THE GARRISON SCHOOL n 



days with equally evil results. The ill health of the 

 father, and their straitened means, may help to explain 

 this neglect of the little girl, without excusing it. 

 Up to the close of a long life she never ceased to 

 regret and reprobate the treatment to which she was 

 subjected in childhood. But, unlike her youngest 

 brother, Dietrich, she laid no part of the blame for 

 this neglect on their invalid father. " Dietrich," she 

 says, "never recollected the eight years' care and 

 attention he had received from his father, but for ever 

 murmured at having received too scanty an education, 

 though he had the same schooling we all of us had 

 had before him." 



It was different with her brother William. In 

 Hanover there was at that time a garrison school, 

 taught by a capable teacher. Master and pupil, find- 

 ing in each other what the other wanted, were a credit 

 to their fellowship in learning. All the children were 

 in the habit of attending this school, from the age of 

 two to fourteen ; but Caroline seems to have got little 

 good from it, and at two or even four years of age 

 she would have been much better at home under a 

 mother's care. The teacher had some knowledge of 

 Latin and arithmetic. Out of school hours he im- 

 parted to William Herschel all he knew of these 

 branches. French the boy also learned, as the polite 

 language of the world of civilised men, and the tongue 

 of the enemies of his King and country. English is 

 not mentioned among his acquirements, although the 

 Elector of Hanover was then George II. of England ; 

 but a King who spoke indifferent English at Windsor, 

 or none at all, would not encourage the study of it 

 in the garrison school at Hanover. Even the German 



