CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL. 59 



phase of society, of which the family is a factor, where engrossing 

 personal fueling will not continue to be a supreme womanly trait. 



Resuming our history, we find that on the 1st of August, 1782, the 

 Herschels with their instruments and furniture arrived at Datchet, and 

 took possession of a large and neglected old house, with garden and 

 grounds overgrown with weeds. Having no female servant, Miss 

 Herschel was shown the shops by the gardener's wife, and her 

 practical sense was at once shocked at the prices of everything, from 

 coal to butcher's meat. But her brother was not disturbed by such 

 considerations. He had stables where he could grind mirrors, a roomy 

 laundry for a library, a large grass-plot for his instruments, and "he 

 gayly assured her that they could live on eggs and bacon, which 

 would cost nothing to speak of, now they were really in the country." 

 After a couple of months the younger brother went back to Bath to 

 resume his occupations in music ; and it was this separation which 

 awakened Caroline to a consciousness of what she was doing in giving 

 up the prospect of becoming independent in the musical profession. 

 But she reconciled herself to the situation by the thought that her 

 brother William could not do without her, and that she had not spirit 

 enough to throw herself upon the public without his protection. Soon 

 after Alexander's departure, William had to go away for a week or 

 ten days, and she was left alone. She thus describes her feelings in 

 entering upon her new work : 



" In my brother's absence from home, I was, of course, left solely to amuse' 

 myself with my own thoughts, which were anything but cheerful. I found I 

 was to be trained for an assistant astronomer, and, by way of encouragement, a 

 telescope adapted for ' sweeping,' consisting of a tube with two glasses, such as 

 are commonly used in a 'finder,' was given me. I was 'to sweep for comets,' 

 and I see by my journal that I began August 22, 1782, to write down and de- 

 scribe all remarkable appearances I saw in my ' sweeps,' which were horizontal. 

 But it was not till the last two months of the same year that I felt the least en- 

 couragement to spend the starlight nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or 

 hoar-frost, without a human being near enough to be within call ; for I knew 

 too little of the real heavens to be able to point out every object so as to find it 

 again without losing too much time by consulting the atlas. But all these 

 troubles were removed when I knew my brother to be at no great distance, 

 making observations with his various instruments on double stars, planets, etc., 

 and I could have his assistance immediately when I found a nebula, or cluster 

 of stars, of which I intended to give a catalogue ; .but, at the end of 1783, I had 

 only marked fourteen, when my sweeping was interrupted by being employed 

 to write down my brother's observations with the large twenty-foot. I had, 

 however, the comfort to see that my brother was satisfied with my endeavors to 

 assist him when he wanted another person, either to run to the clocks, write 

 down a memorandum, fetch and carry instruments, or measure the ground with 

 poles, etc., of which something of the kind every moment would occur." 



The summer months of 1783 were spent in getting the large twenty- 

 foot ready for the next winter. After some account of her brother's 

 many and incessant occupations, she says he also threw away some 



