548 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and well proportioned ; his great head is covered with white hair, 

 his features are regular and handsome. When he is introduced 

 to any one he thrusts both hands into the pockets of his panta- 

 loons, and bows " ; and he told her that it was not necessary for 

 her to present her letters he knew her without. 



With the Airys she went to Cambridge and visited Whewell, 

 of whom "An Englishman is proud, a Cambridge man is the 

 proudest of Englishmen, and Dr. Whewell the proudest of Cam- 

 bridge men.^' He was very severe, even to discourtesy, on Ameri- 

 cans, and imperious in manner ; and escorted Miss Mitchell to 

 church wearing " a long gown reaching nearly to his feet, of rich 

 scarlet, and adorned with flowing ribbons," which did not match 

 the robe but were nearly crimson. At Cambridge she met Mr. 

 Adams, the English calculator of the place of Neptune, and Prof. 

 Sedgwick, then an old man of seventy-four. She was cordially 

 entertained by Sir John and Lady Herschel ; visited Le Verrier 

 at his home in Paris ; and at Rome was called upon by Father 

 Secchi, and was admitted to the observatory where Mrs. Somer- 

 ville and the daughter of Sir John Herschel had been refused ; 

 that observatory for which the Papal Government furnishes nice 

 machinery to keep the telescope accurately up with the motion 

 of the earth on its axis ; " the same motion for declaring whose 

 existence Galileo suffered ; the two hundred years have done 

 their work." At Florence she called on Mrs. Somerville, who, 

 though seventy-seven years old, looked twenty years younger 

 and came tripping into the room, speaking at once with all the 

 vivacity of a young person, was interested in every new improve- 

 ment, as much at home in the drawing room as in science, and 

 asked many questions in regard to the progress of science in 

 America. At Berlin she saw Humboldt, who was much obliged 

 to her for calling to see him, talked intelligently to her about 

 current affairs in the United States, told her the latest news from 

 home, and showed her Clinton, N. Y., on the map when she did 

 not know where it was. 



A few months after the death of Mrs. Mitchell, in 1861, the 

 family removed to Lynn, Mass., where Miss Mitchell had bought 

 property, to which she transferred her observatory, and where 

 she remained until she was called, in 1865, to be Professor of 

 Astronomy and Director of the Observatory at Vassar College. 

 This involved a change of occupation, and one that would, to a 

 certain extent, divert her attention from what had been her life- 

 work of observing. " But she was so much interested in the 

 movement for the higher education of women, an interest which 

 deepened as her work went on, that she gave up in a measure her 

 scientific life, and threw herself heart and soul into this work." 

 She further, in the course of time, gave up her work on the Nau- 



