Notices of Books. 
407 
1876.] 
of her brother. She regretted frequently that, in the first bitter- 
ness of her bereavement, she had left England. But it is very 
clear that had she remained in this country she would have 
found no satisfaction in the present. She looked upon progress 
in science as so much detraction from her brother’s fame, and 
even her nephew’s researches might have become a source of 
estrangement had she remained with him. She died early in 
1848, and, singularly enough, the funeral solemnities took place 
at the same garrison church in which she had been baptised, 
nearly a century before. Royal Hanoverian carriages took part 
in the procession, and the coffin was covered with palm 
branches sent from Herrenhausen by the Crown Princess. 
One most valuable lesson may be gathered from this book. 
Caroline Herschel did not think it needful to attitudinise on a 
public platform and cry out to all the winds of heaven that she 
“ might, could, or would ” do great things if not restricted by 
“ male jealousy from graduating honours.” An idle plea this, 
everywhere — idlest of all in England, where so many of our 
mightiest minds have no connection with our national universi- 
ties, whether as students or professors, and only take degrees 
when they confer instead of receiving honour by the acceptance.* 
She went to work, and found no obstacle, either from laws or 
from social prejudice. Men saw that she was genuine, and 
honoured her accordingly, just as, on the other hand, men 
worthy of the name laugh at the “ shrieking sisterhood,” knowing 
it to be a sham. So far from self entering into the mind of 
Miss Herschel, she even declared, “ I am nothing, I have done 
nothing ; all I am, all I know, I owe to my brother. I am only 
the tool which he shaped to his use — a well-trained puppy-dog 
would have done as much.” Such unconsciousness of its own 
claims and merits is often the companion of true genius. Great 
discoverers have said that any man, with patience and perse- 
verence, might do all they have done. Not the less is it a mis- 
taken estimate. Only a mind similar in its powers to that of 
her brother could have been trained to aid in researches like his. 
A lady who had discovered eight comets and effected the reduc- 
tion of the places of 2500 nebulae, who was the worthy recipient 
of the gold medal of the Astronomical Society and of the Gold 
Medal for Science given by the King of Prussia, accompanied by 
a letter from Alexander Humboldt outweighing a score of degrees 
and diplomas, might well have claimed an independent position 
in the scientific world. That she was content to merge her own 
glory in her brother’s, and to live only for him, is a touching 
* Many foreign critics misjudge English science on this very account. As 
in their own country the universities are the focus where all the greatest 
thinkers, the “ bedeutendeste Maenner” are collected together, and whence 
scientific discoveries radiate out to the world, they expedt the same in Eng- 
land ; and, finding nothing in Oxford or Cambridge like what emanates from 
Goettingen, or Heidelberg, or Bonn, they are led to think that we are, as a 
nation, producing nothing. 
