My dear niece has promised me your article[45] on the writings of Mrs. Somerville. I hope she will not forget it, nor you the Catalogue of double stars. Such things make me very happy, but of any expensive publications I would not wish you to throw away upon me _now_; it makes me only grudge to think of having to leave them in the hands of blockheads. But if you have anything for Göttingen, Encke, or Bessel, it amuses me to forward it. Olbers has been dangerously ill for some time; they tell me he is too fat, and lives too well. I only write this by way of announcing the parcel, that you may inquire for it should it not come to hand in due time, else I am very tired, and must yet make up the parcel, and I want to show myself once more to-morrow evening at the Oratorio, as it is for the poor, and will be the last performance this season.... [Sidenote: 1832. _Letter from Hanover._] EXTRACT FROM A LETTER OF SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. HANOVER, _June 19, 1832_. ... I found my aunt wonderfully well and very nicely and comfortably lodged, and we have since been on the full trot. She runs about the town with me and skips up her two flights of stairs as light and fresh at least as _some folks_ I could name who are not a fourth part of her age.... In the morning till eleven or twelve she is dull and weary, but as the day advances she gains life, and is quite “fresh and funny” at ten or eleven, p.m., and sings old rhymes, nay, even dances! to the great delight of all who see her.... It was only this evening that, escaping from a party at Mrs. Beckedorff’s, I was able to indulge in what my soul has been yearning for ever since I came here—a solitary ramble out of town, among the meadows which border the Leine-strom, from which the old, tall, sombre-looking Markt-thurm and the three beautiful lanthorn-steeples of Hanover are seen as in the little picture I have often looked at with a sort of mysterious wonder when a boy as that strange place in foreign parts that my father and uncle used to talk so much about, and so familiarly. The _likeness_ is correct, and I soon found the point of view.