30 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



She came to England to be a public singer, she begins 

 her work by a few lessons on optical instruments in 

 the shop windows of London. Herschel had by that 

 time evidently entered on the race for fame. His 

 sister was twenty -two years of age. 



Fourteen years after, when she had become a cele- 

 brity in all the observatories of Europe, at the Royal 

 Society, and in the palace at Windsor, she is thus 

 described by a young woman, who was then as 

 famous for her pen as Caroline became for her comet- 

 finder. " She is very little," the authoress of Evelina 

 writes, " very gentle, very modest, and very ingenuous ; 

 and her manners are those of a person unhackneyed 

 and unawed by the world, yet desirous to meet and 

 to return its smiles. I love not the philosophy that 

 braves it. This brother and sister seem gratified with 

 its favour, at the same time that their own pursuit is 

 all-sufficient to them without it." " I inquired of Miss 

 Herschel if she was still comet-hunting, or content now 

 with the moon ? The brother answered that he had 

 the charge of the moon, but he left to his sister to 

 sweep the heavens for comets." x Was this famous 

 little lady above thinking of the small things which 

 delight the fancy of less remarkable women ? In her 

 case, would the answer to the prophet's question, Can 

 a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire ? 

 have been Yes \ Far from it. When she made her 

 first public appearance as a singer " her brother pre- 

 sented her with ten guineas for her dress," and she 

 tells us herself that her " choice could not have been a 

 bad one," as the proprietor of the Bath theatre pro- 

 nounced her " to be an ornament to the stage ! " All 

 1 (Fanny Burney) Madame D'Arblay, Letters, etc,, iii. 442. 



