492 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
things, however flatttering personally, not even the powers invested 
in him to reform the Polytechnic School, and to inspect all the uni- 
versities of France, nor all the immense astronomical correspondence 
of which he became the European centre, did he allow to interfere 
with his continued private research in his own appointed task. 
Wherefore the Academy was electrified again and again by further 
of his magnificent planetary papers, in 1849, 1850, and 1853 — as, 
on new methods of constructing the numerical tables required for 
practically computing the places of the planets as subjected to all 
perturbations of Newtonian gravitation origin; next, on improved 
tables of the Sun, as representing the movements of the earth ; and 
then on still more refined theoretical considerations touching the 
whole group of planetoids, between Mars and Jupiter, whatever their 
teeming numbers might eventually be found with the telescope. 
All this time, too, Le Verrier was the most cheerful of beings, the 
most admired of ail in scientific life, and envied by no one ; for he 
had gained his successes by genius and force which were all his 
own, which no one else could attempt to claim or compete with. 
And he could be so smiling, so gracious, sweet as summer air, and 
full of happy remarks to all he met. Occasionally even rather too 
much so ; for we have seen him at that period of his life at a meet- 
ing of the Academy, and while the very Perpetual Secretary was 
reading out the papers of others , there was M. Le Yerrier joyously 
walking in, and about, and through all the ranks of seated savants, 
nodding to one, discussing with another, laughing with a third, pro- 
posing problems to a fourth, and without the slightest idea he 
could be doing anything wrong. While his personal appearance 
was in those days a tall figure, with fine upright carriage, sparkling 
eyes unconscious of offence, an immense dome of a head and abun- 
dant flaxen hair. The French called it “blond:” and how that 
man could have escaped being born an Anglo-Saxon, was more than 
we could then understand. 
So closed the first period of Le Verrier’s career : for the second 
and very contrasted part of it began when Louis Napoleon appointed 
him to the charge of the Imperial Observatory at Paris. 
And why should it have been such a contrast 1 ? Was not the 
“ Observatoire” just the place for such a man 1 Not a bit of it ! 
