Vll 



an occasional visit to the Continent, either for duty or for relaxation. 

 He delighted especially in the scenery of the dolomite mountains of 

 the Italian Tyrol, spending among them many hours of quiet enjoy- 

 ment, while their magnificent outlines were recorded with rare fidelity 

 by the accomplished companion of his life. 



Happy, then, in his domestic life, happy in the affectionate appre- 

 ciation of numerous friends of varied ages and ranks, he was also 

 happy in seeing his work (though for honours and rewards he cared 

 less than most men) not unacknowledged by his contemporaries. In 

 addition to the honours mentioned above, lie received in 1865 the 

 degree of LL.D. from the University of Dublin, and in 1876 that of 

 D.C.L. from Oxford. In 1870 he was awarded a Royal Medal by this 

 Society. He was a Knight of the Order of St. Maurice and St. 

 Lazare of Italy and of the Order of Leopold of Belgium. He was 

 also an honorary member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of the 

 Mineralogical Society of France, and of Boston, U.S.A., a foreign 

 member of the Mineralogical Society of St. Petersburg, of the Imperial 

 Royal Academy of Sciences, Vienna, and of the Royal Society, Got- 

 tingen ; and a corresponding member of the Academies of Berlin, 

 Munich, Paris, St. Petersburg, and of Turin. 



William Lassell. LL.D., died at Maidenhead, October 5, 1880, aged 

 eighty-two years. He was born at Bolton, Lancashire, June 18, 1799. 

 He acquired the rudiments of education at a day school in his native 

 town, during which time his father died, and thence went for eighteen 

 months to an academy at Rochdale. 



In 1814 he entered a merchant's office at Liverpool, and there served 

 a seven years' apprenticeship. He commenced business in Liverpool as 

 a brewer about the year 1825, without, however, much taste or inclina- 

 tion for trade, and spent almost all his leisure time in his favourite 

 pursuit of astronomy and the mechanics connected therewith. 



Mr. Lassell possessed a great love and aptitude for mechanical 

 invention, and for this reason " he belonged," to use the words of Sir 

 John Herschel, " to that class of observers who have created their own 

 instrumental means, who have felt their own wants, and supplied them 

 in their own way." The qualities which enabled Mr. Lassell to do all 

 this made him what he was. The work was the revelation of the man. 

 He felt precisely where lay the difficulties and wants which met him in 

 his work, because he was sensitive and sympathetic. He could deal 

 successfully with these difficulties and supply these wants often in a 

 masterly and original way, because he could think for himself cautiously 

 yet boldly. He could work out his conceptions in new and difficult 

 directions to a successful issue, because the constancy of his character 

 showed itself here in concentration of thought and perseverance of 



