Page:Memoir and correspondence of Caroline Herschel (1876).djvu/52

30 devoted to the studies which were compelling him to become himself an observer of the heavens. Insufficient mechanical means roused his inventive genius; and, as all the world knows, the mirror for the mighty forty-foot telescope was the crowning result. To his pupils he was known as not a music-master alone. Some ladies had lessons in astronomy from him, and, at the invitation of his friend Dr. Watson, he became a member of a philosophical society then recently started in Bath, to which he for several years contributed a great number of papers on various scientific subjects. It soon came to pass that the gentlemen who sought interviews with him, asking for a peep through the wonderful tube, carried stories of what they had seen to London, and these were not long in finding their way to St. James's. It was thus at the very turning-point of her brother's career that Caroline Herschel became his companion and fellow-worker. No contrast could be sharper than that presented by the narrow domestic routine she had left to the life of ceaseless and inexhaustible activity into which she was plunged;— unless, indeed, it be that presented by the nature of the events she has to record, and the tone in which they are recorded. For ten years she persevered at Bath, singing when she was told to sing, copying when she was told to copy, "lending a hand" in the workshop, and taking her full share in all the stirring