... For these last three months I have not been able to add a single line to my Memoir, but what you will find among my papers and memorandums; perhaps your daughter Isabella may, for her amusement some time or other, correct and write in the clear, my scribblings, for I find that in attempting to correct one blunder I am making two others in the same line. But I wish you might see, by what I say of myself, what trouble and invention it must have cost your father to enable me to assist in determining the places of all these objects, and I see with pleasure that your observations agree so nearly. * * * * * I was going to send, for the amusement of my dear niece, some description of what is going on here in Hanover, but I find it would be too much for my time and patience at present, and will only say that I believe they are all out of their senses. There is an _Eisenbahn_[65] from Hanover to Braunschweig just now completed, which has turned them all wild. Some hundreds of high officers all (but the King) set off at eight o’clock to breakfast with the Braunschweigers, and returned with the same at three to dinner (eight hundred in number) in the orangery at Herrnhausen, from whence the Braunschweigers returned and were at home, I believe, again at eight. I am too tired at present, else I was going to tell you how they are building. Hanover is now twice as large as when you saw it last; nothing but castles will serve them any longer. I have all this from hearsay, for I have not been downstairs since February 3, 1842. * * * * * They talk of nothing here at the clubs but of the great mirror and the great man who made it. I have but one answer for all, which is, “_Der Kerl ist ein Narr!_”[66]... MISS HERSCHEL TO LADY HERSCHEL. _March 4, 1845._ MY DEAREST NIECE,— * * * * * Have I understood you aright? Saw you the thermometer 1½° above zero? the lowest I have heard of here was only 13° below freezing; but we are buried in snow! _March 5th._—No alteration in the weather, nor in my affection for my dear niece and nephew and their ten children! the first is as cold as the latter is warm! * * * * * [Sidenote: 1845. _The Great Telescope._] _April 29, 1845._ In his father’s library my nephew must have found a folio volume of H—— (an astronomer and copper engraver), where, for every hour a distinct picture [of the moon] is given. In the Phil. Transactions for 1780, p. 507, is the first paper of William Herschel on the Moon. In 1787; 1792, p. 27; 1793, p. 206, measure of mountains, &c.