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."[1] 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
- ↑ (Fanny Barney) Madame D'Arblay, Letters, etc., iii 442.
