336 THOMAS YOUNG. 



more severe nor of longer duration than those treated by 

 the best methods. 



In 1818, Young, having been named Secretary to the 

 Board of Longitude, abandoned entirely the practice of 

 medicine to give himself up to the close superintendence 

 of the celebrated periodical work known under the name 

 of the Nautical Almanac. From this date the Journal 

 of the Royal Institution gave every quarter his numerous 

 dissertations on the most important problems of naviga- 

 tion and astronomy. A volume entitled Illustration of 

 the Mecanique Celeste of Laplace, a scientific discussion 

 on the tides, amply attested that Young did not consider 

 the employment he had accepted as a sinecure. This 

 employment became nevertheless to him a source of 

 unceasing disgust. The Nautical Almanac had always 

 been from its commencement a work exclusively des- 

 tined to the service of the navy. Some persons de- 

 manded that it ought to be made, besides, a complete 

 astronomical ephemeris. The Board of Longitude, 

 whether right or wrong, not having shown itself a strong 

 partisan of the projected change, found itself suddenly 

 the object of the most violent attacks. The journals of 

 every party, Whig or Tory, took part in the conflict. 



We were no longer to view it as a union of such men 

 as Davy, Wollaston, Young, Herschel, Kater, and Pond, 

 but an assembly of individuals (I quote the words), " who 

 obeyed a Bceotian influence." The Nautical Almanac, 

 hitherto so renowned, was now declared to have become 

 an object of shame to the English nation. If an error 

 of the press were discovered, such as there must be in 

 any collection of figures at all voluminous, the British 

 navy, from the smallest bark up to the colossal three- 

 decker, misled by an incorrect figure, would all together 

 be engulfed in the ocean, &c. 



