Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/172

148 that he might assist me at the clock. In my way into the garden I was met and detained by Lord S. and another gentleman, who came to see my brother and his telescopes. By way of preventing too long an interruption, I told the gentlemen that I had just found a cornet, and wanted to settle its place. I pointed it out to them, and after having seen it they took their leave.

These entries were continued with great regularity to the year 1819, at which time, as the Diary shows, Sir William's increasing feebleness made her close daily attendance more necessary, and her pen was in greater request than the "sweeper." The last volume concludes with a carefully drawn eye-draft of the situation of a comet visible at Hanover, January 31st, 1824. Thenceforth the instrument which had done such good service in her hands for forty years of steady work, became the chief ornament of her sitting-room, until her disquieting fears for its ultimate fate led her to send it back to England.

Sad as is the story of those last years of declining old age, while the beloved brother lived we know that his sister's life was full of occupation. It is not until the cruel hour comes, and she knows that death and the grave will soon claim him, that she allows the sense of her own bitter desolation to find expression. When all was over, her only desire seems to have been to hurry away. Hardly was he laid in his grave than she collected the few things she cared to keep, and left for ever the country where she had spent fifty years of her