CHAP, vii.] Sir J. Herschel's Translation. 329 



Walk " deserved to be better rendered, so he set about it, 

 and distributed it among his friends as his Christmas 

 sugarplum. The number of interesting autographs, criti- 

 cisms, witticisms, &c., which have been thereupon returned, 

 will make an amusing packet. One lady says (alluding to 

 the singularity of the hexameter in English) that she found 

 it difficult to get into the step of the Walk ; another, that 

 the Walk had got into a Run, it was so often carried off by 

 friends from his table ; another, not knowing whence it 

 came, intended sending it to Herschel for his opinion on its 

 merits! another, while admiring the ideas, says "to the 

 verse I am averse" The good Misses Baillie, of Hampstead, 

 have been greatly delighted with it. They desired their 

 kindest remembrances to you. 



MISS HEKSCHEL TO LADY HERSCHEL. 



HANOVER, March 1, 1843. 



.... Nine o'clock in the evening (February 19). This 

 is the first moment of quiet after six days in tumultuous 

 joys by all living beings, from the most highest to the most 

 lowest, and I will give you here an account of what share I 

 have had in the rejoicings. In the first place, I must begin 

 with confessing that I have been uncommonly ill of late, 

 and nobody came near me to comfort me ; for all my friends 

 were too busy with gala-dresses, or else laid up with colds, 

 &c., from shopping in bad weather, and paddling about in 

 the snow, and I am at this moment ignorant of how they 

 have fared 



I have not time to fill the paper, for my friends begin now 

 to take up my little time of my short forenoons, and the 

 evenings I cannot see ; so here I send what I have been 

 scribbling, and will only add that the enclosed programme 

 was sent me, on the 14th by the Crown Prince, who having 



