you an account of my excursion there. Meanwhile let me congratulate you on the good accounts my mother gives me of your present state of health and spirits, the knowledge of which has enabled me to give real pleasure to many who, when they heard I was related to you, enquired with the greatest interest respecting you. Among the rest I may mention M. Arago, of the Observatory at Paris, and M. Fourrier, the secretary of the Institute, who has just been reading the Éloge of my dear father at a meeting of that body, in which I am sure (from the associations I had with him, and the written communications that passed between us on the subject) your own name will stand associated with his in a manner that cannot fail to be gratifying to you. I have not (of course, as I quitted Paris before it was read, or even written) seen it, but the man is of the right sort, and I will endeavour to procure copies of it for you and my uncle. Indeed, at Paris I find (as where do I not find it?) universal justice rendered to my father’s merits, and a degree of admiration excited by the mention of his name that cannot fail to be gratifying to me, as his son. In fact, I find myself received wherever I go by all men of science, for his sake, with open arms, and I find introductions perfectly unnecessary. At Turin I sent up my card to Prof. Plana, of the Observatory, one of the most eminent mathematicians of the age, who received me like a brother, and made my stay at Turin, which I prolonged a week for the sake of his society, very pleasant. He married a niece of Lagrange (not of Lalande), and both he and his wife were full of enquiries about my “celebrated sister,” (for everybody seems to think me your brother, instead of nephew), and made me tell them a thousand particulars about you. The same reception, but, if possible, still more friendly, and the same curiosity (and, I may add, the same mistake) I met with at Modena, from Professor Amici, an artist and a man of science of the first eminence. He is the only man who has, since my father, bestowed great pains on the construction of specula, and I do assure you that his ten-foot telescopes with twelve-inch mirrors are of very extraordinary perfection. Among other of your enquiring friends I should not omit the AbbÉ Piazzi, whom I found ill in bed at Palermo, and who is a fine respectable old man, though I am afraid not much longer for this world. He remembered you personally, having himself visited Slough.

Naples, Aug. 20th, 1824.—I take the first moment of leisure to proceed with this. I made the ascent of Etna without particular difficulty, though with excessive fatigue. The ascent from Catania is through the village of Nicolosi, about ten miles from Catania, almost every step of which is covered with the tremendous stream of lava which, in 1669, burst from the flanks of the mountain, near Nicolosi, and overwhelmed the city. Here I found a M. Gemellaro, who was so good as to make corresponding observations of the barometer and thermometer during my absence, while his brother observed below at Catania, and I carried up my mountain barometer and other instruments to the summit. From Nicolosi the ascent becomes rugged and laborious, first through a broad belt of fine oak forest, which encircles the mountain like a girdle about its middle, and affords some beautiful romantic scenery—when this is passed we soon reach the limits of vegetation, and a long desolate scorched slope, knee-deep in ashes, extends for about five miles to a little hut, where I passed the night (a glorious starlight one) with the barometer at 21·307 in.—and next morning mounted the crater by a desperate scramble up a cone of lava and ashes, about 1,000 feet high. The sunrise from this altitude, and the view of Sicily and Calabria, which is gradually disclosed, is easier conceived than described. On the highest point of the crater I was enveloped in suffocating sulphurous vapours, and was glad enough to make my observation (bar. 21·400) and get down. By this the altitude appears to be between 10 and 11,000 feet. I reached Catania the same night, almost dead with the morning’s scramble and the dreadful descent of near thirty miles, where the mules (which can be used for a considerable part of the way) could scarce keep their feet.

Florence, Aug. 16th, 1824.—In the hurry and bustle of travelling one is obliged to write by snatches when one can.... I hope to hear from you at all events when I reach England if I should not see you first, of which I begin now to have serious doubts, having been so terribly retarded in my Sicilian journey, and at Naples, on my return, by the illness of a friend.

P.S.—Have you heard how M. Pfaff’s translation proceeds? I wrote to him from Cattagione, in Sicily.

My dear Aunt,—

I had originally intended to have gone to Switzerland from Inspruck, or from this place, having a great desire to visit the north of Switzerland, and to make certain observations among the Alps, but my wish to see you once more, to assure myself and to be able to report to my mother how I find you—to pay my uncle Dietrich a visit—and, though last, not least, to see my father’s birth-place—these considerations outweigh the attractions of Switzerland, and, although the increase this dÉtour will make in the length of my journey homewards is so considerable as to limit my stay in Hanover to two or three days at the utmost, I shall at least have had the satisfaction of not neglecting an opportunity which may never occur again.

The time when I hope to arrive I cannot precisely fix, as it will depend on circumstances which may occur in my route, having so arranged as to take in a variety of objects interesting in various ways, thus:—I shall go somewhat out of my way to visit Professor Pfaff, at Erlangen, and I hope also to find Mr. Encke at Seeberg, Mr. Lindenau at Gotha, Messrs. Gauss and Harding at GÖttingen, &c. Moreover, I hope there will not take place a resurrection among the bones in the cave at Bayreuth before I get there. These things necessarily interrupt post haste, besides which there are always delays in passing frontiers, and accidents happening to wheels, springs, screws, &c. Allowing for these, however, I think it cannot be less than a fortnight, nor more than three weeks from the date of this when I shall have the happiness of once more shaking you by the hand, and I need not say what satisfaction it will give me to find yourself and my uncle, Mrs. Herschel and their family in good health, as well as our good friends the Beckedorffs, Detmerings and Haussmann, with whom it will be a great pleasure to me to renew my acquaintance. You have heard, I daresay, through my mother, of our poor friend, Miss Deluc’s death. Mrs. Beckedorff will have been much grieved at it.

I hope you have not forgotten your English, as I find myself not quite so fluent in this language as I expected. In fact, since leaving Italy, I have so begarbled my German with Italian that it is unintelligible both to myself and to everyone that hears it; and what is very perverse, that though when in Italy I could hardly talk Italian fit to be heard, I can now talk nothing else, and whenever I want a German word, pop comes the Italian one in its place. I made the waiter to-day stare (he being a Frenchman) by calling to him, “Wollen Sie avere la bontÀ den acete zu apportaren!” But this, I hope, will soon wear off.

My dearest Nephew,—

I hardly know how to thank you sufficiently for your valuable letters, especially for the one dated the 17th of this month, as I am now at last assured that my eyes shall once more behold the continuation of your dear father. For the remaining days of my life can only by a few hours’ conversation with you be made tolerable, by affording me your direction how to finish a general catalogue of the 2,500 nebulÆ, &c., which would have otherwise caused us both a tedious and vexatious correspondence in the future.

I anxiously forbore to express my wishes for seeing you, for fear it might have had any influence on the direction of your intended tour. But now all will be well, and I shall only say that we are counting the days and hours until we shall have the happiness of seeing you, and you will, on entering Hanover, have only to direct your postilion to the Markt Strasse, No. 453, where the arms of my brother and sister, as well as mine, are longing to receive you, and till then

P.S.—I beg my respects to ... Blumenbach, and I shall ever remember with many thanks the visit with which he honoured me when last at Hanover.

My dear Lady Herschel,—

My dear nephew has now been gone a week, and I follow him in idea every inch he is moving farther from us, and think he must now be near the water. I am at this moment in the greatest panic imaginable, for we have had all the week much rain, and now it blows a perfect hurricane. I shall not send this till I have heard from you that the dear traveller is safely at home, for it would be cruel to augment your anxiety, which I know you are feeling till you see him again.

[Here follows a long history of the younger members of the Griesbach family, with details of the events of seventy years before.]

... I have not yet done, my dear Lady Herschel, and shall not be easy till I have given some little account of my brother’s [Dietrich’s] family, merely for yours and my dear nephew’s gratification; for, from his kind inquiries if I wanted anything? if he could do nothing for me? it seemed as if he thought he could not do enough for us. My answer was nothing! nothing! and this I could say with truth, as at my age and situation (which is truly respectable) I should not know what to do with more without lavishing it on others, where it would only create habits of luxury and extravagance. The time of our dear nephew’s being here was too short for much confidential conversation, else I wished to have made him better acquainted with mine and my brother Dietrich’s sentiments concerning the noble bequest of our lamented brother, of which Dietrich had not the most distant hope or expectation (for I believe they never had any conversation on the subject), as I am sure his way of thinking is similar to mine, that brothers and sisters (such as we were), each beginning the world with nothing but health and abilities for getting our bread, ought to feel shame at taking from the other if he should by uncommon exertion and perseverance have raised himself to affluence. According to this notion I refused my dear brother’s proposal (at the time he resolved to enter the married state) of making me independent, and desired him to ask the king for a small salary to enable me to continue his assistant. £50 were granted to me, with which I was resolved to live without the assistance of my brother; but when nine quarters were left unpaid I was obliged to apply to him, as he had charged me not to go to anyone else. In 1803, you and my brother insisted on my having £10 quarterly added to my income, which I certainly should not have accepted if I had not been in a panic for my friends at Hanover, which had just then been taken by the French.

Dearest Nephew,—

Your welcome letter, dated Slough, Oct. 22nd, had not only the most beneficial effect on my spirits, but gave the greatest pleasure to the whole family, for I find Groskopf had been under great apprehension for your safety from the many reported accidents among the shipping on the English coasts. Count MÜnster, it is said, lies dangerously ill in consequence of the fright he suffered on his passage (his lady and his children were with him), and Groskopf imagined he must have left Calais at the same time with you. But, thank God, all is well! All I meet with lament your leaving us so soon. Gauss has been here, and they say he was quite inconsolable at having missed you. Hauptmann MÜller was charged with compliments, which he intends to deliver himself if I will give him leave. To be sure! and Olbers, whom Dr. MÜhry saw in Bremen, was sorry not to have seen you, as you had been so near. The Duke of Cambridge, whom Dietrich met in the street, asked about you, but we could not trace you farther than Antwerp. I believe half Hanover would have been gratified if you could have made a longer stay with us. Dr. Groskopf will one day come to England I am afraid, and talk you deaf; he is, however, a very good sort of man, and desires me to tell you that if you wanted any books you might command him, he would send you anything you wanted.

What gives me the most pleasure in reading over your letter, is your telling me that your dear mother is not in the least altered in her looks, and that she has been so considerate as to give me in her own handwriting the assurance that you are extremely well. That I may yet often hear the same, wishes your most affectionate aunt,

P.S.—[To Lady Herschel].... My knowing so well to what noble purposes an experimental philosopher may use his fortune, it would make me very unhappy if my dear nephew was cramped in his. And if I could do any good by relinquishing my annuity I would leave Hanover and live on my pension in the country most willingly, and am only sorry that I have no other means of showing the care and affection I have for my dear nephew. But I beg no other notice may be taken of all I have written than often—when my nephew or yourself cannot write—to inform me by the hand of Miss B—— of all your joys and sorrows, that I may, though at this distance, sympathise with the same.

If my nephew cannot be easily supplied with the Berliner Jahrbuch, I beg he will let me know, for I have got them by me, and can send them by the messenger in January.

Dear Aunt,—

My mother and self received your welcome letter, and so far from finding, as you seem to fear, the details you enter into tedious, I assure you we found them highly interesting. The sacrifices you have individually made for your family are above all praise. It would ill become me, who am a rich man (I mean in that sense only in which any man can truly be called rich,—having enough to satisfy all my moderate and rational wants), to deprive you of any, the smallest part of your income. On the contrary, it would rather be my duty, were it insufficient, to add to it, but the account you give of your situation, corroborated as it is by what I have myself seen of it, sets at rest all apprehensions on that score.

I hope the Catalogue of NebulÆ goes on as you wish. I shall have little time now for astronomical observations, being become a resident in London in consequence of taking on myself the duties of Secretary to the Royal Society.

I have sent the lenses you wished for, and also two prints of the king and queen of the Sandwich Islands, which I would be much obliged to you if you would transmit to Prof. Blumenbach, with my compliments. They are the best that have appeared, and are considered striking likenesses.

My dearest Nephew,—

I am now writing out the Catalogue of NebulÆ, and am at zone 30°, and hope to finish it for the Easter messenger; but my health is so wretched that I often am obliged to lay by for a day or two. Dr. Groskopf desires his compliments, and I am to tell you that when next you come to Hanover again he can not only procure you a sight of Leibnitz’s MS., but leave to take some home with you. I am in quest of a good print of Leibnitz for you, and hope soon to hear of one, which shall accompany Dr. Franklin’s, which Dietrich lately found among his music.

Graf Rapfstein brought me lately the Moniteur of December, containing the history of your dear father’s life, as read in June, etc., at full length. It is the only copy of the Court paper coming here at Hanover to the French Ambassador, and I was obliged to return it to the same; but Groskopf has promised to procure these copies from Paris, that we may all have one. Miss Beckedorf read it to me by way of translation, and we both cried over it, and could not withhold a tear of gratitude to the author for having so feelingly adhered to truth in the details of your dear father’s discoveries, etc....

But if I have understood Miss B.’s translation right I could point out three instances where too great a stress is laid on the assistance of others, which withdraws the attention too much from the difficulties your father had to surmount.

(1.) The favours of monarchs ought to have been mentioned, but once would have been enough.

(2 & 3.) Of Alexander and me can only be said that we were but tools, and did as well as we could; but your father was obliged first to turn us into those tools with which we could work for him; but if too much is said in one place let it pass; I have, perhaps, deserved it in another by perseverance and exertions beyond female strength! Well done!

With compliments to all friends, particularly Mr. and Mrs. Babbage,

Poor Sir William Watson! [whose death had lately been announced to her.]

The birthday of my dear nephew! who I wish may enjoy in health and prosperity many returns of this day. I will drink your health, and on the 16th of this month you may return the compliment, for then I shall have completed my seventy-fifth year.

I received the parcel, not till the last day of February, which contained your letter of December 4th, with the prints of the King and Queen, which I delivered to the Regierungsrath B——, to forward to his father at GÖttingen.

The first part of your letter is filled with expressions of the most feeling kindness towards me, and I will pass them over without attempting to describe what I felt on reading the same, and merely for yours and your dear mother’s satisfaction I will answer as in the way of business all you wished to know. November 22nd I received the £50 Lady H. paid over for me to Mr. Goltermann, for which I returned the day after (23rd) the formal receipt in a letter to your mother, and hope it may not have been lost (for I generally write what comes uppermost).... I am ready with the Catalogue of NebulÆ, and have only to write, not a Preface, for I shall write what I have to say at the end.... I wish, in case you were not on the spot to receive the box from Mr. Goltermann yourself, you would before you left town beg Mr. G. to keep it till you called for it yourself; for I must confess that from the day I let the eight manuscript books and catalogue of NebulÆ, and catalogue of stars drawn out of the eight books of sweeps, go out of my hands, I shall have no peace till I know they are safe in your own, where they ought to be. If you can think of anything else I can send you, I beg you will let me know, for a large parcel is no more trouble than a lesser one to put up. But I shall write again when I have packed up the box, and if you still wish for relics of your dear father’s hand-writing, I have a great mind to part with his pocket-book (to you only), which he used before we left Bath. There are only a few pencil memoranda, but they show that music did not only occupy his thoughts, but that timber for the erection of the thirty-foot telescope of which the casting of the mirror was pretty far advanced was thought of.

But now I must say a few words to your dear mother, but I wish soon to hear that you have received this, and also a letter I sent from here on the 14th January. I hope it is not lost.

I am not very well pleased with my English, but have no time to write what I have to say over again, but this I hope you will be able to understand—that

My dear Lady Herschel,—

I received your letter of the 4th December, and it relieved me of much anxiety I felt from a fear that the subject of my long letter of November 8th might have injured me in your or my nephew’s opinion, and I had nothing to console me in this uncertainty, but a line from Mr. Goltermann that he had seen you in good health and received £50 from you, which I received the 22nd November here at Hanover, and sent my thanks and the usual receipt the next day. But still I remained in uncertainty, till by a letter from Miss B. of 15th December, you kindly sent me your thanks for the very letters which caused me such fears.

But it grieves me you should yourself take the trouble of writing to me; the least kind expression from you dictated to Miss B. is sufficient to make me happy for many days after. I hope she will not be taken from you again for a long time, for she is the most cheerful companion in health and consoling one in sickness you could have about you.

I was sorry to hear by a letter from Mr. H. Griesbach to my brother that you had had another attack of the gout, but God grant I may hear soon it may have been of short duration. Daily we come to hear of the departure of a friend or some one we know, but at our time of life it cannot be otherwise, for many of those we knew were older than ourselves, and it is painful to see when we at last are left to stand (or lie) alone, which is often the case with a single person; for no attention can equal or be more cheering than what comes from the heart of an affectionate child. But no more of this; if we must grieve, there is the comfort we shall not grieve much longer.

The death of my eldest nephew I lament sincerely, for he was deserving to have enjoyed the prosperity of his children some years longer, but by a letter I had from Miss G. I was gratified to know that they had found (for the present) so noble a support from the King and from the excellent Countess of Harcourt. As to the exit of poor F. Griesbach, it gave me more joy than pain; for nothing but the grave could relieve him from wretchedness; and nothing but that would rouse his posterity to a sense of their duty, which is to work for an honest livelihood; even the youngest is old enough to do so, and I hope to hear that they may awake from their dreams of commissions in the army and midshipmen in the navy. The lot of the children of a poor musician and descendants of a menial servant (even to a king) is not to look too high, but trust to his own good behaviour and serving faithfully those who can employ them; then they will not want encouragement.

This is the way I compose myself, for help I cannot anybody any longer, and it hurts me, for I am too feeble to think much of these kind of things. The 4th April goes the messenger, and my nephew will receive my handy works and a few little publications. I have yet some publications to make which will take me some time, to go with the catalogue: and then I shall have nothing to put me in mind of the hours I spent with my dear brother at the telescopes, and for that reason I keep the five printed vols. of my brother’s papers, and read them over once more before I send them to my nephew, and besides, it would be too much at once, for books are heavy.

Farewell, my dear Lady H., and remember me to Miss B., who, I hope, will be good to me and write often to

P.S.—Mr. H—— is released from his plague, for his wife is dead.

My dear Nephew,—

I hope the MS. Catalogue of NebulÆ and that of the stars, which have been observed in the series of sweeps along with the eight volumes from which they have been drawn out, will not unfrequently be of use to you.

The gauges were brought immediately after observations into a book called “Register of Star Gauges,” which was kept with the “Register of Sweeps.” Observations and remarks on various subjects will often be found as memorandums, made during or at the end of a sweep, to which the general index may serve as a direction—as for instance under the head of zodiacal lights—the index points out twelve different sweeps in which they were observed.

N.B.—Let it be remembered that the memorandums in the transcript of the sweeps between ""——"" are mine, and must be confided in accordingly.

At the end of the Catalogue of NebulÆ I have put a list of memorandums to the catalogue of omitted stars, and index to Flamsteed’s Observations, contained in his second vol. They are properly not all to be called errata, but mem. of errors, which could only be solved by later observations, &c., &c.

All your father’s papers from the Phil. Trans., which are bound in five volumes, and in which I have carried all corrections (in the Catalogues of NebulÆ) I could find, I must keep a little longer, but they shall come safe to your hands—along with Bode’s and Wollaston’s catalogues, when my eyes have robbed me of the pleasure of reading—for which misfortune I am in daily fear.

Dear Aunt,—

I received this afternoon your most valuable packet containing your labours of the last year, which I shall prize, and more than prize—shall use myself, and make useful to others. A week ago I had the twenty-foot directed on the nebulÆ in Virgo, and determined afresh the right ascensions and polar distances of thirty-six of them. These curious objects (having now nearly finished the double stars) I shall now take into my especial charge—nobody else can see them. I hope very soon (in a fortnight or three weeks) to be able to transmit to you and to MM. Gauss and Harding our work (Mr. South’s and my own) on the double stars, in which you will find some of my father’s most interesting discoveries placed beyond the reach of doubt. It will contain measures of the position and distance of 380 double stars. But Mr. South, who is an industrious astronomer (almost as much so as yourself), has just sent me complete and accurate measures of 279 more, making in all 659. Among these we have now verified not less than seventeen connected in binary systems in the way pointed out by my father, and twenty-eight at least in which no doubt of a material change having taken place can exist. M. Struve, at Dorpat, and M. Amici, in Italy, have also taken up the subject of double stars, and are prosecuting it with vigour.

I am particularly obliged to you for my father’s letters and pocket-book—they are to me a real treasure. The style of the Éloge in the Moniteur is very inferior to what I expected from Fourier; but on the whole it contains nothing materially untrue. The publications enclosed were very acceptable. I wish my uncle had not confined himself to a mere catalogue of insects, but had told us a little of their habits. Of Leibnitz’s MSS. more hereafter....

The mettwursts are excellent. The packets to my mother and Mary shall be sent....

My dear Nephew,—

I must content myself with only writing a few lines by way of thanking you for your very interesting letter, which has taken all the care from my mind which I felt for the fate of the MS.

Before the box left Hanover, I received a very kind letter from Hofrath Blumenbach, in which was one enclosed to you; I hope it is come to hand, though I am still in doubt about your direction, and for that reason kept the letter near a fortnight before I parted with it.

You give me hope of receiving some of your and Mr. South’s works for Gauss and Harding. I know no way of sending them than through Mr. Goltermann by the quarterly messenger, and that it will be well for you to make some inquiry beforehand about the time he is likely to leave England.

The Duke of Cambridge will, within a month, be in England; perhaps you will meet with him; he is a great admirer of you. Last Saturday, between the acts of the concert, he asked me many questions about you. I wish I had had your letter two days sooner, I should then have known better how to answer him. He enquired if you were much engaged with astronomy? I said you were a deep mathematician, which embraced all, &c., ... then he asked if you studied chemistry? answer, very much! you had built yourself a laboratorium at Slough, had a house in town for three years, was secretary of the Royal Society, would probably, in the vacation, be at Slough, &c., &c., and in return he told me that he heard from everybody you were a very learned philosopher; and if I tell you that the Duke of Cambridge is the favourite of all who know him, I think I have made you acquainted with one another.

My brother intends soon to write a few words about insects himself, which is almost the only object with which he amuses himself. It is well he does not see the word amuses, for I suppose it should be sublime study, for whenever he catches a fly with a leg more than usual, he says it is as good as catching a comet! Do you think so?

Perhaps I may have soon an opportunity of sending by Mr. Quintain a German translation of Baron Fourier’s “Forlesung.” I must examine first if I have the whole or not; it does not seem bad, but as I do not understand French, which I had only read to me by Miss Beckedorff, I can be no judge; but I think you will not be displeased with it; but at the ending they have not mended it, for it also says I had published all your father’s papers, though nobody will or does believe that; still I would rather that nothing at all had been said about me than say the thing which is impossible; and I shall only fare like Bruce when he pretended to have made the drawings to his publications himself; his having wrote the book, or even having been in Abyssinia, was disbelieved.

I must only add that I am, my dearest nephew,

Sir,

I am almost at a loss how to express my thanks sufficiently for the kind visit with which you honoured me when last in Hanover, for not only the wish of seeing the man of whom I so often had heard my late brother speak in the highest terms of admiration has been at last gratified, but I flatter myself of having found in you, sir, a friend who will do me the kindness of presenting the works of Flamsteed (published in 1725, with my Index to the Observations contained in his second volume) to the Royal Observatory of the Royal Academy of GÖttingen.

The regret I feel at the separation from books which have afforded me so many days interesting employment will be greatly softened by knowing that, referring to the memorandums in the margin of the pages in Flamsteed’s second volume, much time may yet be saved to any astronomer who wishes to consult former observations, and therefore I hope you will pardon the trouble I am thus giving you, and, with the greatest esteem, believe me,

... I know not how it comes that I am so barren of subjects for filling up these pages; my spirits are rather depressed at present on account of my brother’s health, who suffers very frequently much from weakness, so that to combat against infirmities and peevishness (the usual companions of old age) depends entirely on my exertion to bear my share without communication, for unfortunately we are never in the same mind, and with a nervous person of an irritable temper one can only talk of the weather or the flavour of a dish, for which I care not a pin about. But I think I shall do well enough, for I am a subscriber to the plays for two evenings per week, and Thursdays and Saturdays two ladies with long titles are at home. This is what they imagine (I believe) a learned society, or blue-stocking club, of which, to make it complete (for all what I can say), I must make one. I am to have a day too, viz., Tuesday, and I begin to tremble for the end of October, when we are to start, for in the morning I cannot work, and if I gad about all the evenings nothing will be done. But we shall see! one thing I must not forget, there are no gentlemen of the party to set us right; but luckily not much is required,—to talk of Walter Scott, Byron, &c., will go a long way; and I subscribe to an English library, where they have all the monthly reviews and Edinburgh Quarterly, Scott’s works, and a few other novels....

Dear Aunt,—

I have sent by Mr. Goltermann several volumes of Mr. South’s and my paper on double stars, which form the third part of the Philosophical Transactions for 1824. You will, I have no doubt, be gratified to hear that the French Academy of Sciences have thought so well of this work as to give us the prize of astronomy for the present year (a large and handsome gold medal to each of us). Our competitors, it is whispered, were Bessel, Struve, and Pons, the first for his immense catalogue of stars; the second for his observations, also of double stars; the third for his discovery of twenty or thirty comets. Will you, on receiving them, distribute them as follows:—1. Keep the bound copy for yourself; 2. My uncle; 3. M. Harding; 4. M. Gauss; 5. The Royal Society of GÖttingen. The three last, I have no doubt, M. Blumenbach will forward. I was gratified some time back by a short note from Professor Blumenbach, from which I find he received the pictures safely.

I have already found your Catalogue of NebulÆ in zones, very useful in my twenty-foot sweeps, and I mean to get it in order for publication by degrees; but it will take a long time, as it will require a great deal of calculation to render it available as a work of reference.

The permission to examine Leibnitz’s MSS. will be very acceptable to me should I again visit Hanover, but of that I have no immediate prospect. A very intimate friend of mine, Mr. James Grahame, talks of taking up his residence at GÖttingen for the sake of the library of the University. He is writing a history of America. I shall give him a letter to Professor Blumenbach, and shall beg you to introduce him to his son, Regierungsrath B., and perhaps Dr. Groskopf will make him acquainted with Dr. Koch, of the Royal Library at Hanover, who may be able to assist him in his researches.... If there is anything in England you wish for, or that you cannot get so well in Hanover, pray name it, and I will make a point of procuring it....

I have not been doing much in the astronomical way of late—but, en revanche, Mr. South has been hard at work, and has sent a second paper of 460 double stars to the Royal Society. He is returned from Paris, and is now busy erecting an observatory, as he means to stay six months in England, and cannot be so long without star-gazing. I enclose a little thing which I published in Schumacher’s Astronomische Nachrichten which may interest you. Shortly I shall have the pleasure to transmit you some papers on the longitude of Paris, and on the parallax of the fixed stars, which I have now in hand. Do not suppose that I pretend to have discovered parallax, but if it exists to a sensible amount, I think it cannot long remain undiscovered if anybody can be found to put into execution the method I am about to propose, and I hope it will be taken up by astronomers in general.

I have so far perfected the system of sweeping with the twenty-foot that I can now make sure of the polar distances of objects to within 1', and their right ascensions to certainly within 2 of time. I have re-observed a great many of the nebulÆ, and in the course of the few sweeps I have made, have discovered many not in your most useful catalogue. But I am now fixed in town for the winter, and have brought up the said catalogue to consider of the best mode of preparing it for publication, if it meets with your approbation.

Mr. South’s later observations strikingly confirm the results obtained by us jointly respecting the revolving stars, and afford new and very remarkable instances in support of my father’s ideas on this subject. Of one pair (the double star ? Ursa Majoris) I have no doubt we shall soon obtain elliptic elements.

The following is the answer from Professor Gauss to the letter already given:—

Dear Madam,—

Being returned hither a few days ago from a journey that had kept me absent during a month, I found your favour of September 8th, together with your extremely valuable present of Flamsteed’s “Hist. Coel.,” “Atlas Coel.,” and your own catalogue. Be assured that I acknowledge your kindness with the most sincere gratitude, and that these works, so precious by themselves, but much more so by the numerous enrichments from your own hand, shall always be considered as the greatest ornament of the library of our Observatory.

I am very sorry that my absence from GÖttingen has deprived me of the pleasure of seeing Mr. Grahame, who was calling upon me the same day I had set out for my journey. However, I am glad to understand from your nephew’s letter, which Mr. Grahame has left here, that this gentleman intends to return to GÖttingen in the next year.

I cannot express how much I feel happy of having made the personal acquaintance [of one] whose rare zeal and distinguished talents for science are paralleled by the amiability of her character, and I flatter myself that in future, if I find once more an opportunity of staying in Hanover, I shall not be denied the permission to repeat personally the assurance of the high esteem with which I am,

GÖttingen, Sept. 28, 1825.