102 Caroline Lucretia HerscheL [1799-isoo. 



MISS HERSCHEL TO THE KEY. DR. MASKELYNE. 



January, 1800. 



DEAR SIR, 



If it was not highly necessary to make you acquainted 

 with the safe arrival of your valuable present at Slough, I 

 might perhaps be a long while before I should think my- 

 self sufficiently collected to express the grateful feelings the 

 sight of it occasioned me. My being pleased at having two 

 such useful and convenient instruments has but very little 

 connection with my present ideas ; and if they had come 

 to me from any other hands but those of the Astronomer 

 Royal, I should use them as occasion required, and think 

 myself much obliged to the giver. But as it is, I cannot 

 help wishing I were capable of doing something to make my- 

 self deserving of all these kind attentions. 



I feel gratified in particular when I think of the stipula- 

 tion I was making when you were taking measure of the 

 distance [apart] of my eyes : viz., that if you in future 

 should change in opinion, and not think me worthy of the 

 present, not to bestow it on me. 



Mrs. Maskelyne's good-natured looks, and all she said at 

 the time, come now again to my remembrance, and seeing 

 not only the binocular (which I had but a conditional expec- 

 tation of receiving), but also the night-glass, makes me hope 

 that during the time I had the honour of being in the 

 company of such esteemed friends, I have suffered no loss 

 in their former good opinion of me, which was a circum- 

 stance I often feared might have happened ; for I have too 

 little knowledge of the rules of society to trust much to my 

 acquitting myself so as to give hope of having made any 

 favourable impressions. 



You see, dear sir, that you have done me more good than, 

 you were perhaps aware of : you have not only enabled me 



