DISTANCES OF THE STARS 245 



my income is by one third more than I have the 

 power to spend, for by a twelve years' trial I find 

 that I cannot get rid of more than 600 thl. = 100 per 

 year, without making myself ridiculous." 



Her thoughts were not set on money, or on the 

 respect which money, honourably earned, usually 

 brings. The memory of the "best and dearest of 

 brothers" clung to her with an all-absorbing power. 

 It was her first and her last love. " You have made 

 me completely happy for some time," she wrote from 

 Hanover to his son, " with the account you sent me of 

 the double stars ; but it vexes me more and more that 

 in this abominable city there is no one who is capable 

 of partaking in the joy I feel on this revival of your 

 father's name. His observations on double stars were 

 from first to last the most interesting subject; he 

 never lost sight of it in his papers on the construction 

 of the heavens, etc. And I cannot help lamenting 

 that he could not take to his grave with him the satis- 

 faction I feel at present in seeing his son doing him 

 so ample justice by endeavouring to perfect what he 

 could only begin." When Sir John Herschel delivered 

 the address that preceded the handing over to Bessel 

 of the Astronomical Society's Gold Medal for deter- 

 mining, by means of the heliometer, the distance from 

 us of the double star 61 Cygni, she was heart and soul 

 with him when he said, "Gentlemen, I congratulate 

 you and myself that we have lived to see the great 

 and hitherto impassable barrier to our excursions into 

 the sidereal universe that barrier against which we 

 have chafed so long and so vainly almost simultane- 

 ously overleaped at three different points." 1 He 



1 Astron. Soc. Trans, xii. 448-53. 



