I return you many thanks for your communication of being chosen an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society, and beg you will do me the favour to convey my most heartfelt thanks to the honourable gentlemen of the Council for conferring so great an honour on me; and only regret that at the feeble age of 85 I have no hope of making myself deserving of the great honour of seeing my name joined with that of the much distinguished Mrs. Somerville.
I beg you will believe me to remain, with great regard,
Sir, your most respectful and
obliged humble servant,
Caroline Herschel.
1835. Catalogues of Stars.
MISS HERSCHEL TO F. BAILY, ESQ.
Hanover, April 2, 1835.
Dear Sir,—
I feel very great gratification at recollecting that some twenty years ago I had the pleasure of being present when you were conversing at Slough with my dear brother, for it encourages me to address you now as an old friend, and I might almost say my only one, for death has not spared me one of those valuable men of the last century in whose society I had an opportunity of spending many happy hours, when they came to pass an astronomical night at Bath, Datchet, Clay Hall, and Slough. And I should now in the absence of my nephew (who would in my name have properly answered your kind letter for me) been much at a loss how to reply to yours of March 17. But I hope, dear Sir, you will have the goodness to return my sincere thanks to the Council of the Society for voting me a complete copy of their Memoirs. But, considering my advanced age and declining health, I think it best not to have them sent over to me, for it would cause me much uneasiness to leave them in the hands of those who could neither read nor understand them.