MARIA MITCHELL. 339 



In the education of a pupil, the daughter of a Western banker, 

 she was enabled to make a journey through the United States in 1853, 

 and sailed for Europe the same year. This was her first going abroad, 

 and friends on both sides of the water were determined that one so 

 earnest and appreciative should have every opportunity the world 

 could afford. She went accredited to distinguished women, as well as 

 to distinguished men. She visited the great astronomers, not only 

 at their observatories, but at their homes, and discovered a likeness 

 among this sort of people everywhere, — a likeness that lay in the 

 simplicity of their domestic lives, and in their elevation of thought. 

 In short, she found what she went to seek, and what she went to carry, 

 an appreciative sympathy. 



It was in the course of this journey that she made an inspection of 

 the Roman Observatory under a special dispensation which had been 

 denied to others of her sex, including Mrs. Somerville and the daughter 

 of Sir John Herschel. Soon after, she was made the recipient of the 

 bronze medal of merit from the Republic of San Marino, together 

 with the ''Ribbon" and "Letters Patent " signed by the two Cap- 

 tains Regent. Some of the notes of this first European journey 

 appear in the Atlantic Monthly, under the title of " A Visit to 

 Mary Somerville," and others were published after her death in the 

 Century Magazine, under the title of "Maria Mitchell's Reminis- 

 cences of the Herschels." On her return home from this journey, 

 she received an excellent equatorial telescope, made by Alvan Clarke, 

 and presented by Miss Elizabeth Peabody, "representing the women 

 of America." 



The years between 1857 and 1860 were the saddest of her life, and 

 the most valuable in her manner of computing time ; for these were 

 years of watching and nursing the declining strength of her mother. 

 She was alone with her parents, her sisters having married. This 

 mother — who had formerly, in the midst of her large family, been a 

 strong and steady principle, the source of its ambitious spirit, and the 

 object of an affection that bound the children together as in a com- 

 mon cause — now gradually sank away, mind and body together, till 

 her death took nothing out of the world except a precious and pain- 

 ful duty. 



We ought perhaps to mention that Miss Mitchell's mother had 

 been, for a brief period before her marriage, a teacher, as her mother 

 before her had been. The only other in any sense public duty that 

 had devolved upon her was, in later years, that of presiding " Clerk" 

 of the Nantucket Monthly Meeting of Friends. 



