MISS HERSCHEL TO THE REV. DR. MASKELYNE.
If it was not highly necessary to make you acquainted with the safe arrival of your valuable present at Slough, I might perhaps be a long while before I should think myself sufficiently collected to express the grateful feelings the sight of it occasioned me. My being pleased at having two such useful and convenient instruments has but very little connection with my present ideas; and if they had come to me from any other hands but those of the Astronomer Royal, I should use them as occasion required, and think myself much obliged to the giver. But as it is, I cannot help wishing I were capable of doing something to make myself deserving of all these kind attentions.
I feel gratified in particular when I think of the stipulation I was making when you were taking measure of the distance [apart] of my eyes: viz., that if you in future should change in opinion, and not think me worthy of the present, not to bestow it on me.
Mrs. Maskelyne's good-natured looks, and all she said at the time, come now again to my remembrance, and seeing not only the binocular (which I had but a conditional expectation of receiving), but also the night-glass, makes me hope that during the time I had the honour of being in the company of such esteemed friends, I have suffered no loss in their former good opinion of me, which was a circumstance I often feared might have happened; for I have too little knowledge of the rules of society to trust much to my acquitting myself so as to give hope of having made any favourable impressions.
You see, dear sir, that you have done me more good than you were perhaps aware of: you have not only enabled me