Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/15

 with all her heart and with all her strength. She might have become a distinguished woman on her own account, for with the "seven-foot Newtonian sweeper" given to her by her brother, she discovered eight comets first and last. But the pleasure of seeking and finding for herself was scarcely tasted. She "minded the heavens" for her brother; she worked for him, not for herself, and the unconscious self-denial with which she gave up her own pleasure in the use of her "sweeper", is not the least beautiful feature in her life. She must have been witty and amusing, to judge from her books of "Recollections." When past eighty, she wrote what she called "a little history of my life from 1772-1778" for her nephew, Sir John Herschel, the son of her brother William, that he might know something of his excellent grandparents, as well as of the immense difficulties which his father had to surmount in his life and labours. It was not to tell about herself, but of others, that she wrote them. There is not any good biography of Sir William Herschel, and the incidental revelations of him in these Recollections are valuable. They show how well he deserved the love and devotion she rendered to him. Great as were his achievements in science, and his genius, they were borne up and ennobled by the beauty and worth of his own inner life.

These memorials of his father and his aunt were