false shame with
which in her memoirs she tells us all these graphic little details of
their early humble days.

While they were thus working at Bath an incident occurred which is
worth mentioning because it shows the very different directions in
which the presence or the want of steady persistence may lead the
various members of the very self-same family. William received a
letter from his widowed mother at Hanover to say, in deep distress,
that Dietrich, the youngest brother, had run away from home, it was
supposed for the purpose of going to India, "with a young idler no
older than himself." Forthwith, the budding astronomer left the lathe
where he was busy turning an eye-piece from a cocoa-nut shell, and,
like a good son and brother as he always was, hurried off to Holland
and thence to Hanover. No Dietrich was anywhere to be found. But
while he was away, Carolina at Bath received a letter from Dietrich
himself, to tell her ruefully he was "laid up very ill" at a waterside
tavern in Wapping--not the nicest or most savoury East End
sailor-suburb of London. Alexander immediately took the coach to town,
put the prodigal into a decent lodging, nursed him carefully for a
fortnight, and then took him down with him in triumph to the family
home at Bath. There brother William found him safe and sound on his
return, under the sisterly care of good Carolina. A pretty dance he
had led the two earnest and industrious astronomers; but they seem
always to have treated this black sheep of the family with uniform
kindness, and long afterwards Sir William remembered him favourably in
his last will.

In 1779 and the succeeding years the three Herschels were engaged
during all their spare time in measuring the heights of about one
hundred mountains in the moon, which William gauged by three different
methods. In the same year, he made an acquaintance of some importance
to him, as forming his first introduction to the wider world of science
in London and elsewhere. Dr. Watson, a Fellow of the Royal Society,
happened, to see him working at his telescope; and this led to a visit
from the electrician to the amateur astronomer. Dr. Watson was just
then engaged in getting up a Philosophical Society at Bath (a far rarer
institution at that time in a provincial town than now), and he invited
William Herschel to join it. Here Herschel learned for the first time
to mix with those who were more nearly his intellectual equals, and to