Women -- Biography; Women -- Social and moral questions
Through the whole of her life she had a sacred regard for the rules of
morality. One of her school-fellows informs us that she could get on
with those who had bumps at the top of their heads. An intelligent old
man living at Haworth, said to her biographer:—“Charlotte would sit
and inquire about our circumstances so kindly and feelingly!... Though
I am a poor working man (which I never felt to be any degradation), I
could talk with her with the utmost freedom. I always felt quite at
home with her. Though I never had any school education, I never felt
the want of it in her company.”
CHAPTER VI.
Scientific Women.
_SECTION I.—CAROLINE LUCRETIA HERSCHEL._
“Prior to her demise, hope had long become certainty, and prophecy
passed into truth; and assemblies of the learned, through means of just
though unusual tributes to herself, had recognised the immortality of
the name she bore!”
J. P. NICHOL, LL.D.
_ASTRONOMY._
In most other sciences, the mind is so often lost in details, that it
is difficult to stand where you may gaze freely out upon the unknown.
In astronomy, however, you are brought almost at once to stand face to
face with the Infinite. A wonderful study are these old heavens. They
have excited the curiosity, and called forth the discoveries of both
male and female students. What an immensity of sublime magnificence God
has crowded into a few yards of sky. There is truth in the well-known
lines:—
“When science from creation’s face
Enchantment’s veil withdraws,
What lovely visions yield their place
To cold material laws.”
But if science has torn from the heavens the false lustre of fiction,
it has supplied the clear light of fact. From points, the stars have
magnified into worlds, and from thousands they have multiplied into
millions.
“Come forth, O man, yon azure round survey,
And view those lamps that yield eternal day;
Bring forth your glasses; clear thy wondering eyes,
Millions beyond the former millions rise;
Look farther—millions more blaze from remoter skies.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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