LIVES OF WILLIAM HERSCHEL 247 



were brought her of hopes at last fulfilled, and thought 

 longingly of the seven-feet reflector, with which she 

 used to sweep the heavens, as it stood in the room 

 beside her, but which she should never use again. 



" How I envy you having seen Bessel," she wrote 

 to her nephew in 1842 " the man who found us the 

 parallax of 61 Cygni." 1 



" The seven-foot shall stand in my room, and be my 

 monument," she wrote to her nephew in 1823; what 

 to do with it was a puzzle to her. Her sweeper she 

 thought of leaving to her girlhood's friend's daughter, 

 Miss Beckedorff, but in 1840 it was consigned to "the 

 hands of the good, honest creature, Dr. Hausmann." 

 "The five-foot Newtonian reflector," she wrote that 

 same year, 2 " is in the hands of the Royal Astronomical 

 Society, and will be preserved by it as the little tele- 

 scope of Newton is by the Royal Society, long after 

 I and all the little ones are dead and gone." It was 

 a source of justifiable pride to her as she neared the 

 end. 



Faithful to the memory and greatness of her de- 

 parted brother, she resented every attempt at an 

 imperfect or unworthy presentation of his life and 

 works. What she should have done herself, and she 

 had better means than others of doing it truthfully 

 and faithfully, she left to the ignorant or the conceited 

 to attempt. She could only rail at their efforts, and 

 wish they had left the work alone. It was not just 

 to them or to him. The world wishes to know some- 

 thing of those whose greatness of mind or achievement 

 has enriched humanity or extended its knowledge of 



1 Memoirs, p. 327. 



2 " Five-foot Newtonian sweeper," Memoirs, p. 91. 



