IV.

WILLIAM HERSCHEL, BANDSMAN.





Old Isaac Herschel, the oboe-player of the King's Guard in Hanover,
had served with his regiment for many years in the chilly climate
of North Germany, and was left at last broken down in health and
spirits by the many hardships of several severe European campaigns.
Isaac Herschel was a man of tastes and education above his
position; but he had married a person in some respects quite
unfitted for him. His good wife, Anna, though an excellent
housekeeper and an estimable woman in her way, had never even
learned to write; and when the pair finally settled down to old age
in Hanover, they were hampered by the cares of a large family of
ten children. Respectable poverty in Germany is even more pressing
than in England; the decent poor are accustomed to more frugal fare
and greater privations than with us; and the domestic life of the
Herschel family circle must needs have been of the most careful and
penurious description. Still, Isaac Herschel dearly loved his art,
and in it he found many amends and consolations for the sordid
shifts and troubles of a straitened German household. All his
spare time was given to music, and in his later days he was enabled