About the same time, when she was sitting near him one day, listening to his prattle, her attention was drawn to his repeated and formidable hammering. On investigating into its object, she found that it was the continuation of the labour of many days, during which he had undermined the ground about the corner of the house, had entirely removed the corner-stone, and was zealously toiling to overthrow the next! His aunt gave the alarm, and old John Wiltshire, a favourite carpenter, ran to the spot, exclaiming, "Heaven bless the boy! if he is not going to pull the house down!"
In 1834, Sir John, as already stated, made a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope, in order to undertake a series of observations of the southern heavens. His aunt had now reached the ripe old age of eighty-four, an age attained by few,—and when attained, bringing with it in almost every case a painful diminution of physical energy, and a corresponding decline in mental force. But such was not the case with this remarkable woman. She still continued an active correspondence with her nephew, and manifested the liveliest interest in all his movements. It is astonishing to mark the vivacity and clearness of the letters she wrote at this advanced period of her life. Thus, on the 1st of May 1834, she writes to Sir John:—
"Both yourself and my dear niece urged me to write often, and to write always twice; but, alas! I could not overcome the reluctance I felt of [at] telling you that it is over with me for getting up at eight or nine o'clock, dressing myself, eating my dinner alone without an appetite, falling asleep over a novel (I am obliged to lay down to recover the fatigue of the morning's exertions), awaking with nothing but the prospect of the trouble of getting into bed, where very seldom I get above two hours' sleep. It is enough to make a parson swear! To this I must add, I found full employment for the few moments, when I could rouse myself from a melancholy lethargy, to spend in looking over my store of astronomical and other memorandums of upwards of fifty years' collecting."
Later in the year she writes:—
"I know not how to thank you sufficiently for the cheering account you give of the climate agreeing so well with you and all who are so dear to me, and that you find all about you so agreeable and comfortable;... so that I have nothing left to wish for but a continuation of the same, and that I may only live to see the handwriting of your dear Caroline, though I have my doubts about lasting till then, for the thermometer standing 80° and 90° for upwards of two mouths, day and night, in nay rooms (to which I am mostly confined), has made great havoc in my brittle constitution. I beg you will look to it that she learns to make her figures as you find them in your father's MSS., such as he taught me to make. The daughter of a mathematician must write plain figures.
"My little grand-nephew making alliance with your workmen shows that he is taking after his papa. I see you now in idea, running about in petticoats among your father's carpenters, working with little tools of your own; and John Wiltshire (one of Pitt's men, whom you may perhaps remember) crying out, 'Dang the boy, if he can't drive in a nail as well as I can!'
"I thank you for the astronomical portion of your letter, and for your promise of future accounts of uncommon objects. It is not clusters of stars I want you to discover in the body of the Scorpion [the astronomical sign, so called], or thereabout, for that does not answer my expectation, remembering having once heard your father, after a long, awful silence, exclaim, 'Hier ist wahrhaftig ein loch ein Himmel!' [Here, indeed, is a great gap in Heaven!], and, as I said before, stopping afterwards at the same spot, but leaving it unsatisfied."
These extracts may seem trivial to some of our readers, but they are not so, rightly considered. They illustrate the wonderful mental vivacity of their venerable writer, and in this respect are useful; but still more useful in showing how cheerfully she bore the burden of her years, and with what intellectual serenity she looked forward to her end.
We own that the lives of the Herschels are what the world would call uneventful. The discovery of a new planet, or of the orbit of a star, seems less romantic to the vulgar taste than the slaughter of ten thousand men on a field of battle. It will seem to the unthinking that the victorious general or the daring seaman, the leader of a forlorn hope, or the captain who goes down with his sinking ship, affords an example worthier of imitation than the patient, watchful, enthusiastic astronomer or his devoted sister. His, they will say, was a noble life. Be it so; but every life is noble which is spent in the path of duty. Do what comes to your hand to do with all honesty and completeness, and you will make your life noble. Subdue your passions, master your evil thoughts, observe the laws of temperance and purity, be truthful, be firm, be honest, and keep ever before you the law of Christ as the law of your daily work, and you will make your life noble. We cannot all be great commanders or daring captains, we cannot all be distinguished men of science; but we can all be righteously-living men, endeavouring to raise others by our example, and it is a higher aim to live purely than to live successfully. We cannot all command the success, just as we do not all enjoy the intellectual powers, of a Herschel; but we can emulate the industry and perseverance of the astronomer, we can copy the devoted affection and self-denial of his sister. The sorriest mistake of which men can be guilty,—yet it is a mistake which has clouded many lives,—is to suppose that duty is less imperative in its claims on the humble and unknown than on men raised or born to eminent position. Let it be understood and remembered that each one of us can rise to a standard of true heroism, by cultivating the graces of the Christian character, and doing the work which God has appointed.