HONOURS TO CAROLINE HERSCHEL 243 



mained, to the end of her long life, the same loving 

 worshipper of departed greatness that she had been 

 during her brother's lifetime, and the same outspoken 

 critic of men and women whom she happened to meet. 

 Thirteen years after she left England, she wrote: 

 " Within the last two months I have been obliged to 

 exert myself once more to answer two letters, one to 

 Mr. De Morgan, the Secretary of the Royal Astrono- 

 mical Society, the other to Mr. Baily (who, I suppose, 

 is President), for they have been pleased to choose me, 

 along with Mrs. Somerville, to be a member (God 

 knows what for) of their Society." Promotion ! she 

 says, they call it in Hanover, and laughingly talks of 

 " our Society, of which I am now a fellow ! " She 

 was then eighty-five years of age. Apparently she 

 was of the same mind as Hannah More, who, when 

 she found her name proposed as an honorary member 

 of the Royal Society of Literature, wrote a strong 

 remonstrance, declining the distinction, chiefly "be- 

 cause I consider the circumstance of sex alone a 

 disqualification." 1 



In November 1838 she was also elected an honorary 

 member of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin: and 

 besides she received in 1846, from the King of Prussia, 

 a gold medal for science. Well earned though both of 

 these honours were, she wrote with the modesty of 

 true science, when she heard of the former, " I cannot 

 help crying out aloud to myself, every now and then, 

 ' What is THAT for ?'...! think almost it is mocking 

 me to look upon me as a Member of an Academy : I 

 that have lived these eighteen years (against my will 

 and intention) without finding as much as a single 

 1 Life, ii. 307, December 23, 1820. She was then seventy-five. 



