"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