mathematics and calculations, mysterious as these generally seem to the
feminine mind, that she was able to formulate with exactness the result
of her brother's researches. She never failed to be his willing
fellow-labourer in the workshop; she helped him to grind and polish his
mirrors; she stood beside his telescope, in order to record his
observations, during the dark and bitter mid-winter nights, when the
very ink was frozen in the bottle. It may be said, without exaggeration,
that she kept him alive by her care: thinking nothing of herself, she
lived for him, and him alone. She loved him, she believed in him, she
aided him with all her heart and all her strength. Her mental powers
were very considerable; and undoubtedly she might have attained to
eminence on her own account, for she herself discovered no fewer than
eight comets. But she shunned self-glorification; she desired to live in
her brother's shadow; she worked for him, never for herself; and in her
elevated character no feature more strongly demands our admiration than
her heroic though unconscious self-denial. Happy the man who has such a
sister; happy the sister whose brother is worthy of so much devotion! It
is pleasant to know that William Herschel deserved the love so lavishly
poured out at his feet; that great as were his achievements in science,
lofty and broad as was his genius, they were fully sustained and
ennobled by the beauty and worth of his inner life. Who can contemplate
their twofold career in all its singleness of purpose, its purity, its
unselfishness, its sublime disregard of worldly pleasures, without
emotion? The lessons told by such a life are worth all the moral
treatises ever written.

To Miss Herschel's diary we again refer, for a glimpse of the
occupations of her brother and herself at Slough in the first two years
of their residence. These two years, to use an apt expression of her
own, were spent in a perfect chaos of business. The garden and workrooms