242 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



the British Government to allow him to sail in all 

 seas unmolested. He himself endeavoured, by means 

 of his extensive correspondence, to procure some cer- 

 tain accounts as to the disastrous result. When a 

 considerable collection of natural curiosities, which 

 Labillardiere had sent to France during his voyage, 

 fell into the hands of English privateers, and became 

 the property of the English Government, Sir Joseph 

 generously exerted his influence again, and the result 

 was that the cases were immediately sent to France, 

 without having even been opened." l 



A king, a landed gentleman of great wealth, and a 

 musician from Bath formed the triumvirate in science, 2 

 of which our countrymen used to speak, and were 

 deservedly proud for twenty years before and for 

 twenty after the beginning of the present century. 

 All three were dead, but they were survived for a 

 quarter of a century or more by a lady, who made her- 

 self famous in science and wore her well -won honours 

 with the modesty of true deserving Caroline Lucretia 

 Herschel, the devoted sister and unwearied assistant 

 of her brother William. With touching pathos she 

 writes to Francis Baily in 1835, "It encourages me 

 now to address you as an old friend, and I might 

 almost say my only one, for death has not spared me 

 one of those valuable men of the last century in whose 

 society I had an opportunity of spending many happy 

 hours, when they came to pass an astronomical night 

 at Bath, Datchet, Clay Hall, and Slough." She re- 



1 This international courtesy was thus shown on no fewer than eleven 

 occasions, and some of the collections are "now of inestimable value" 

 (1896) : Hooker, Journal, etc., p. xxxiii. 



9 Niemeyer, Scots Magazine, i. (1823), pp. 692-93. 



