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30 She came to England to be a public singer, she begins her work by a few lessons on optical instruments in the shop windows of London. Herschel had by that time evidently entered on the race for fame. His sister was twenty-two years of age.

Fourteen years after, when she had become a celebrity in all the observatories of Europe, at the Royal Society, and in the palace at Windsor, she is thus described by a young woman, who was then as famous for her pen as Caroline became for her comet-finder. "She is very little," the authoress of Evelina writes, "very gentle, very modest, and very ingenuous; and her manners are those of a person unhackneyed and unawed by the world, yet desirous to meet and to return its smiles. I love not the philosophy that braves it. This brother and sister seem gratified with its favour, at the same time that their own pursuit is all-sufficient to them without it." "I inquired of Miss Herschel if she was still comet-hunting, or content now with the moon? The brother answered that he had the charge of the moon, but he left to his sister to sweep the heavens for comets." Was this famous little lady above thinking of the small things which delight the fancy of less remarkable women? In her case, would the answer to the prophet's question. Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? have been Yes! Far from it. When she made her first public appearance as a singer "her brother presented her with ten guineas for her dress," and she tells us herself that her "choice could not have been a bad one," as the proprietor of the Bath theatre pronounced her "to be an ornament to the stage!" All