her promise.’ Her real interest was with Sir John Herschel's career, and she felt keenly the intellectual isolation to which she had condemned herself. Before quitting England she had made over to her brother Dietrich her little funded property of 500l.; and her extreme frugality allowed room for further generosity to her poorer relations out of an income of 150l. a year, of which 100l. was a bequest from her brother William. She nursed Dietrich Herschel at his house in the Marktstrasse until his death in 1827, and made a final move in 1833 to No. 376 Braunschweigerstrasse.
For her ‘Reduction and Arrangement in the Form of a Catalogue in Zones of all the Star Clusters and Nebulæ observed by Sir William Herschel’ she received the Astronomical Society's gold medal on 8 Feb. 1828 (Memoirs Royal Astr. Society, iii. 409), but was ‘more shocked than gratified’ by the distinction. This laborious work was styled by Sir David Brewster ‘an extraordinary monument of the inextinguishable ardour of a lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science.’ Although never published, it was the most valuable of her undertakings, because indispensable to Sir John Herschel's review of northern nebulæ. Miss Herschel was created an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1835, and of the Royal Irish Academy in 1838. On the first occasion Mrs. Somerville transmitted to her a copy of ‘The Connexion of the Physical Sciences.’
Miss Herschel's later years were cheered by many attentions. All men of science passing through Hanover, among them Gauss, Humboldt, and Mädler, called to see her. The royal family showed her constant kindness, and she had a particular regard for the Duke of Cambridge. Until 1839 her tiny figure was rarely absent from the theatre, where she was pleased to be noticed as a celebrity; she never missed a concert, and recorded her delight with Catalani and Paganini. A visit from her nephew in October 1824 afforded her vivid pleasure. During his next visit in June 1832 he wrote of her, then in her eighty-third year: ‘She runs about the town with me, and skips up her two flights of stairs. In the morning, till eleven or twelve, she is dull and weary, but as the day advances she gains life, and is quite “fresh and funny” at ten o'clock p.m., and sings old rhymes, nay, even dances! to the great delight of all who see her.’ Her ninety-sixth birthday was marked by Humboldt's transmission to her, in the name of the king of Prussia, of the gold medal for science. On the succeeding anniversary she entertained the crown prince and princess with great animation for two hours, even singing to them a composition of her brother William. Her last letter was finished on 3 Dec. 1846, but she lived to hold in her hands, in her nephew's ‘Cape Observations,’ the completion of the great celestial survey in which she had borne a share. She passed away tranquilly on 9 Jan. 1848, in her ninety-eighth year, and was buried with her parents in the churchyard of the ‘Gartengemeinde’ at Hanover. Her coffin was, by command of the princess royal, adorned with palm-branches, and, at her own request, contained a lock of her ‘revered brother's’ hair; and the inscription on her tombstone, composed by herself, commemorated her ‘participation in his immortal labours.’
Caroline Herschel was absolutely without personal ambition, and jealous of her own praises lest they should seem to abate anything from her brother's merits. ‘I did nothing for him,’ she protested, ‘but what a well-trained puppy-dog would have done.’ ‘My only reason,’ she wrote to her nephew, ‘for saying so much of myself is to show with what miserable assistance your father made shift to obtain the means of exploring the heavens.’ Her commonplace-book, by its numerous entries of elementary problems in mathematics and astronomy, picked up from her brother at odd moments, proves the diligence with which she acquired the scanty outfit which her alert intelligence rendered effective. Although her memory remained excellent to the last, she records that she could never remember the multiplication table. Her portrait, painted by Tielemann in 1829, which she declared to ‘look like life itself,’ is in the possession of her grand-nephew, Sir William J. Herschel. An engraving from a later likeness, taken at the age of ninety-seven, forms the frontispiece to Mrs. John Herschel's ‘Memoir.’ The Newtonian seven-foot reflector, with which many of her discoveries had been made from the roof of the house at Slough, was presented in 1840 by her and Sir John Herschel jointly to the Royal Astronomical Society. Her gold medal, bequeathed to her grand-niece, Lady Gordon, was given by her to Girton College, Cambridge. Minor planet No. 281 was named ‘Lucretia’ in her honour by M. Palisa in 1889. The materials for her own and her brother's biographies are derived chiefly from her ‘Journals’ and ‘Recollections’ written at various periods, with a fragment of a ‘History of the Herschels’ begun in 1842.
