Of her very early childhood one gets the impression that Caroline was a quiet, modest little maiden, “deeply interested in all the family concerns,” content to be eclipsed by her more brilliant and less patient elder sister, and overlooked by her thoughtless brothers, toward one of whom, William, she already began to cherish that deep affection which she maintained throughout their lives.  The lives of this brother and sister, indeed, in this respect, recall to mind those of Charles and Mary Lamb.  When she was five years old the family life was disturbed by war, which took away temporarily father and sons, and left the little girl at home, her mother’s sole companion.  Her recollections of this time are very dismal, and may be read at length in the memoir by Mrs. John Herschel, to which we are indebted for much aid.  When she was seventeen her father died, and the polished education which he had hoped to give her was supplanted by the rough but useful knowledge which her mother chose to inculcate in her—­an education which was to help to fit her to earn her bread, and to be of great assistance to her beloved brother William.  He had now for some years been living at Bath, England, from which he wrote in 1772, proposing that his sister should join him there to assist him in his musical projects, for he had now become a composer and director.  In August of this year she accomplished a most adventurous and wearisome journey to London, encountering storms by land and sea, and on the 28th of the month found herself installed in her brother’s lodgings at Bath.

It will be necessary here to speak a little more at length of her brother’s life as she found it when she joined him, as thereafter her own existence was practically merged in his, and, as she has said modestly of herself and her service:  “I did nothing for my brother but what a well-trained puppy-dog would have done; that is to say, I did what he commanded me.  I was a mere tool, which he had the trouble of sharpening.”  Posterity discredits this self-depreciation, while it admires it, and Miss Herschel’s services are now esteemed at their true worth.  Her brother then, when she came to Bath, had established himself there as a teacher of music, as organist of the Octagon Chapel, and, as we have said before, was a composer and director of more than ordinary merit.  This was all a side issue, however.  It was but a means to an end.  His music was the goose that laid the golden egg, which, once in his possession, he turned over to the mistress of his soul—­Astronomy.

Every spare moment of the day, we are told, and many hours stolen from the night, had long been devoted to the studies which were compelling him to become himself an observer of the heavens.  He had worked wonders of mechanical invention, forced thereto by necessity; had become a member of a philosophical society, and his name was beginning to be circulated among the great, rumors of his work reaching and arresting even royal attention.