462 Reviews^ and Notices respecting New Books. 



however have been completely observed. Under these circumstances, 

 (though the deficiency for the latter part of the time only might be sup- 

 plied from scattered foreign observations,) considering how desirable it is, 

 in a research of some delicacy, to use observations made at the same place, 

 I believe that I shall be compelled to abandon it entirely. The superior 

 planets have been more frequently observed, and those but very little. And 

 generally as to the comparison of theory with observation, and its imme- 

 diate consequences, the reducing of complicated phenomena to simple laws, 

 or the showing that new supplementary laws are necessary, forming alto- 

 gether the most glorious employment for the intellect of man, I may state, 

 in one word, to the best of my knowledge nothing has been done in En- 

 gland. In the lunar and planetary theories we have done nothing, not even 

 in the way of numerical application. In the theory of the new planets and 

 the periodical comets, we not only have done nothing, but we have scarcely 

 known what others have done. With regard to the latter points, the distin- 

 guishing discoveries of the present century, our humiliation is great. Some 

 of the new planets are very faint, and all are subject to excessive perturba- 

 tion. If Astronomy had been confined to England, we never should have 

 rediscovered them, even if we had once made out their orbits. If Astro- 

 nomy had been confined to England, the paths of the comets would never 

 have been traced, and the consequences deduced from the appearances of 

 Encke's comet, the brightest discovery of the age, would have been lost. 

 While Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen, have emulously pushed on the 

 theory and the observation of these bodies, Englishmen alone, of all the na- 

 tions professing to support a high scientific character, have stood still. — I 

 am glad to turn from this dispiriting subject. 



** There are other points to which I can scarcely allude without intro- 

 ducing a degree of personality which cannot be admitted in a public Report. 

 They can be understood perhaps only by those who know the state of ob- 

 servation here, and who have seen the interior of foreign observatories. Of 

 the latter, I can only profess personally to be slightly acquainted with those 

 of France and those of the North of Italy. The characteristic difference be- 

 tween the spirit of the proceedings in England and on the Continent may be 

 stated thus. — In England, an observer* conceives that he has done every- 

 thing when he has made an observation. He thinks that the merely noting 

 the passage of a star over one wire and its bisection by another, is all that 

 can be expected from him; and that the use of a Table of logarithms, or 

 anything beyond the very first stage of reduction, ought to be left to others. 

 In the foreign observatories, on the contrary, an observation is considered 

 as a lump of ofe, requiring for its production, when the proper machinery 

 is provided, nothing more than the commonest labour, and without value till 

 it has been smelted. In them, the exhibition of results and the comparison 

 of results with theory, are considered as deserving much more of an astro- 

 nomer's attention, and demanding greater exercise of his intellect, than the 

 mere observation of a body on the wire of a telescope. As an instance of 

 the extent to which the reductions are carried there, I may mention that in 

 one Italian observatory where the planets were considered the principal ob- 

 ject, not only were the observations freed from instrumental errors and as- 

 tronomical corrections, but the tabular places were computed by direct use 

 of the Tables, (the ephemeris attached to Schumacher's lunar distances not 



* " I am far from asserting that this is the character of every English ob- 

 server, and I am equally unwilling to point out any individual to whom it is 

 applicable. My object is merely to explain what I conceive to be the kind 

 of difference which exists between English observers generally and foreign 

 observers generally." 



