xix 



these powers, which might seem at first to be original gifts of nature, have, 

 I do not doubt, acquired very much of their activity from their careful and 

 energetic use/' 



Adverting to the Catalogue of fixed stars, for which more especially the 

 medal was bestowed, Mr. Airy observes, — 



Had this Catalogue proceeded from an observatory of which the per- 

 sonal establishment was charged with no other labours, we should have 



considered it as a highly meritorious work What, then, shall we say 



to this work in the circumstances under which it has reached us ? It has 

 come, the voluntary enterprise of an individual, who could not, by any con- 

 struction of his connexion with the Hamburgh Observatory, be supposed 

 to owe to the world a hundredth part of the labour which it has cost. It 

 is the fruit of observations made in the watches of the night, and calcula- 

 tions made in the leisure hours of the day, by a person who would seem, 

 to vulgar eyes, to be engrossed to the limits of human endurance by an 

 onerous professional office. Well may we consider it as a remarkable 

 instance of voluntary labour, undertaken under difficult circumstances, not 

 for public display, but as an aid to science, and skilfully and steadily 

 directed to that purpose alone." 



M. Riimker was, a Member of the Royal Academies of Munich and Got- 

 tingen, the Batavian Society of Rotterdam, the Royal Astronomical and 

 many other English and Foreign learned Societies. He was elected Foreign 

 Member of the Royal Society in 1855. 



After having laboured long and profitably, repeated attacks of illness, 

 accompanied by an asthmatic cough which increased in severity at each 

 relapse, forced him at length (in 1857) to rest from his labours, and to 

 seek a milder climate for the benefit of his shattered health. 



At his suggestion the care of the Navigation School was entrusted to 

 M. Niebour, who had been his assistant for many years, and that of the 

 Observatory to his only son, George Riimker, at that time the Astronomer 

 of the Durham Observatory, and now his successor as Director of the 

 Observatory of Hamburg. 



He had visited and been pleased with Lisbon during his earlier voyages, 

 and was induced to select that place for his retreat. There, after a residence 

 of six years, tenderly watched over by his wife, a lady of English birth, and 

 the discoverer of the comet VI of 1847, retaining full possession of his 

 faculties, he died on the 21st of December 1862. 



Having served in the British Navy, and received the medal given to those 

 who shared in the battle of Algiers, he was followed to the grave by officers 

 of the British fleet in the Tagus, and by his German friends. He lies 

 buried in a spot chosen by himself, close to Fielding's grave in the cemetery 

 of the church of Estrella. 



