68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



breaking up of the milky-way was in it, I said 'Yes,' and he looked content. I 

 cannot help remembering this circumstance : it was the last time I was sent to 

 the library on such an occasion." 



Her brother William died on the 25th of August, and in the fol- 

 lowing October she settled in Hanover with her brother Dietrich. 



When her brother died she was herself in feeble health, and ex- 

 pected soon to follow him to the grave, and it suited her feelings to 

 go back to Hanover to die. Besides, she says : 



"My whole life almost has passed away in the delusion that, next to my el- 

 dest brother, none but Dietrich was capable of giving me advice where to leave 

 my few relics, consisting of a few books and my sweeper. And for the last 

 twenty years I kept to the resolution of never opening my lips to my dear 

 brother William about worldly or serious concerns, let me be ever so much at a 

 loss for knowing right from wrong. And so it happened that, at a time when I 

 was stupefied by grief at seeing the death of my dear brother, I gave myself 

 with all I was worth (500 of bank-stock) to my brother Dietrich and his 

 family, and, from that time till the death of Dietrich, I found great difficulty to 

 remain mistress of my own actions and opinions. In respect to the latter we 

 never could agree." 



Her brother William, however, left her a legacy of 100 a year, 

 and during the rest of her life her chief study was how to spend this 

 sum without making herself ridiculous. 



As was to be expected, after fifty years' absence she found Han- 

 over changed in everything, and little to her taste, and she was also 

 grievously disappointed in the generation of relatives with whom she 

 lived, and of whom she says : 



" They have never been of the least use to me, and for all the good I have 

 lavished on them they never came to look after me, but when they had some 

 design upon me." 



In speaking of her return to Hanover, her biographer writes thus : 



"Who can think of her at the age of seventy-two, heart-broken and deso- 

 late, going back to the home of her youth to find consolation without a pang 

 of pity ? She little guessed how much her habits had changed in the different 

 world where she had lived for fifty years. She had the bitterness to find her- 

 self alone with her great sorrow." 



We have no space to give to this part of her life, although it occu- 

 pies more than half of the volume, to which we must refer our readers. 

 It is made up chiefly of her correspondence, and her letters, from their 

 unconscious self-portraiture, are quite as interesting as her "Diary" 

 or her "Recollections." It is full of interest also on account of the 

 details it gives concerning the life of Sir William Herschel, of whom 

 no reliable biography has yet appeared. 



She died peacefully in 1848, and her funeral was held in the same 

 garrison-church where she was christened and confirmed. According 

 to a request made to her favorite niece, a lock of her brother's hair, 



