Alas! advice is thrown away on many, like good seed on a bare rock.  Teach a cow for seven years, but she will never learn to sing the Old Hundreth.  Of some it seems true that when they were born Solomon went by the door, but would not look in.  Their coat-of-arms is a fool’s cap on a donkey’s head.  They sleep when it is time to plough, and weep when harvest comes.  They eat all the parsnips for supper, and wonder they have none left for breakfast.

    Once let every man say Try,
    Very few on straw would lie,
    Fewer still of want would die;
    Pans would all have fish to fry;
    Pigs would fill the poor man’s sty;
    Want would cease and need would fly;
    Wives,and children cease to cry;
    Poor rates would not swell so high;
    Things wouldn’t go so much awry—­
    You’d be glad, and so would I.

* * * * *

XVIII.

CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL.

(BORN 1750—­DIED 1848)

A NOBLE, SELF-SACRIFICING WOMAN.

March 16, 1750, and January 9, 1848.  These are the dates that span the ninety-eight years of the life of a woman whose deeds were great in the service of the world, but of whom the world itself knows all too little.  Of the interest attaching to the life of such a woman, whose recollections went back to the great earthquake at Lisbon; who lived through the American War, the old French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon; who saw the development of the great factors of modern civilization, “from the lumbering post wagon in which she made her first journey from Hanover to the railroads and electric telegraphs which have intersected all Europe;” of the interest which such a life possesses, apart from that which attaches to it as that of a noble, self-sacrificing woman, who was content to serve when she might have led in a great cause, but few will be insensible.

Caroline Herschel was born on the 16th of March 1750, and was the eighth child of ten children.  Her father, Isaac Herschel, traced his ancestry back to the early part of the seventeenth century, when three brothers Herschel left Moravia through religious differences, they being Protestant.  The father, Isaac, was passionately fond of music, to the study of which, as a youth, he devoted himself, and, at the time of his marriage in Hanover, was engaged as hautboy player in the band of the Guards.  When, in the course of time, his family grew up around him, each child received an education at the garrison school, to which they were sent between the ages of two and fourteen; and at home the father strove to cultivate the musical talents of his sons, one of whom, William, soon taught his teacher, while another, Jacob, was organist of the garrison church.