Page:Williamherschel00simegoog.djvu/254

242 the British Government to allow him to sail in all seas unmolested. He himself endeavoured, by means of his extensive correspondence, to procure some certain accounts as to the disastrous result. When a considerable collection of natural curiosities, which Labillardière had sent to France during his voyage, fell into the hands of English privateers, and became the property of the English Government, Sir Joseph generously exerted his influence again, and the result was that the cases were immediately sent to France, without having even been opened."

A king, a landed gentleman of great wealth, and a musician from Bath formed the triumvirate in science, of which our countrymen used to speak, and were deservedly proud for twenty years before and for twenty after the beginning of the present century. All three were dead, but they were survived for a quarter of a century or more by a lady, who made herself famous in science and wore her well-won honours with the modesty of true deserving—Caroline Lucretia Herschel, the devoted sister and unwearied assistant of her brother William. With touching pathos she writes to Francis Baily in 1835, "It encourages me now to address you as an old friend, and I might almost say my only one, for death has not spared me one of those valuable men of the last century in whose society I had an opportunity of spending many happy hours, when they came to pass an astronomical night at Bath, Datchet, Clay Hall, and Slough." She