iate need for Griselda to put on a mourning garment.
Distress of mind, and the long, long walk in the cold chill air of
January to Claverton Down, had the effect of throwing her into an
illness--a fever--which attacked her brain, and rendered her unconscious
of all troubles, past and present, for some time.

It was touching to see how the child, so prematurely old, and so well
accustomed to privation and nursing of the sick, took up her place by
her sister's bed, and proved the most efficient of little nurses--as
nursing was understood in those days.

Griselda was certainly an instance of a patient suffering more from the
remedy than the disease. The doctor--Mr. Cheyne--who was called in, let
blood several times from her arm, cut off her beautiful hair, and
blistered the back of her head, and brought her to the very verge of the
grave. She took no heed of any one who came and went, or she would have
seen Caroline Herschel by her bed every day, and would have known that
many little delicacies were brought by her hand. She was immersed in
ever-increasing musical engagements, for, besides the preparation for
the oratorio to be performed during Lent, she actually copied with her
own hand the scores of the "Messiah" and "Judas Maccabaeus" in parts for
an orchestra of nearly one hundred performers; and in the vocal parts of
Samson, Caroline Herschel instructed the treble singers, of whom she was
now amongst the first.

Very few women of these days have gone through the amount of hard
continuous labour which Caroline Herschel did; and when we are tempted
to think highly of the increasing number of women, qualified by culture
and natural gifts to fight the battle of life for themselves, we must
not forget that the end of the eighteenth century produced a goodly list
of able and distinguished women.

Perhaps Caroline Herschel has hardly received the prominent place she
deserves in that list, and yet it would be hard to trace a life more
useful and more loyally devoted to serve in the cause of science--a
service which in her case, and that of her distinguished brother, was
encompassed with difficulties, that would have daunted the courage of
less steadfast souls.

While Leslie Travers lay on the borderland between life and death, all
unconscious that the woman he loved so well was also treading the path
through that dim mysterious valley of the shadow, the favourite scheme
on which William Herschel set so many hopes failed!