presented with your book, and he went to fetch his spectacles, and was much pleased with the subject, saying, “I shall read it, for I like such things.” After I had read the whole book myself—mind, I say _the whole_, though you recommended me to read only the first and last chapters—and knowing no one who is worthy to look into it, I had it handsomely bound and wrote in the top margin “To His Royal Highness, the Duke of Cambridge.” At the side of Sir Francis Bacon stands “_from_” and in the margin at the bottom, “Caroline Herschel, aunt of the author.” By this means, I know it secured from contamination in the Duke’s library, where anybody who is desirous of reading it will find it. [Sidenote: 1832. _Last Illness of Lady Herschel._] _December 26th._ MY DEAREST NIECE,— So far I wrote last night, thinking to fill this page to-day, with such news as I should like to communicate to my nephew if he was present; but now all is fled from my memory, for my dear sister is ill, and perhaps still in danger, and my only trust is in your goodness of sending me a speedy account, which may confirm the hope you seem to entertain of her recovery. For there is nothing I so ardently desire as to be spared the pain of mourning for a single individual of those friends I have in England, and how much more it would affect me to lose one so nearly connected, and within a few months of my own age, it may be easily imagined.... Next to listening to the conversation of learned men, I like to hear about them, but I find myself, unfortunately, among beings who like nothing but smoking, big talk on politics, wars, and such like things. Of our German astronomers, I have lately heard nothing; but that, perhaps, is owing to Encke having had the cholera, but of which he soon recovered. Gauss has been long unhappily situated by losing his second wife, who had been long lingering.... ... I beg once more for an early assurance of my dear sister’s recovery. MISS HERSCHEL TO SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. HANOVER, _Jan. 20, 1832_. MY DEAREST NEPHEW,— My dear niece’s and your letter of January 3rd, have indeed answered your kind intentions, for the painful communication of your last found me prepared, and enabled me to break the black seal with tolerable composure, and I found no small consolation from your description of the easy ending of your dear departed parent. At this moment, I am incapable of saying anything of myself. I know it cannot be long before I shall follow the dear departed, and my pen would trace nothing but lamentations at the prospect that my remains will not be joined in rest by the side of those with whom I lived so long.