Tell your dear Margaret that the very day on which the letter arrived, in which she requested some hair, I sent for the hair-dresser and made him cut off all which was useless to me, leaving plenty for a toupee and a little curl in the poll. But I repented not having kept a few out of the plait, which I might have sent in a letter, as I understand it is designed for a talisman against the evils of this hurly-burlying world. But I consoled myself with the thoughts that no harm could possibly assail the dear little creature as long as she is under the care of her affectionate and excellent mother, leaving a loving father out of the account. Dr. Groskopf has been _zum Ritter ernannt_ by his present Majesty. So was Dr. Mühry last week. If all is betitled in England and Germany, why is not my nephew, J. H., a lord, or a wycount at least (query)? General Komarzewsky used to say to your father, Why does not he (meaning King George III.) make you Duke of Slough? * * * * * [Sidenote: 1830-1831. _Her Nephew’s Book._] MISS HERSCHEL TO J. F. W. HERSCHEL, ESQ. _March, 1831._ MY DEAREST NEPHEW,— If it was not high time to congratulate you on your birthday—of which I most heartily wish you may enjoy many returns in uninterrupted and increasing happiness—I might have still deferred to thank you for your kind letter and the valuable present of _your book_. I intend to follow your mother’s example to read it “from end to end,” which I was hitherto not able to do on account of my dim eyes; but now the days are getting longer I think I see better, and to judge by the few pages I have read, that so far from making me go to sleep, it will be an antidote against a propensity for doing so in the daytime. I much regret my inability to acknowledge my dear niece’s letter in such a manner as might encourage a correspondence with me, but it is difficult to write in a cheerful strain when one is continually in the dismals. I do all I can to keep up my spirits under a daily increase of my infirmities, and have been best part of the winter confined to my rooms. My complaint is incurable, for it is a _decay_ of nature, and nine days after your birthday I am eighty-one. What a shocking idea it is to be decaying! _decaying!_ But never mind—if I am decaying here, there will be, as Mrs. Maskelyne once was comforting me (on observing my growing lean), “the less corruption in my grave!”