Life, Researches, and Discoveries of F. W. Bessel 319 

 In the year 1842, Bessel for the first and last time, visited Eng- 



land, and was received in a manner befitting the high estimation 



in which his merits were held. His unaffected and pleasing de- 

 portment, the charm of his conversation, and the rich fund of 

 information and instruction it afforded, will be remembered with 



pleasure and regret by all who had the good fortune to be in his 

 company. 



There can be little doubt that he was preparing, on his return 



to Germany, and perhaps even before his visit to England, for an 



attack upon that great problem whose solution has done so much 



honor to Le Verrier and Adams. He had, in fact, with a view to 



this undertaking, engaged a young and promising astronomer, 



Mr. Flemming, to reduce anew, with the utmost rigor, all known 



observations of Uranus, including the Konigsherg observations 



of that planet, and to compare them with the tables. This 



was the groundwork of his intended researches. Mr. Flemming 



completed the reductions, which are in the possession of Mr. 



Schumacher, and died soon afterwards, and the fatal malady of 



which, after two years of continually increasing suffering, Bessel 



himself died, made its appearance, and interdicted every serious 

 labor. 



The scientific character of Bessel will have been easily col- 

 lected from what has been said of particular branches of his ex- 

 tensive labors. One leading feature of it was the concentration 

 °f all known data on each particular subject of inquiry, with the 

 view of expressing from them, by the highest and most refined 

 application of mathematical and computistic power, the utmost 

 they are capable of affording in the direction of numerical pre- 

 dion ; and as a means to this end, to satisfy this earnest longing 

 after precise results, an equally earnest and successful endeavor 

 to improve to the utmost all formulas and systems of computa- 

 tions as such; that is to say, to put them before the computist in 

 a state ready for immediate use, and to give the last precision 

 Jhich the state of science admits to every fundamental and every 

 derivative coefficient. In the preface to his Untersuchiingcn. he 

 ^ys of himself, that he at no time felt any especial predilection 

 lor one rather than another particular branch of astronomical oc- 

 cupation, but that one idea was continually present to his mind 

 that of always working up to an immediate and definite object ; 

 eit her that of arriving at some positive result, more perfect than 

 J* h *t before had been obtained, or that of removing some ac- 

 knowledged obstacle which opposed at once the improvement of 

 mor e than one subject. And in this remarkable passage he goes 

 °[J l ° declare, that the desire of merely accumulating data by 

 ^ bs ervation, without the intention of using them to such ends, 

 J^s altogether alien to his tastes : and that the deduction of ac- 

 lu *l results from observations, by the observer himself, with a 



