most resembling in
shape and spirit her brother dear." She wrote a beautiful elegy on
his death at Zutphen: Great loss to all that ever did him see; Great
loss to all, but greatest loss to me. The renowned experimental
philosopher, Robert Boyle, and his sister, Catherine, the very
accomplished and famous countess of Ranelagh, were a noted pair of
friends. Bishop Burnet has drawn for us a delightful picture of them.
He says, "They were pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they
were not divided; for, as he lived with her above forty years, so he
did not outlive her a week." The countess "lived the longest on the
most public scene, and made the greatest figure, in all the
revolutions of these kingdoms for above fifty years, of any woman of
that age." She laid out her time, her interest, and her estate, with
the greatest zeal and success, in doing good to others, without
regard to sects or relations. "When any party was down, she had
credit and zeal enough to serve them; and she employed these so
effectually, that, in the next turn, she had a new stock of credit,
which she laid out wholly in that labor of love in which she spent
her life. And though some particular opinions might shut her up in a
divided communion, yet her soul was never of a party. She divided her
charities and friendships both, her esteem as well as her bounty,
with the truest regard to merit and her own obligations, without any
difference made upon the account of opinion. She had, with a vast
reach of knowledge and apprehension, an universal affability and
easiness of access, an humility that descended to the meanest persons
and concerns, an obliging kindness and readiness to advise those who
had no occasion for any farther assistance from her. And with all
those and many other excellent qualities, she had the deepest sense
of religion, and the most constant turning of her thoughts and
discourses that way, that has been, perhaps, in our age. Such a
sister became such a brother; and it was but suitable to both their
characters, that they should have improved the relation under which
they were born to the more exalted and endearing one of friend." Two
of the most distinguished in the long roll of eminent astronomers are
a brother and a sister, Sir William and Caroline Herschel. The story
of their united labors, how, for thousands of nights, side by side
they sat and watched and calculated and wrote, one sweeping the
telescopic heavens, the other as