78 ROUGH WAYS MADE SMOOTH. 



kind of astronomical materials which Government astrono- 

 mers are employed to collect and arrange. Such work may 

 rather be called celestial surveying than astronomy. But from 

 the days of Flamsteed, the first of our Astronomers Royal 

 (as the chief Government astronomer is technically called) 

 whose contemporary, Newton, discovered the great law of 

 the universe, to those of Maskelyne and Sir G. Airy, whose 

 contemporaries, the elder and the younger Herschel, dis- 

 closed the structure of the universe, there have always been 

 astronomers outside the ranks of official astronomy, in 

 no way desirous of entering those ranks, and in fact so 

 taking their course from the beginning of their study of 

 the science as to preclude themselves from all possibility of 

 undertaking any official duties in astronomy. * Non sua se 

 voluntas,' necessarily, 'sed suae vitse rationes, hoc aditu 

 laudis, qui semper optimo cuique maxime patuit, prohibue- 

 runt :' though, indeed, it may not untruly be said that to one 

 who apprehends the true sublimity of astronomy as a science 

 the routine of official astronomy is by no means inviting, and 

 probably personal tastes have had very much to do with the 

 choice, by such men, of the more attractive departments of as- 

 tronomy. Be this as it may, it is certain that the astronomers 

 who thus keep outside the official ranks are not only free, 

 and may not only be fully competent, to express an opinion 

 on the arrangements made by Government astronomers, or 

 on the results obtained by them, but as the only members of 

 the community who are at once free and able so to do, their 

 right to speak may often involve, in some degree, the duty 

 of speaking. If through some mistake wrong arrangements 

 were proposed for instance, and all men, even officials 

 (Herbert Spencer says, especially officials), are apt to make 

 mistakes, then, unless non-official astronomers, who had 

 carefully examined the subject, expressed their doubts, it is 

 certain that there would be no means whatever of correcting 

 the error, or even of detecting its consequence, until many 

 years had elapsed. The leading official astronomers would 

 in such a case be apt, in fact they are apt enough as it is, to 



