312 Telescopes — Life of Fraunhofer. 



with a pulmonary complainr, from which he never recovered. 

 The injury which he sustained by the fall of his house seems 

 to have left some effects behind it, and for several years he 

 had suiFered from glandular abscesses. He was, however, 

 seldom obliged to discontinue his labors, and there is reason 

 to think that he suffered from exposure to the heat of his 

 furnaces. His faculties never for a moment left him ; and 

 in his few last days, his mind was occupied with the idea of 

 a journey to France and Italy for the recovery of his health. 

 He was cut off on the 7th June 1826, in the fortieth year of 

 his age. A few days before this event he had received from 

 the King of Denmark the diploma of Chevalier of the order 

 of Dannebroga. The whole of the city of Munich took a 

 lively interest in his disease, and felt the most sincere sorrow 

 for his death. The magistrates of the city permitted M. 

 Utzschneider to choose a place for his tomb, and he was in- 

 terred by the side of the great tnechanician M. Reichenbach, 

 who had died a short time before. 



Bavaria has thus lost one of the most distinguished of her 

 subjects, and centuries may elapse before Munich receives 

 within her wails an individual so highly gifted and so univer- 

 sally esteemed. But great as her loss is, it is not rendered 

 more poignant by the reflection that he lived unhonored and 

 unrewarded. His own sovereign Maximilian Joseph was 

 his earliest and his latest patron, and by the liberality with 

 which he conferred civil honors and pecuniary rewards on 

 Joseph Fraunhofer, he has immortalized his own name, and 

 added a new lustre to the Bavarian crown. In thus noticing 

 the honors which a grateful sovereign had conferred on the 

 distinguished improver of the achromatic telescope, it is im- 

 possible to subdue the mortifying recollection, that no wreath 

 of British gratitude has yet adorned the inventor of that no- 

 ble instrument. England may well blush when she hears 

 the name of DoUond pronounced without any appendage of 

 honor, and without any association* of gratitude. Even that 

 monumental fame which she used to dispense so freely to the 

 poets whom she starved, has been denied to this benefactor 

 of science, and Westminster Abbey has not opened her hal- 

 lowed recesses to the remains of a man who will ever be 

 deemed one of the finest geniuses of his age, and who had 

 exalted that genius by learning and piety of no ordinary kind. 



Thus neglected and mortified, it is not a matter of sur- 

 prise that this branch of science and of art should seek for 



