CHAP. Y.J Retrospection. 143 



services, was an unprecedented occurrence in England. 

 She had watched and shared in every effort and 

 every failure from the first seven-foot telescope to 

 the construction of the ponderous machinery that 

 was to support the mighty tube of which she herself 

 made the first crude model in pasteboard. -When, 

 finally, her brother was summoned to the King, and 

 wrote to tell her how he fared at Court, she accepted 

 the decision, by which he exchanged a handsome in- 

 come for the sake of obtaining the command of his own 

 time, and 200 a-year from his gracious sovereign, 

 with only a passing expression of regret from the. 

 housekeeper's point of view, and threw herself heart 

 and soul into the new life at Datchet. One all-sufficing 

 reward sweetened her labours " I had the comfort to 

 see that my brother was satisfied with my endeavours 

 in assisting him." When the dignity of original 

 discovery gave her a distinct and separate claim to 

 the respect of the astronomical world, she must 

 have found out that she was something better 

 than a mere tool. The requisite knowledge of 

 algebra and mathematical formulae for calculations and 

 reductions she had to gather when and how she could : 

 chiefly at meals, and at any odd moments when her 

 brother could be asked questions, and the answers 

 were carefully entered in her Commonplace Book, 

 where examples of taking equal altitudes, and how to 

 convert sidereal time into mean time, follow upon 



