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From another letter we take a lively little picture of a Christmas in Hanover:—­

She had been told that keeping Christmas in the German sense was coming to be very general in England; but her shrewd, practical turn of mind induced her to hope that the English would never go “such lengths in foolery.”  At Hanover, she wrote, the tradespeople had been for many weeks in full employ, framing and mounting the embroideries of the ladies and girls of all classes; of all classes, for not a folly or extravagancy existed among the great but it was imitated by the little.  The shops were beautifully lighted up by gas, and the last three days before Christmas all that could tempt or attract was exhibited in the market-places in booths lighted up in the evening, whither everybody hastened to gaze and to spend their money.  Cooks and housemaids presented one another with knitted bags and purses; the cobbler’s daughter embroidered “neck-cushions” for her friend the butcher’s daughter.  These were made up by the upholsterer at great expense, lined with white satin; the upper part, on which the back rested, being wrought with gold, silver, and pearls.

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But we must no longer delay the reader by our gossip.  Enough has been said to illustrate the character of a remarkable woman, and of those features of it—­her cheerfulness, her patience, her industry, her devoted affection, her unselfishness—­which all of us may be the better for studying and imitating.  Our limits compel us to draw our simple narrative to a close, and we must pass over the delight with which she received and read Sir John Herschel’s great work, “Cape Observations,”—­a noble monument of the perseverance and strenuous labour of genius; but of twofold interest to her, because it not only testified to the eminent qualities of her nephew, but brought to a noble conclusion the vast undertaking of that nephew’s father and her own beloved brother—­the survey of the nebulous heavens.

A letter written by her friend Miss Becksdorff, on the 6th of January 1848, describes Caroline Herschel’s last days:—­

“Her decided objection to having her bed placed in a warmer room had brought on a cold and cough; and so firm was her determination to preserve her old customs, and not to yield to increasing infirmities, that when, upon her doctor’s positive orders, I had a bed made up in her room, before she came to sit in it one day, it was not till two o’clock in the night that Betty could persuade her to lie down in it.  Upon going to her the next morning, I had the satisfaction, however, of finding her perfectly reconciled to the arrangement; she now felt the comfort of being undisturbed, and she has kept to her bed ever since.  Her mental and bodily strength is gradually declining.  But a few days ago she was ready for a joke.  When Mrs. Clarke told her that General Halkett sent his love, and ’hoped