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Transactions of the Boyal Society oj South Africa. 
fortunate enough to see only one side of a question. All through his 
life he was on friendly terms with most of the South African political 
leaders — Bartle Frere, Ehodes, Jameson, Earl Grey, Milner. 
He was a passionate lover of music, and few things gave him greater 
pleasure than an afternoon or evening spent in listening to good singing 
or playing. He did much, also, to foster a taste for good music by taking 
a helpful interest in the various public concerts that were given from time 
to time in Cape Town. 
He had a fine appreciation of pictures, and his house possessed not a 
few of considerable value. Indeed his home was the dwelling-place of a 
man of refined tastes. In all its conditions and circumstances it suggested 
the abode of one who loved beautiful things. 
Gill was the last of the old school of astronomers who lived and toiled 
in the strenuous epoch between the days of Lagrange, Leverrier, Bessel, 
and Gauss, and the present hour that heralds in the day of the New 
Astronomy, and he was the greatest of them all. 
But to some of us it is not thoughts of his intellectual attainments, or 
of his great achievements in the world of science, that arise as we seek to 
picture the man anew to our inner vision, but rather memories of one who 
was abiding in his friendships, upright and honourable in all his actions, 
gracious and kindly in his outlook on men and things, fearless in the 
discharge of what he deemed to be his duty. 
If much of a personal note has crept into this tribute, it is because it 
has never been absent from the writer's mind. 
And I am sure it will not be lacking from out the thoughts of those 
who with knowledge and sympathy read, and so reading will supply 
wherein we have failed. 
Of him, and of the future verdict of history upon him, we may fittingly 
quote the well-known words of Horace : — 
" Crescit, occulto velut arbor aevo 
Fama Marcelli, micat inter omnes 
Julium Sidus, velut inter ignes, 
Luna Minores." 
Alex. W. Egberts. 
