DIARY—continued—1810.

April 29th.—My nephew took leave of me, returning to Cambridge.

May 4th.—I went to Slough, my brother going to town with Mrs. H. He returned after a short stay, and I remained with him till Mrs. H. came home again. Some of my last days of staying at Slough I spent in papering and painting the rooms I was to occupy in a small house of my brother's attached to the Crown Inn, to which I removed.

July 13th.—I went to remain at my brother's house during the time he, with Mrs. H. and Miss Baldwin, went to Scotland.

Sept. 18th.—My brother and the family returned, and Dietrich came to Slough, a room being prepared for him in my cottage.

Dec. 1st.—Dietrich went to town to enter on his winter engagement.

July 22nd.—My brother with his family left Slough on a tour to Edinburgh and Glasgow. I went to his house till they returned, Sept. 18th.

SIR JOHN HERSCHEL AT THE CAPE.

Cape Town, Jan. 21, 1834.

My dear Aunt,—

Here we are safely landed and comfortably housed at the far end of Africa, and having secured the landing and final stowage of all the telescopes and other matters, as far as I can see, without the slightest injury, I lose no time in reporting to you our good success so far. M. and the children are, thank God, quite well; though, for fear you should think her too good a sailor, I ought to add that she continued sea-sick, at intervals, during the whole passage. We were nine weeks and two days at sea, during which period we experienced only one day of contrary wind. We had a brisk breeze “right aft” all the way from the Bay of Biscay (which we never entered) to the “calm latitudes,” that is to say, to the space about five or six degrees broad near the equator, where the trade winds cease, and where it is no unusual thing for a ship to lie becalmed for a month or six weeks, frying under a vertical sun. Such, however, was not our fate. We were detained only three or four days by the calms usual in that zone, but never quite still, or driven out of our course, and immediately on crossing “the line,” got a good breeze (the south-east trade wind), which carried us round Trinidad, then exchanged it for a northwest wind, which, with the exception of one day's squall from the south-east, carried us straight into Table Bay.

MISS HERSCHEL TO J. F. W. HERSCHEL.

Feb. 1, 1826.

My dearest Nephew,—

On the 17th January I received by the same post your letters of December 30th and January 9th. I should have answered your precious communication of December 30th immediately if I was not in hopes of receiving daily an answer to what I sent on the 28th December. I cannot express my thanks sufficiently to you for thinking me worthy of forming any judgment of your astronomical proceedings, and am only sorry that I cannot recall the health, eyesight, and vigor I was blessed with twenty or thirty years ago; for nothing else is wanting (and that is all) for my coming by the first steamboat to offer you the same assistance (when sweeping) as, by your father's instructions, I had been enabled to afford him. For an observer at your twenty-foot when sweeping wants nothing but a being that can and will execute his commands with the quickness of lightning [!], for you will have seen that in many sweeps six or twice six, &c., objects have been secured and described within the space of one minute of time.

I cannot think that any catalogue but the MS. one in zones (which was only intended for your own use) would facilitate the reviewing of the Nebulæ, and you are the only one to whom 1885, viz., 2nd and 3rd class, out of the 2500, can be visible in your twenty-foot.

LIFE OF THE BROTHER AND SISTER IN BATH.

At the time when William Herschel brought his sister back with him to Bath, he had established himself there as a teacher of music, numbering among his pupils many ladies of rank. He was also organist of the Octagon Chapel, and frequently composed anthems, chants, and whole services for the choir under his management. On the retirement of Mr. Linley (father of the celebrated singer, afterwards the beautiful Mrs. Sheridan) from the direction of the Public Concerts, he at once added this to his other avocations, and was consequently immersed in business of the most laborious and harassing kind during the whole of the Bath season. But he considered all this professional work only as the means to an end; devotion to music produced income and a certain degree of leisure, and these were becoming every day more imperatively necessary. Every spare moment of the day, and many hours stolen from the night, had long been devoted to the studies which were compelling, him to become himself an observer of the heavens. Insufficient mechanical means roused his inventive genius; and, as all the world knows, the mirror for the mighty forty-foot telescope was the crowning result. To his pupils he was known as not a music-master alone. Some ladies had lessons in astronomy from him, and, at the invitation of his friend Dr. Watson, he became a member of a philosophical society then recently started in Bath, to which he for several years contributed a great number of papers on various scientific subjects.

RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY LIFE IN HANOVER.

Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born at Hanover on the 16th of March, 1750. She was the eighth child and fourth daughter of Isaac Herschel, by Anna Ilse Moritzen, to whom he was married in August, 1732. The family consisted of ten children, four of whom died in early childhood.

A memorandum in the handwriting of Isaac Herschel, transcribed by his daughter in the original German at the beginning of her Recollections, traces the family back to the early part of the seventeenth century, about which time, it appears that three brothers Herschel left Moravia on account of their religion (which was Protestant), and became possessors of land in Saxony. One of these brothers, Hans, was a brewer at Pirna, a little town two miles from Dresden, and the father of two sons, one of whom, Abraham by name, was born in 1651, was the father of the abovementioned Isaac, and the grandfather of Caroline Lucretia Herschel. Abraham Herschel was employed in the royal gardens at Dresden, he received commissions from various quarters on account of his taste and skill as a landscape gardener. Of his four children, Eusebius, the eldest, appears to have kept up little or no intercourse with his family after the father's death in 1718. The second child, Apollonia, married a landed proprietor, Herr von Thümer.