2 Caroline Liter ctia Herschcl. [i675-i73i. 



Lucretia Hcrschel. Abraham Herschel was employed in 

 the royal gardens at Dresden, he received commissions 

 from various quarters on account of his taste and skill 

 as a landscape gardener. Of his four children, Euse- 

 bius, the eldest, appears to have kept up little or no in- 

 tercourse with his family after the father's death in 1 71 8. 

 The second child, Apollonia, married a landed proprie- 

 tor, Herr von Thiimer. Benjamin, the second son, died 

 in his third year ; and Isaac, the youngest, was born 

 14th of January, 1707, and was thus an orphan at 

 the early age of eleven years. His parents wished 

 him to be a gardener like his father, but a passionate 

 love of music led him to take every opportunity of 

 practising on the violin, besides studying music under 

 a hautboy-player in the royal band. When he was 

 about one and twenty he resolved to seek his fortune, 

 and went to Berlin, where the style of hautboy play- 

 ing was so little to his taste that he soon left it, and 

 went to Potsdam, where he studied for a year under 

 the celebrated Cappell Meister Pabri'ch, the means 

 for so doing being supplied by his mother and sister ; 

 his brother, as he quaintly remarks, contenting him- 

 self with writing him letters in praise of the virtue 

 of economy! In July, 1731, he went to Brunswick, 

 and in August to Hanover, where he at once obtained 

 an engagement as hautboy-player in the band of the 

 Guards, and in the August following he married as 

 above stated. 



