CHAP. I.] Early Recollections. 19 



regained his former skill on the violin, and was re- 

 duced to a sad state of suffering and infirmity ; a few 

 months later he was pronounced to be in a confirmed 

 dropsy. Changes of abode, not always for the better ; 

 anxieties, on account of Alexander's prospects and 

 Jacob's vagaries ; disappointment, at seeing his 

 daughter grow up without the education he had 

 hoped to give her; were the circumstances under 

 which the worn-out sufferer struggled through the 

 last three years of his life, copying music at every 

 spare moment, assisting at a Concert only a few- 

 weeks before his death, and giving lessons until he 

 was obliged to keep wholly to his bed. He was re- 

 leased from his sufferings at the comparatively early 

 age of sixty-one on the 22nd March, 1767, leaving 

 to his children little more than the heritage of his 

 good example, unblemished character, and those 

 musical talents which he had so carefully educated, 

 and by which he probably hoped the more gifted of 

 his sons would attain to eminence. 



Miss Herschel describes herself as having fallen into 

 "a kind of stupefaction," which lasted for many 

 weeks after the loss of her father, and the awakening 

 to life had little of hope in the present or promise for 

 the future, so far as she could see then. At the age 

 of seventeen she had learned little beyond the first 

 elements of education, and she was now deprived of 

 the one friend who encouraged and sympathised with 



