1863.] 249 [Coppee. 



seemed his misfortune was in reality a great blessing. In the routine 

 of academic duties he might have remained satisfied; but when once 

 more thrown upon his own remarkable energies, his "sleepless soul" 

 undertook grand and original adventures. 



During the period of his professorship, he could still find time to 

 devote to other public duties. From 1836 to 1837, he was Chief 

 Engineer of the Little Miami Railroad. He had, while in the army, 

 acquired some experience in railway engineering, which was to prove 

 of value on many occasions during his life of peace, and to find bril- 

 liant opportunities during his brief but splendid military career. But his 

 principal study was astronomy, the objective science which kindled his 

 ardor and claimed all his devotion. Amid the drudgery of the lawyer's 

 oflBce; while teaching the elements of mathematics and mechanics; 

 in the practical, busy life of a railway engineer, the stars shone upon 

 him with that potent injluence with which, in earlier days, they had 

 been supposed to shine upon every man. For him, we may almost 

 believe, there was a horoscope, and that all the planets were conjoined 

 in its composition. 



In 1842, he undertook to establish the Cincinnati Observatory, 

 now IMitchel's Observatory, a gigantic labor, which would have been 

 too much for talent, energy, and industry less than his own. Of the 

 difficulties which he encountered, we may best judge by his own 

 narrative. Writing in 1848, he says : " My attention had been for 

 many years directed to this subject (the erection of a great astro- 

 nomical observatory in the city of Cincinnati), by the duties of the 

 professorship, which I then held in the College. In attempting to 

 communicate the great truths of astronomy, there were no instru- 

 ments at hand to confirm and fix the wonderful facts recorded in the 

 books. Up to that period, our country, and the West particularly, 

 had given but little attention to practical astronomy. A few indivi- 

 duals, with a zeal and ardor deserving of all praise, had struggled on 

 to eminence almost without means or instruments. An isolated tele- 

 scope was found here and there scattered through the country; but 

 no regularly organized observatory, with powerful instruments, ex- 

 isted within the limits of the United States, so far as I know. . . . 



" To ascertain whether any interest could be excited in the public 

 mind in favor of astronomy, in the spring of 1842, a series of lectures 

 was delivered in the hall of the Cincinnati College. To give an 

 increased effect to these discourses (which were unwritten, and in a 

 style of great simplicity), a mechanical contrivance was prepared, by 

 the aid of which the beautiful telescopic views in the heavens were 



