Hanoverians, when he accompanied that King on his visit to the Electorate in 1821. Perhaps Herschel's mother was an example of this great simplicity, misplaced. At least it resulted in years and recollections of exceeding bitterness to William Herschel and his sister. There can be little doubt that both of them laid on her the blame of great mistakes committed, and grave responsibilities incurred, which darkened her son's future life. Possibly it had something to do with the difficulty he had, as he approached his eightieth year, in drawing up an autobiography, as he wished to do. He found "himself much at a loss for the dates of the month, or even the year, when he first arrived in England with his brother Jacob." The work was handed over to Caroline, who undertook it with the "proviso not to criticise on my telling my story in my own way." Her youngest brother, Dietrich, the scapegrace of the family, was under three years of age when these sorrowful passages occurred in their household history. When past seventy he was as hard to deal with as in his teens. "Let me touch on what topic I would," she writes, "he maintained the contrary, which I soon saw was done merely because he would allow no one to know anything but himself." There were two strains in this large family, as there are in many others, one tending downwards, another soaring upwards, and the former is usually a grief to the latter. Jacob, Dietrich, and Sophia represented the one: William, Caroline, and, in a lesser degree, Alexander represented the other. The only one who made a fortune was William, and the one who got a larger share of it than any of the others, even than Caroline and Alexander,
