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 Jilustration of 
the Mécanique Oéleste 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 Beeotian influence.” The Wautical 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, &e. 
