CHAP, ii.] Removal to Datchet. 5 L 



where " the small twenty-foot " was to be erected ; he 

 gaily assured her that they could live on eggs and 

 bacon, which would cost nothing to speak of now that 

 they were really in the country ! 



The beginning of October, Alexander was obliged to return 

 to Bath. The separation was truly painful to us all, and I 

 was particularly affected by it, for till now I had not had time 

 to consider the consequence of giving up the prospect of 

 making myself independent by becoming (with a little more 

 uninterrupted application) a useful member of the musical pro- 

 fession. But besides that my brother William would have been 

 very much at a loss for my assistance, I had not spirit enough 

 to throw my self on the public after losing his protection. 



Poor Alexander ! we had hoped at first to persuade him 

 to change Bath for London, where he had the offer of the 

 most profitable engagements, and we should then have had 

 him near us ... but he refused, and before we saw him 

 Again the next year he was married. 



Much of my brother's time was taken up in going, when 

 the evenings were clear, to the Queen's Lodge to show the 

 King, c., objects through the seven-foot. But when the 

 days began to shorten , this was found impossible, for 

 the telescope was often (at no small expense and risk 

 of damage) obliged to be transported in the dark back to 

 Datchet, for the purpose of spending the rest of the night 

 with observations on double stars for a second Catalogue. 

 My brother was besides obliged to be absent for a week 

 or ten days for the purpose of bringing home the metal of 

 the cracked thirty-foot mirror, and the remaining materials 

 from his work-Toom. Before the furnace was taken down 

 At Bath, a second twenty-foot mirror, twelve-inch diameter, 

 was cast, which happened to be very fortunate, for on the 



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