She stood beside her brother, William Herschel, sharing his labours, helping his life. In the days when he gave up a lucrative career that he might devote himself to astronomy, it was owing to her thrift and care that he was not harassed by the rankling vexations of money matters. She had been his helper and assistant in the days when he was a leading musician; she became his helper and assistant when he gave himself up to astronomy. By sheer force of will and devoted affection, she learned enough of mathematics and of methods of calculation, which to those unlearned seem mysteries, to be able to commit to writing the results of his researches. She became his assistant in the workshop; she helped him to grind and polish his mirrors; she stood beside his telescope in the nights of midwinter, to write down his observations, when the very ink was frozen in the bottle. She kept him alive by her care; thinking nothing of herself, she lived for him. She loved him, and believed in him, and helped him, with all her heart and with all her strength. She might have become a distinguished woman on her own account, for with the “seven-foot Newtonian sweeper” given to her by her brother, she discovered eight comets first and last. But the pleasure of seeking and finding for herself was scarcely tasted. She “minded the heavens” for her brother; she worked for him, not for herself, and the unconscious self-denial with which she gave up her own pleasure in the use of her “sweeper,” is not the least beautiful feature in her life. She must have been witty and amusing, to judge from her books of “Recollections.” When past eighty, she wrote what she called “a little history of my life from 1772-1778” for her nephew, Sir John Herschel, the son of her brother William, that he might know something of his excellent grandparents, as well as of the immense difficulties which his father had to surmount in his life and labours. It was not to tell about herself, but of others, that she wrote them. There is not any good biography of Sir William Herschel, and the incidental revelations of him in these Recollections are valuable. They show how well he deserved the love and devotion she rendered to him. Great as were his achievements in science, and his genius, they were borne up and ennobled by the beauty and worth of his own inner life.