... “Now let me tell you how things fell out. Dr. Groskopff took Willie with him to aunty, but without saying who he was. Says she, ‘What little boy is that?’ Says he, ‘The son of a friend of mine. Ask him his name.’ However, Willie would not tell his name. ‘Where do you come from, little fellow?’ ‘From the Cape of Good Hope,’ says Willie. ‘What is that he says?’ ‘He says he comes from the Cape of Good Hope.’ ‘Ay? and who is he? What is his name?’ ‘His name is Herschel.’ ‘Yes,’ says Willie, ‘William James Herschel.’ ‘_Ach, mein Gott! das ist nicht möglich; ist dieser meines Neffen’s Sohn?_’ And so it all came out, and when I came to her all was understood, and we sat down and talked as quietly as if we had parted but yesterday.... “Groskopff, by the way, was recounting a strange feat which, to give you some notion of the _sort of person_ (_par rapport au physique_), she performed, not longer than half a year ago. Remember it is a person of eighty-eight or eighty-nine of whom we are speaking. Well! what do you say of such a person being able to put her foot behind her back and scratch her ear, in imitation of a dog, with it, in one of her merry moods?” The “Day-Book,” as already stated, had been recommenced in the year 1833. The first volume of the new Day-Book concludes in May, 1837, with comments on Baily’s account of Flamsteed, and recollections of days spent at Greenwich in 1799, when she had seen and wondered at the piles of manuscripts accumulated there. “Dr. Maskelyne was not indifferent to the stores of observations of his predecessor, for he even attempted to make _me_ undertake the examination of some of Halley’s scribblings on fragments of waste paper [to see if they] might not belong to some star or other. But such things cannot be done in a moment, and the parcel was restored to its dusty shelf. Poor Dr. Maskelyne had but one assistant, with a salary of £70 a-year, whom I once heard lament that all the planets happened to pass the meridian in the night-time!” The entries are chiefly of the numerous visitors she received, but there are frequent intervals of several months when illness or disinclination to write prevented her continuing her Journal regularly. The English Quarterly and Monthly Reviews and newspapers, and James’s novels, supplied her with constant reading, and every allusion to her brother’s or her nephew’s labours is carefully noted. It is evident that she still was in the habit of taking ample notes of any book that interested her, in spite of complaints of the growing failure of sight, and that, when tolerably well, no day was considered altogether satisfactory which was passed in solitude. It was in May, 1833, that she moved to No. 376, Braunschweiger Strasse, and here she continued to dwell for the remainder of her days. MISS HERSCHEL TO LADY HERSCHEL. HANOVER, _July 30, 1838_. MY DEAREST NIECE,—