EXCKE THE ASTRONOMER. 65 



From the date of this discovery, Encke took high 

 rank among the astronomers of Europe. His subse- 

 quent labors by no means fell short of the promise 

 which this, his first notable achievement, had aiforded. 

 If he effected less as an astronomical observer than 

 many of his contemporaries, he was surpassed by 

 few as a manipulator of those abstruse formulae by 

 which the planetary perturbations are calculated. It 

 was to the confidence engendered by this skill that we 

 owe his celebrated discovery of the acceleration of the 

 motion of the comet mentioned above. Assured that 

 he had rightly estimated the disturbances to which 

 the comet is subjected, he was able to pronounce con- 

 fidently that some cause continually (though all but im- 

 perceptibly) impedes the passage of this body through 

 space, and so by one of those strange relations which 

 the student of astronomy is familiar with the contin- 

 ually retarded comet travels ever mores wiftly along a 

 continually diminishing orbit. 



Bruhns's Life of Encke is well worth reading, not 

 only by those who are interested in Encke's fame and 

 work as an astronomer, but by the general reader. 

 Encke the man is presented to our view, as well as 

 Encke the astronomer. "With loving pains the pupil 

 of the great astronomer handles the theme he has 

 selected. The boyhood of Encke, his studies, his 

 soldier-life in the great uprising against Napoleon in 

 1813, and his work at the Seeberge Observatory ; his 



