AuGUSE 15, 1912] 
NATURE 
623 
he should retain it for his own use. To this was 
added a further 200]. a year for maintenance, and a 
pension of 5o0/. a year to Caroline Herschel. And 
besides, he was allowed to make specula for sale, and 
half the observatories of Europe were so furnished by 
him at prices which were then thought considerable. 
At any rate Herschel jumped at the offer, which, by 
relieving him from his musical slavery, allowed him 
to follow the wish of his life. The Herschels then 
came to the neighbourhood of Windsor, and after 
several removals they finally settled at Slough. The 
change was delightful for him, since he now had 
space for his telescopes and workshops, but the diffi- 
culties of housekeeping in a rambling and dilapidated 
house rendered the change somewhat less agreeable 
to his sister. 
The closeness to Windsor was perhaps a necessity 
of the case, but it had its disadvantages, since he was 
frequently summoned to take his telescope to Wind- 
sor, or large parties from the Castle would visit him 
at his house in order to see the wonders of the 
heavens. When his time had been wasted in this 
way he would make up for the loss by redoubled 
labour. 
The fury, as I may call it, with which they worked 
may be gathered from Caroline’s journal, and the 
work was not free from danger, because in his eager- 
ness Herschel would not always delay his observa- 
tions until the telescope was properly fixed. To stand 
in the dark on a platform without a railing, when 
your attention is distracted from your position, cannot 
be very safe, and they both met with a good many 
accidents which might easily have proved fatal. 
The incessant work, together with the interruptions 
by the visitors from the Castle, began at length to 
tell on Herschel’s health. His sister notes that on 
October 14, 1806, after working all day, he was out 
from sunset until past midnight surrounded by fifty 
or sixty persons, without food or proper clothing, 
and that he never seemed to recover completely from 
this great strain on his strength. 
But I have passed by an event of importance in the 
lives of both brother and sister, for in 1783 he married 
Mrs. Pitt, a lady of singularly amiable and gentle 
character. To the sister, however, the marriage was 
a great blow, for, although she continued to be his 
secretary and assistant, she moved into neighbouring 
lodgings, and was no longer so closely associated 
with him as theretofore. Mrs. John Herschel writes : 
“Tt is not to be supposed that a nature so strong and 
a heart so affectionate should accept the new state of 
things without much and bitter suffering,’ and tradi- 
tion confirms this belief. All her notes and memor- 
anda relating to a period of fifteen years from the 
time of the marriage were destroyed by her when, 
as we may presume, her calmer judgment showed her 
that the record of her heartburning would be painful 
to the surviving members of the family. At any rate, 
she was on affectionate terms with her sister-in-law 
throughout all the later years of her life, and the 
brilliant career of her nephew, the celebrated Sir John 
Herschel, and. correspondence with him, afforded the 
leading interest of her old age. 
Although Herschel lived until 1822, and accomplished 
an enormous amount of work up to the end of his 
life, yet his health seems to have declined from about 
the time I have noted. On his death Caroline felt 
| when she was in one of her merry moods.” 
and fun. In a letter to her nephew, she told him 
that her father used to punish her, a grown woman, 
by depriving her of her pudding if she did not guess 
rightly the angle of the piece she had helped herself 
to. Dr. Groskopf writes of her when she was eighty- 
nine years of age, “‘ Well! what do you say of such a 
person being able to put her foot behind her back 
and scratch her ear with it, in imitation of a dog, 
She only 
died in 1847, having very nearly completed her ninety- 
eighth year. 
Herschel himself must have been a man of singular 
charm, as is testified to by Dr. Burney and his daugh- 
ter, Mdme. d’Arblay. That he possessed an incredible 
amount of patience is proved by the fact of his sub- 
mitting to the reading aloud of the whole of a por- 
tentous, and fortunately unpublished, poem in many 
cantos by Dr. Burney, entitled ‘‘A Poetical History of 
Astronomy.’’ It appears that Herschel had had an 
interview with Napoleon in Paris in 1802, and the 
poet Campbell asked him whether he had been struck 
by Napoleon’s knowledge. ‘ No,” said Herschel, “the 
First Consul surprised me by his versatility, but in 
science he seemed to know little more than any well- 
educated gentleman, and of astronomy much less, for 
example, than our King. His general air was some- 
thing like affecting to know more than he did know.” 
He was struck, too, by Napoleon’s hypocrisy in observ- 
ing ‘how all these glorious views gave proofs of 
Almighty Wisdom.” 
And now having endeavoured to show what kind 
of people Caroline and her brother were, I must turn 
to what they. did. Herschel’s discoveries were so 
numerous that I am compelled: to make a selection. 
I shall, therefore, only attempt to sketch his endeavour 
to understand the general construction of the stellar 
universe, and to speak of his work on double stars. 
(To be continued.) 
BUDGETS OF CERTAIN UNIVERSITIES 
AND UNIVERSITY COLLEGES. 
Ap ale reports for the year r1g1o-11 from those 
universities and university colleges in Great 
Britain which are in receipt of grants from the 
Board of Education have now been issued as Blue- 
books (Cd. 6245 and 6246). 
It will be remembered that the following English 
universities participate in the annual grant made by 
Parliament for university colleges :—Birmingham, 
Bristol, Durham (Armstrong College), Leeds, Liver- 
pool, Manchester, Sheffield, London (including Uni- 
versity College, King’s College, Bedford College, 
School of Economics, and East London College), 
and also the University Colleges at Nottingham, 
Reading, and Southampton. The University of 
Wales includes the University Colleges of Aberyst- 
wyth, Bangor, and Cardiff. 
The reports also deal with certain other constituent 
colleges of universities in receipt of aid under “‘ The 
| Statement of Grants available from the Board of 
Education in Aid of Technological and Professional 
| Work in Universities in England and Wales.’”’ These 
| schools attached to hospitals in London. 
that her life, too, was practically ended, and she | 
returned to Hanover. Ever afterwards she used to 
cry, ‘‘ Why did I leave happy England?” and it is in- | 
comprehensible that she should not have returned to 
the place where all her real interests lav. 
Although she felt the death of her brother as prac- 
tically the end of her life, she was always full of jokes 
NO. 2233, VOL. 89| 
institutions are twelve in number, nine being medical 
They are 
all schools of the University of London. One, the 
Newcastle College of Medicine, is a constituent 
college of the University of Durham, while the two 
remaining, namely, Manchester Municipal School of 
Technology and the Bristol Merchant Venturers’ 
College, make provision for the faculties of tech- 
nology and engineering, respectively, in the universi- 
ties to which they are attached. 
