All this afternoon I have spent listening to Sir John, who has
shown me his father's manuscript, his aunt's, beautifully neat,
and he told me about his Cape observations.
The telescope used at the Cape of Good Hope lies in the barn
(the glass, of course, taken care of) unused; and Sir John now
occupies himself with writing only. He made many drawings at the
Cape, which he showed me, and very good ones they are. Lady
Herschel offers me a letter to Mrs. Somerville, who is godmother
to one of her children. I am afraid I shall have no letter to
Leverrier, for every one seems to dislike him. Lady Herschel
says he is one of the few persons whom she ever asked for an
autograph; he was her guest, and he refused!
Just as I was coming away, Sir John bustled up to me with a
sheet of paper, saying that he thought I would like some of his
aunt's handwriting and he would give it to me. He had before
given me one of his own calculations; he says if there were no
"war, pestilence, or famine," and one pair of human beings had
been put upon the globe at the time of Cheops, they would not
only now fill the earth, but if they stood upon each other's
heads, they would reach a hundred times the distance to
Neptune!
I turned over their scrap-books, and Sir John's poetry is much
better than many of the specimens they had carefully kept, by
Sir William Hamilton.
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