68 



HISS CAROLINE LUCBETIA HEE3CIIEL. 



note to Ckilde Harold, but in his 

 diary and correspondence recorded 

 his genuine impressions. " I saw 

 Curran," he says, "presented to 

 Madame de Stiiel, at Mackintosh's ; 

 it was the grand confluence of the 

 Rhone and the Saone; they were 



both so ugly that I could not 



help wondering how the best intel- 

 lects of France and Ireland could 

 have taken up respectively such 

 residences." 



Mr. Jerdan, in his autobiography, 

 mentions his acquaintanceship with 

 Madame de Stael, remarking that 

 she was far from handsome or at- 

 tractive, and an almost incessant 

 talker. He adds, by way of apo- 

 logy, that in London society, every- 

 body endeavoured to "draw her 

 out.'" 



LAPLACE AND HIS ENGLISH TRANS- 

 LATOR AND EXPOSITOR. 



Nathaniel Bowditch, the trans- 

 lator of Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, 

 was cheered on in his arduous la- 

 bours by his wife, who not only 

 relieved him from domestic cares, 

 but offered to submit to any degree 

 of self-denial necessary to his pub- 

 lishing the work at his own risk. 

 In grateful acknowledgment of her 

 support and sympathy, he dedicated 

 the book to her memory. An idea 

 of the difficulty of the task of trans- 

 lation and exposition is conveyed 

 by a remark of Dr. Bowditch, who 

 used to say " I never come across 

 .one of Laplace's Thus it plainly ap- 

 pears, without feeling sure that I 

 have got hours of hard study before 

 me to fill up the chasm, and find 

 out and show how it plainly ap- 

 pears." It is highly honourable to 

 the sex, that the only exposition of 

 Laplace's work that has appeared 

 in England, is from the pen of a 

 female the accomplished Mary 

 Somerville, wife of Dr. Somerville, 

 of Chelsea Hospital. This is pub- 

 lished under the title of the Mecha- 

 nism of the Heavens, of which it 



is observed in the Edinburgh Review, 

 " this, unquestionably, is one of the 

 most remarkable works that female 

 intellect ever produced in any age 

 or country ; and, with respect to 

 the present day, we hazard little iu 

 saying that Mrs. Somerville is the 

 only individual of her sex in the 

 world who could have written it." 

 For this signal service to science a 

 pension of 300 per annum was 

 bestowed upon the authoress, on 

 the recommendation of the late Sir 

 Robert Peel. 



MISS CAROLINE LtlCRETIA HERSCHEL. 



This very interesting lady died 

 at Hanover on the 9th of January, 

 1848, in the 98th year of her age. 

 She was the sister of Sir William 

 Herschel ; and, consequently, aunt 

 to Sir John Herschel, the present 

 representative of this truly scientific 

 family. 



Miss Herschel was the constant 

 companion of her brother, and sole 

 assistant of his astr onom ical labours, 

 to the success of which her inde- 

 fatigable zeal, diligence, and sin- 

 gular accuracy of calculation, not a 

 little contributed. For the per- 

 formance of these duties, his Ma- 

 jesty King George the Third was 

 pleased to place her in the receipt 

 of a salary sufficient for her singu- 

 larly moderate wants and retired 

 habits. In the intervals, she found 

 time both for astronomical obser- 

 vations of her own, and for the exe- 

 cution of more than one work of 

 great extent and utility. The ob- 

 servations she made with a small 

 Newtonian sweeper, constructed for 

 her by her brother, with which she 

 found no less than eight comets ; 

 and on five of these occasions her 

 claim to the first discovery is ad- 

 mitted. These sweeps also proved 

 productive of the detection of seve- 

 ral remarkable nebulae and clusters 

 of stars, previously unobserved. * 



On her brother's death, in 1822, 

 Miss Herschel returned to Hanover, 





