142 Caroline Liter etia Hcrschel. [1822. 



to accept of duties as utterly remote from all that her 

 previous life had prepared her for as if he had asked 

 her to accompany him on a pilgrimage to Mecca. 

 And thus, of all of whom he had made trial, it was 

 not the brilliant Jacob, nor the gifted Alexander, but 

 the little quiet, home-bred Caroline, of whom nothing 

 had been expected but to be up early and to do the 

 work of the house, and to devote her leisure to knitting 

 and sewing, in whom he found that steady devotion 

 to a fixed purpose which he felt it was possible 

 to link with his own. "I did nothing for my 

 brother," she said, " but what a well-trained puppy- 

 dog would have done : that is to say, I did what he 

 commanded me. I was a mere tool which he had the 

 trouble of sharpening." Such was always her own 

 modest self-estimate. It is hardly too much to say 

 that, to have worked as she had worked, and to have 

 done all that she had accomplished, and to claim no 

 more than the credit due to passive obedience to 

 orders, is a depth of humility of that rare and noble 

 kind which is in itself a form of greatness. It must 

 not be forgotten, that the progress of astronomical 

 science since Sir William Herschel's great reflector 

 startled the world, has not been greater than has 

 been the change, both in opinion and practice, on 

 the subject of female employments and education. 

 The appointment of a young woman as an as- 

 sistant astronomer, with a regular salary for her 



