days with equally evil results. The ill health of the father, and their straitened means, may help to explain this neglect of the little girl, without excusing it. Up to the close of a long life she never ceased to regret and reprobate the treatment to which she was subjected in childhood. But, unlike her youngest brother, Dietrich, she laid no part of the blame for this neglect on their invalid father. "Dietrich," she says, "never recollected the eight years' care and attention he had received from his father, but for ever murmured at having received too scanty an education, though he had the same schooling we all of us had had before him."
It was different with her brother William. In Hanover there was at that time a garrison school, taught by a capable teacher. Master and pupil, finding in each other what the other wanted, were a credit to their fellowship in learning. All the children were in the habit of attending this school, from the age of two to fourteen; but Caroline seems to have got little good from it, and at two or even four years of age she would have been much better at home under a mother's care. The teacher had some knowledge of Latin and arithmetic. Out of school hours he imparted to William Herschel all he knew of these branches. French the boy also learned, as the polite language of the world of civilised men, and the tongue of the enemies of his King and country. English is not mentioned among his acquirements, although the Elector of Hanover was then George II. of England; but a King who spoke indifferent English at Windsor, or none at all, would not encourage the study of it in the garrison school at Hanover. Even the German
