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66 had she arrived in Hanover, in October, 1822, than she realised her great mistake. She found herself among uncongenial company. "In the last hope of finding in Dieterich a brother to whom I might communicate all my thoughts of past, present and future," she wrote to her nephew in 1827, "I saw myself disappointed the very first day of our travelling on land. For let me touch on what topic I would, he maintained the contrary, which I soon saw was done merely because he would allow no one else to know anything but himself." The old lady could find no congeniality in the company of a soured, fractious old man, and among people who could not enter in the slightest into her scientific interests. "From the moment I set foot on German ground," she said, "I found I was alone." She described herself as leading a "solitary and useless" life—"not finding Hanover or anyone in it like what I left when the best of brothers took me with him to England in August, 1772".

Solitary her life was, so far as congeniality went, but by no means useless. Soon after her settlement in Hanover, she formed a catalogue of all her brother's nebulæ and clusters, arranged in zones. In April, 1825, she forwarded this to her nephew, John Herschel, then engaged in his review of these objects. This catalogue was described by Sir David Brewster, as "an extraordinary monument of the unextinguished ardour of a lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science". It was rewarded by the presentation to her of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, in 1828—an honour by which, with characteristic modesty, she said she was "more shocked than gratified". In 1835 she was elected an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society, membership of which was not then open to women; and in 1838 the Royal Irish Academy enrolled her name among its members. These honours sat very lightly on her. "Saying too much of what I