CHAPTER III.

In August 1782 the Herschels removed to Datchet.  Their new home was “a large neglected place; the house in a deplorably ruinous condition, the garden and grounds overgrown with weeds.”  Nor were the domestic arrangements more favourable.  For a fortnight the little family were without a female servant; and an old woman, the gardener’s wife, showed Miss Herschel the shops, where the high prices of every article, from coals to butcher’s meat, appalled her.  But of these inconveniences Herschel took no account.  Enough for him that he was released from the drudgery of teaching, and free thenceforth to devote himself to the heavens and their wonders.  A man whose thoughts are always with the stars can hardly be expected to trouble himself about the price of tallow-candles!  Were there not capacious stables in which mirrors of any size could be ground; and a roomy laundry capable of easy conversion into a library, with one door opening on a large lawn, where the “small twenty-foot” was to take its stand?  Compared with advantages such as these, what mattered the scarcity of “butcher’s meat”?  Herschel laughingly assured his sister that they could live on eggs and bacon; which, he confidently asserted, would cost next to nothing, now that they were really in the country!

And so he settled down to a life of quiet, industry at Datchet; his admirable sister being formally adopted as his assistant and secretary.  Never had master a more devoted, a more enthusiastic, or a more intelligent servant!  She shared in all his night-watches, with her eye constantly on the clock, and the pencil in her hand; with unerring accuracy she made all the complex calculations so frequently required; she made three or four copies of every observation in separate registers, co-ordinating, classifying, and analyzing them.  If the scientific world, says Arago, saw with astonishment the unexampled rapidity with which Herschel’s works succeeded one another for many years, they were greatly indebted for this affluence of production to the affectionate ardour of his sister Caroline.  Her enthusiasm never failed; her industry knew no check; and her brother’s fame was dearer to her than life.

In one of her letters she describes with graphic simplicity the “interior” at Datchet:—­

“I found that I was to be trained for an assistant-astronomer; and by way of encouragement, a telescope adapted for ‘sweeping’ (or rapidly surveying a wide extent of space), consisting of a tube with two glasses, was given [to] me.  I was to ’sweep for comets;’ and I see by my journal that I began August 22nd, 1782, to write down and describe all remarkable appearances I saw in my ‘sweeps.’  But it was not till the last two months of the same year that I felt the least encouragement to spend the starlit nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar-frost, without a human being near enough