Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/371

Rh the least possible trouble. She especially prayed him not to come should her death occur in the winter; but the reiterated instructions through the long series of letters show how keen was her anxiety that whatever she possessed of value should pass into his hands, and that no one of her Hanoverian connections, with the exception of Mrs. Knipping [who, with Miss Beckedorff, was entrusted with her keys], should intermeddle. She desired to be laid beside her father and mother, and an inscription of her own composition records how she was her brother's assistant, &c. She was followed to the grave by many relations and friends, the Royal carriages forming part of the procession; the coffin was covered with garlands of laurel and cypress and palm branches sent by the Crown Princess from Herrnhausen, and the holy words spoken over it were uttered in that same garrison church in which, nearly a century before, she had been christened, and afterwards confirmed. One direction she could not put on paper, but she desired Mrs. Knipping to place in her coffin a lock of her beloved brother's hair and an old, almost obliterated, almanack that had been used by her father.