Page:Williamherschel00simegoog.djvu/267

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FAIRY PRINCE; SLEEPING PRINCESS
255

feel the same doubts about the authorship, that critics generally feel about the authorship of the last chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, in which Moses is commonly supposed to have recorded his own death and funeral. And thus closes the wonderful story of William Herschel and his sister Caroline, the story of the fairy prince of science coming to the sleeping princess of the heavens to awake her and all her company from the sleep of ages on the one hand, and, on the other, the story of the despised household drudge, Cinderella, taking a place, a deserved place, among the laurelled benefactors of humanity. Future ages are certain to witness many histories of men and women, of fairy princes and ragged Cinderellas, uniting perseverance to genius, prosaic detail to lofty imaginings. Other women since her time have shrined their names as worthy travellers among the stars; but, while they may never eclipse the brightness of the sunshine I have endeavoured to picture in this little book, Encke's homage will be echoed by all time—"A lady whose name is so intimately connected with the most brilliant astronomical discoveries of the age, and whose claims to the gratitude of every astronomer will be as conspicuous as her own exertions for extending the boundaries of our knowledge, and for assisting to develop the discoveries by which the name of her great brother has been rendered so famous throughout the literary world."