My dearest Niece,—
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Have I understood you aright? Saw you the thermometer 1½° above zero? the lowest I have heard of here was only 13° below freezing; but we are buried in snow!
March 5th.—No alteration in the weather, nor in my affection for my dear niece and nephew and their ten children! the first is as cold as the latter is warm!
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1845. The Great Telescope.
April 29, 1845.
In his father’s library my nephew must have found a folio volume of H—— (an astronomer and copper engraver), where, for every hour a distinct picture [of the moon] is given. In the Phil. Transactions for 1780, p. 507, is the first paper of William Herschel on the Moon. In 1787; 1792, p. 27; 1793, p. 206, measure of mountains, &c.
Twenty-three years ago, when first I came here, I visited Madame W. (not von) once or twice, saw her observatory and a telescope, I believe not above 24-inch focal length; at that time she amused herself with modelling the heads of the Roman Emperors: her daughter, then a girl, was a poet, and a portrait of her was exhibited as a Sappho crowned with laurels....
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