News from Hanover put a sudden stop for a time to all these labours. The mother wrote, in the utmost distress, to say that Dietrich had disappeared from his home, it was supposed with the intention of going to India “with a young idler not older than himself.” His brother immediately left the lathe at which he was turning an eye-piece in cocoanut, and started for Holland, whence he proceeded to Hanover, failing to meet his brother as he expected. Meanwhile the sister received a letter to say that Dietrich was laid up very ill at an inn in Wapping. Alexander posted to town, removed him to a lodging, and after a fortnight’s nursing, brought him to Bath, where, on his brother William’s return, he found him being well cared for by his sister, who kept him to a diet of “roasted apples and barley-water.” Dietrich remained in England, his brother easily procuring him employment until 1779, when he returned to Hanover, and shortly afterwards married a Miss Reif. The family now moved to a larger house, 19, New King Street, which had a garden behind it, and open space down to the river. It is incidentally mentioned, “that here many interesting discoveries besides the Georgium Sidus were made.” In preparation for the oratorios to be performed during Lent, Miss Herschel mentions that she copied the scores of the “Messiah” and “Judas Maccabæus” into parts for an orchestra of nearly one hundred performers, and the vocal parts of “Samson,” besides instructing the treble singers, of which she was now herself the first. On the occasion of her first public appearance, her brother presented her with ten guineas for her dress,— “And that my choice could not have been a bad one I conclude from having been pronounced by Mr. Palmer (the then proprietor of the Bath theatre) to be an ornament to the stage. And as to acquitting myself in giving my songs and recitatives in the ‘Messiah,’ ‘Judas Maccabæus,’ &c., I had the satisfaction of being complimented by my friends, the Marchioness of Lothian, &c., who were present at the rehearsals, for pronouncing my words like an Englishwoman.”