om the
fact that, to our best knowledge, Miss Herschel's was a temperament
which would be strongly affected by the life she was leading, and her
silence as to personal sentiment shows to what an extent she had become
a tool in her brother's hands--rejoicing in his successes, and
sympathizing in his sorrows, but never revealing to what depth of
self-sacrifice she may have been plunged by her voluntary surrender and
devotion to her brother.

As we understand her, Miss Herschel would have been eminently fitted to
fill a position of high domestic responsibility; and no woman of this
sort, who has once dreamed of a home of her own, with its ennobling and
divine responsibilities, can, without a pang, give up so sweet a vision
for a life of sacrifice, although it be brilliant with the cold
splendors of science. Her life with her brother, as has been said, was
one of ceaseless activity in all the capacities in which she served him.
As housekeeper, she occupied a small room in the attic, while her
brother occupied the ground-floor, furnished in new and handsome style.
She received a sum for weekly expenses, of which she must keep a careful
account, and all the marketing fell to her. She had to struggle with
hot-tempered servants, and with the greatest irregularity and disorder
in the household; while her imperfect knowledge of English (this was
soon after her arrival at Bath) added a new pang to her homesickness and
low spirits. Later on, in her capacity as musical assistant, we are told
that she once copied the scores of the "Messiah" and "Judas Maccabaeus"
into parts for an orchestra of nearly one hundred performers, and the
vocal parts of "Samson," besides instructing the treble singers, of whom
she was now herself the first. As astronomical assistant, she has
herself given a glimpse of her experience in the following words: "In my
brother's absence from home, I was, of course, left solely to amuse
myself with my own thoughts, which were any thing but cheerful. I found
I was to be trained for an assistant astronomer, and, by way of
encouragement, a telescope adapted for 'sweeping,' consisting of a tube
with two glasses, such as are commonly used in a 'finder,' was given me.
I was 'to sweep for comets,' and I see by my journal that I began August
22, 1782, to write down and describe all remarkable appearances I saw in
my 'sweeps,' which were horizontal. But it was not till the last two
months of the same year that I felt the l