Women of History: Selected from the Writings of Standard AuthorsVarious
History
Women of History: Selected from the Writings of Standard Authors
Various
Women -- Biography
[Lady Elizabeth was afterwards married to Mr Craven, who came to be Lord
Craven. The marriage, at its outset, seems to have been in its most
essential respects a happy one. The margravine acknowledges that Lord
Craven possessed the highest admiration for the refined character and
many graces and accomplishments of his young wife; and the contests
between them were the amiable ones arising from his unbounded generosity
towards her, and the refusals his offered presents met with from her
discretion and modesty. At length a discovery was made by Lady Craven,
which led to that eventful change in her life and fortunes, but for
which, in all probability, the subject of this sketch would have
attracted as little attention as many other brilliant noblewomen of her
day. Lord Craven had for some time absented himself for long periods
from home, under pretexts which his wife discovered to be false; but all
doubts were removed when Lord Macartney came to the injured wife and
entreated her to prevent Lord Craven from travelling in one of his
coaches with a woman calling herself Lady Craven. This led to the
explosion of a mine of intrigue. Lady Craven then went to France, and
subsequently travelled over all Europe, at the various courts of which
she was honoured and feted. During her stay in Paris she had received
the visits of the Margrave of Anspach, who had known her from childhood,
and had formed a strong attachment to her. He had now invited her to
pass some time at Anspach with himself and the margravine as his adopted
sister. To this she agreed; and, subsequently, by a strange coincidence,
the Margravine and Lord Craven having died about the same time, she
became the wife of the margrave. In 1816 the margrave died, and from
that time the margravine chiefly resided at Naples, where she died in
the seventy-eighth year of her age.]
CAROLINE HERSCHEL.
[BORN 1750. DIED 1848.]
PROFESSOR CRAIK.
Another distinguished name can scarcely be forgotten or omitted here,
although its honoured and venerable possessor still lives [in 1847],
connecting the present with the past age. Caroline Herschel, the sister
of the illustrious Sir William Herschel, was, as is well known, the
associate of her brother, both in the business of observation and in
that of calculation, throughout the whole of his splendid career. Four
comets are enumerated as discovered by her--one on the 1st of August
1786, another on the 21st of December 1788, another on the 7th of
January 1790, another on the 8th of October 1793.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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