fellow-worker of so many years, than he characteristically employed her
to fetch one of his last papers, and a plate (or map) of the forty-foot
telescope. "But, for the universe," says Miss Herschel, "I could not
have looked twice at what I had snatched from the shelf; and when he
faintly asked if the breaking up of the Milky Way[1] was in it, I said,
'Yes,' and he looked content." I cannot help remembering this
circumstance; it was the last time I was sent to the library on such an
occasion. That the anxious care for his papers and workrooms never ended
but with his life, was proved by his frequent whispered inquiries if
they were locked and the key safe; of which I took care to assure him
that they were, and the key in Lady Herschel's hands.

[Footnote 1: The _Via Lactea_, or "Milky Way," had long been supposed to
consist of a nebulous, vague, luminous matter, but Herschel showed that
it was really made up of stars and systems of stars.]

After struggling for some thirty minutes against his rapidly increasing
weakness, the great astronomer, bowed by his burden of years and
labours, was forced to retire to his bed, with little hope that he would
ever rise from it again. For ten days and nights his wife and sister
watched by his side in painful suspense, until, on the 25th of August,
the end came. Peacefully closed a life which had passed in a peace and
quietness not often vouchsafed to man.

* * * * *

Herschel, says a brother astronomer, will never cease to occupy an
eminent place in the small group of our contemporary men of genius,
while his name will descend to the most distant posterity. The variety
and the magnificence of his labours vie with their extent. The more they