XXIV 



added such an amount of anxious labour to the already overwhelming 

 requirements of his office, as for the last three years completely pre- 

 cluded him from making further researches with the heliometer. 

 This is the more to be deplored, as there is reason to fear that the 

 monotonous, though cheerfully endured, fatigue inevitable in reducing 

 so novel and accumulative a process to a regular system, accelerated 

 the sad event which it has been our mournful task to record. 



An earnest labourer himself, Mr. Johnson was ever ready to 

 further the scientific labours of those whom he had it in his power 

 to assist ; and it was in this spirit that he sanctioned and encouraged 

 his assistant, Mr. Pogson, in making independent researches with 

 the Radcliffe Equatorial, after the hour of closure of the official work 

 of the Observatory, whereby that gentleman was enabled to discover 

 four planets and ten new variable stars. 



The remembrance of his high social qualities, his refined taste, 

 and extensive fund of ready information in literature and the fine 

 arts as well as in science, his frank and agreeable demeanour, his 

 thorough integrity of purpose, and his unostentatious benevolence, 

 will be long cherished by a wide circle of friends, especially in the 

 University, where he was so bright an ornament and so general a 

 favourite. 



He was President of the Royal Astronomical Society in the years 

 1857 and 1858, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 

 1856. 



Lieutenant-Colonel CHARLES HAMILTON SMITH was born in 

 Austrian Flanders, on the 26th of December, 1 776, of a Protestant 

 family holding a good position in the province, and partly of British 

 descent. He was bred to the military profession, and began his 

 career as a volunteer in the British army in the Netherlands, but 

 soon obtained a commission, and in 1797 was transferred to a regi- 

 ment in the West Indies. After serving for twelve years in that 

 part of the world, he returned to Europe, and joined the Walchereri 

 expedition as Deputy Quartermaster- General. In 1813 he was again 

 employed in the Low Countries ; and on this occasion he succeeded, 

 with a handful of men, in capturing the fortress of Tholen, whereby 

 a new and better basis of operations was opened up to the British 

 forces in Brabant. After being engaged, in 1816, on a mission to the 



