EXPLANATIONS OF HIS FLIGHT 23 



about twenty miles to the south of the town ; the 

 roads were so bad that even a King's coach, sixty 

 years later, drawn by eight horses, could not make 

 a longer stage than five miles; an invading army 

 would move more slowly. The north road towards 

 the sea was clear of the enemy: and the German 

 outposts extended no farther than the palace at 

 Herrenhausen, about a mile and a half from the 

 town. William Herschel passed these without molest- 

 ation, journeyed along the Bremen road, and at last 

 found his way to Hamburg, to which his trunk was 

 sent after him. In the following year he appears to 

 have crossed the sea to England. Obscurity then 

 covers the fugitive's wanderings for nearly ten years. 

 Five or six pages of sorrowful details are torn out of 

 his sister's journal at this point ; and the way of the 

 wanderer is lost in darkness. More is told by her of 

 the eldest brother's comings and goings, of his rude 

 and ungenerous treatment of her, than of the brother 

 whom she worshipped. We could have taken less of 

 Jacob, and more of William, " the best and dearest of 

 brothers," as the circumstances manifestly required. 



After the lapse of seventy years Caroline Herschel 

 felt as keenly as she did at first the unpleasantness of 

 her brother's flight from Hanover. On his return as 

 a King's messenger in 1786, bearing a King's present 

 to the University of Gottingen, the editor of the 

 Gottingen Magazine of Science and Literature got 

 from him some particulars of his early life, which it 

 would have been better if he had not furnished. " In 

 my fifteenth year," he wrote, " I enlisted in military 

 service, only remaining in the army, however, until I 

 reached my nineteenth year, when I resigned, and 



