xlvi 



had so successfully entered. For this work he was highly gifted ; he had 

 a keen eye, a steady hand, great power of bearing fatigue and want of sleep, 

 prompt decision in catching a bisection, and boundless enthusiasm. Fraun- 

 hofer, to whom he applied in the first instance, declined giving him an 

 object-glass without also supplying its equatoreal. It wouldjiave been a 

 happy thing for him had he accepted this proposal ; but he had no faith 

 in any instrument maker but Troughton, whom he worshipped with all the 

 intense devotion of his impulsive character. He looked elsewhere : 

 Cauchoix had completed a 12-inch object-glass, about which, in 1829, he 

 was chaffering with the French Government ; South heard of it, went over 

 to Paris, tried it, paid the optician the price which he dem.anded, and 

 started with it next morning on his way to England, to the great disgust of 

 Arago that it was lost to France. But it was a fatal acquisition. Trough- 

 ton was of course charged with the construction of the equatoreal ; and a 

 dome for containing it was also commenced. Unhappily, both of them 

 were planned without much respect for the elementary principles of engi- 

 neering, the first especially ; and though Mr. Babbage and others pointed 

 out to him its utter weakness, he merely answered, " It is designed by 

 Troughton." He had no knowledge of mechanical science, and had unli- 

 mited faith in Troughton's infallibility. As was foretold, the instrument 

 was a failure ; and though many attempts were m.ade to correct the inhe- 

 rent vices of its framing, they were only partially successful. The result 

 was a deadly quarrel between the two friends (which perhaps might have 

 been healed but for the intervention of other personal animosities), and a 

 litigation, which after a run of four years was decided in a way unsatisfac- 

 tory to both parties, most so to South. The dome was also a failure ; in 

 general it required four or five men to move it ; sometimes it stuck fast ! 

 The loss of full ^8000 thus spent without any useful result was itself a 

 misfortune ; but it was as nothing in comparison of the evil influence which 

 these transactions exerted on his character. The feeling that his confidence 

 had been misplaced, that the friendship which had been his ruling passion, 

 and which he still cherished, was changed into bitter hate, made him sus- 

 picious and irritable ; and he lost that reliance on the truthfulness and 

 honesty of others, without which life becomes a desert. By degrees this 

 left hira in an isolation from many old and true friends ; and also, as a ne- 

 cessary consequence, deadened his love of science, which, like all other 

 good things, is strengthened by sympathy. And he had no longer a defi- 

 nite pursuit ; he could not resolve to adopt any practicable form of equa- 

 toreal, though Lord Rosse offered to design and even to make one for him ; 

 and during the years that were wasted, the harvest of double stars which 

 he had hoped to reap was gathered by Sir J. Herschel, tlie two Struves, 

 Bond, and others. This object-glass, while in his possession, made only 

 one discovery, the sixth star in the trapezium of Orion ; and remained 

 useless till he gave it to the Dublin Observatory in 1862, when Lord Rosse 

 was elected Chancellor of that University. In the hands of Dr. Briinnow 



