Page:Williamherschel00simegoog.djvu/224

212 too great, and it was tearing down his enfeebled frame. For sixteen years the battle continued; the phases of it are recorded by his biographer, and little remains but to trace in her words, how year after year saw his strength declining and the flame of life dying out. At the same time it is difficult to understand how Herschel and his wife allowed this process of painful decay to go forward unchecked. He did not require thus to die in harness actually by inches. Both of them were wealthy; and though he had resigned office, it is not probable that his pension would have been withdrawn. But the story of fading strength is told in words that cannot be explained away.

"When all hopes for the return of vigour and strength necessary for resuming the unfinished task of polishing the great mirror was gone, all cheerfulness and spirits had also forsaken him, and his temper was changed from the sweetest almost to a pettish one; and for that reason I was obliged to refrain from troubling him with any questions, though ever so necessary, for fear of irritating or fatiguing him." Want of room, the refusal of funds to meet expenses, the great telescope "nearly fallen into decay almost in all its parts," "every nerve of the dear man unstrung by over-exertion," may well send a thrill of sympathetic sorrow through every reader of the story. Neither Brighton nor Bath, nor summer visits to Edinburgh or Glasgow could restore the lost tone: "A farther attempt at leaving the work complete became impossible." How sorrowful the entries for more than a