Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/157

Rh another, except that I, from my daily calls, returned to my solitary and cheerless home with increased anxiety for each following day."

On the 25th of August, 1822, Sir William Herschel died in his house at Slough.

A small book, containing a very few pages, entitled "Memorandum from 1823 to," &c., gives the sad history of the last days of that long life of indefatigable toil over which the devoted sister had watched so long with untiring love. It would be easy, and perhaps in some respects preferable, to tell the story without the details, but it would be at the cost of much that is characteristic and illustrative of the nature which has thus far been unfolded from within, and it is the last chapter of her life which she thought worth recalling to memory and committing to paper. The terrible blow of the death of her brother seems to have deprived her of all power or desire to do or to will anything beyond the one stern, dogged resolve to leave England for ever as soon as the beloved remains were buried from her sight. Six months after her return to Hanover she thus prefaced this last and most pathetic of her Recollections:—

, April 15th, 1823. "Eighteen months have elapsed since I could acquire fortitude enough for noting down in my Day-book any of those heartrending occurrences I witnessed during the last nine months of the fifty years I have lived in England, and I cannot hope that ever a time will come when I shall be able to dwell on any one of those interesting but