CAROLINE HERSCHEL. 805 England relating his good and ill fortune, and meanwhile Caroline grows up to womanhood. She is twenty-two years of age, when word comes from her brother that he is well established at Bath as organist and music-master, and that he would gladly have his sister come to him and preside over his home. She joins him at Bath, then in the full tide of its pros- perity as a fashionable watering-place. Her brother, as I have before related, shared this prosperity, played the organ at a church, gave lessons and concerts, and had some leisure left for reading and study. Both sister and brother became enthusiastic students of astronomy through the lectures and writings of Ferguson, the popular astrono- mer of that day. The brother makes a telescope for himself ; makes another ; succeeds very happily ; makes dozens and scores of telescopes ; and among others, makes one for his sister, Caroline, with which she begins to scrutinize the heavens. She discovers a comet, to her great delight. This success leads her to sweep the whole heavens in search of comets, and by the time she had reached middle life she had discovered eight, five of which had never before been observed. Meanwhile her brother, from making telescopes turns more and more to using them, and becomes the most diligent, resolute, and successful observer in Europe ; dis- covers a planet ; becomes famous all over the world ; receives a pension and a house from the king of England ; and brother and sister go to live in the house near Wind- sor, almost in the shadow of Windsor Castle, the king's own abode. There is not a happier pair in the world than they, for it seems their burning zeal for astronomy had much embarrassed their affairs, and their good for- tune came just in time to save them from ruin. So, at least, Madame D'Arblay says, who was then attached to the court, and occasionally visited them.
