gentlewoman." Poor Carolina, there she was mistaken: Miss Fleming could
make her into no gentlewoman, for she was born one already, and nothing
proves it more than the perfect absence of false shame with which in her
memoirs she tells us all these graphic little details of their early
humble days.

While they were thus working at Bath an incident occurred which is worth
mentioning because it shows the very different directions in which the
presence or the want of steady persistence may lead the various members
of the very self-same family. William received a letter from his widowed
mother at Hanover to say, in deep distress, that Dietrich, the youngest
brother, had run away from home, it was supposed for the purpose of
going to India, "with a young idler no older than himself." Forthwith,
the budding astronomer left the lathe where he was busy turning an eye-
piece from a cocoa-nut shell, and, like a good son and brother as he
always was, hurried off to Holland and thence to Hanover. No Dietrich
was anywhere to be found. But while he was away, Carolina at Bath
received a letter from Dietrich himself, to tell her ruefully he was
"laid up very ill" at a waterside tavern in Wapping--not the nicest or
most savoury East End sailor-suburb of London. Alexander immediately
took the coach to town, put the prodigal into a decent lodging, nursed
him carefully for a fortnight, and then took him down with him in
triumph to the family home at Bath. There brother William found him safe
and sound on his return, under the sisterly care of good Carolina. A
pretty dance he had led the two earnest and industrious astronomers; but
they seem always to have treated this black sheep of the family with
uniform kindness, and long afterwards Sir William remembered him
favourably in his last will.

In 1779 and the succeeding years the three Herschels were engaged during