But she shunned self-glorification; she desired to live in
her brother's shadow; she worked for him, never for herself; and in her
elevated character no feature more strongly demands our admiration than
her heroic though unconscious self-denial. Happy the man who has such a
sister; happy the sister whose brother is worthy of so much devotion! It
is pleasant to know that William Herschel deserved the love so lavishly
poured out at his feet; that great as were his achievements in science,
lofty and broad as was his genius, they were fully sustained and
ennobled by the beauty and worth of his inner life. Who can contemplate
their twofold career in all its singleness of purpose, its purity, its
unselfishness, its sublime disregard of worldly pleasures, without
emotion? The lessons told by such a life are worth all the moral
treatises ever written.
To Miss Herschel's diary we again refer, for a glimpse of the
occupations of her brother and herself at Slough in the first two years
of their residence. These two years, to use an apt expression of her
own, were spent in a perfect chaos of business.
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