DIFFICULTIES WITH WORKPEOPLE 115 



of the building of this grand instrument, which it 

 would be a mistake to overlook. 



Caroline Herschel had difficulties with servants from 

 her earliest days of housekeeping. No one pleased her ; 

 whether because, having been intended for a household 

 drudge herself by her mother and her brother Jacob, 

 she was too exacting when it came to her turn to lord 

 it over others, or from the ignorance and disregard to 

 right of the class servants were drawn from, we cannot 

 tell. But her account of the workmen whom her 

 brother employed on the great telescope paints the 

 employed of those days in colours more black, and 

 more incredible, than we are warranted in receiving 

 without scruple. For some weeks in the summer of 1786 

 she was left in charge at Slough, while her brother was 

 absent in Hanover on a scientific mission from the 

 King, charged in fact with conveying to the University 

 of Gottingen a 10-feet reflector, constructed by Her- 

 schel, and presented by the King for the Observatory, 

 which had already taken high rank in Europe. " There 

 were no less than thirty or forty of my brother's work- 

 people," she writes, "at work for upwards of three 

 months together, some employed in felling and rooting 

 out trees, some digging and preparing the ground for 

 the bricklayers who were laying the foundation for the 

 telescope, and the carpenter in Slough, with all his 

 men. The smith, meanwhile, was converting a wash- 

 house into a forge, and manufacturing complete sets 

 of tools for the work he was to enter on. ... In short, 

 the place was a complete workshop for making optical 

 instruments, and it was a pleasure to go into it to see 

 how attentively the men listened to and executed their 

 master's orders." 



