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28 of all the young men by her beauty and accomplishments. Offer after offer was made for her hand, but the preference was given by her father, for reasons not creditable to him, to a suitor very much older than she was, but immensely wealthy. With difficulty the girl was persuaded to agree to the match. She withdrew from all public engagements, and nothing was talked of in Bath but the approaching wedding. While the town was in this state of expectation, William Herschel, seeing that great prizes were in prospect for attractive singers, bethought himself of his sister Caroline, then two or three years older than Miss Linley. He proposed that she should join him at Bath, after receiving lessons from their eldest brother, Jacob, in the hope that she "might become a useful singer for his winter concerts and oratorios." Should the experiment not succeed, he promised to bring her back to Hanover at the end of two years. Evidently Jacob—he is described as "brilliant"—had been a failure in Bath. A bully, such as he was, could not help feeling that it was a reflection on him to suggest she might succeed where he had failed. Without ever hearing the girl sing, he "turned the whole scheme into ridicule," but she resented his conduct "by taking every opportunity when all were from home to imitate, with a gag between my teeth, the solo parts of concertos, shake and all, such as I had heard them play on the violin; in consequence I had gained a tolerable execution before I knew how to sing." The cruelty or stupidity of the eldest brother had no effect on William, except to deepen his determination to make this experiment.

Meanwhile, strange things were happening at Bath. Miss Linley's admirer threw up his engagement, and,