were preserved in his hard wrestle with fortune. The tenderness and domestic order of that kind sister kept him from resorting to the public-house, preserved both his health and morals; and he knew and owned in after-life, when he became a thriving and a prosperous man, that his sister had been a true helper, without whose aid he would probably have succumbed to the hardship of his lot.
William Hutton was not merely a prosperous man, he was good in all the various relationships of life, and he lived to extreme old age.
On the publication of his "History of Birmingham," which had a very large circulation, he was elected a Fellow of the Antiquarian Society of Edinburgh. Wealth and honours followed; but in wealth as in poverty he retained a humble, kindly, grateful nature, and always delighted to own his great obligations to his sister Catherine.
Certainly the most memorable case in modern biography of sisterly sympathy and help is furnished in the life of Miss Caroline Herschel, of whom incidental mention has been made in the sketch of Mrs. Mary Somerville. The splendour of the name of Herschel, and the scientific distinctions attained by Sir William, and Sir John his son, might throw into complete shade the early history of the family, and thus prevent us from knowing and being instructed by a very impressive and beautiful domestic history, only that the recent publication of the life
