of Edinburgh, Session 1877 - 78 . 
493 
In our own Mrs Somerville’s autobiography, unfortunately not then 
published, she pointedly records that when all the world was paying 
her honour, immediately after the publication of her most unex- 
ampled lady’s book on astronomy, entitled “ The Mechanism of the 
Heavens,” elucidated there by her able expositions of the algebraical 
analysis of La Place and other great French mathematicians — 
one of her lady friends in Burntisland remarked so confidently, 
“ Oh ! Mrs Somerville, what a happy life you must lead, for of 
course you are always gazing at the stars through a telescope ! ” 
Whereupon Mrs Somerville answered to the effect, “ that she had 
never looked through a telescope in her life, except once ; and then 
it was not at a star.” And of course ! For if she had been spend- 
ing her nights in instrumental star-gazing, how could she have been 
also getting up by midnight oil the totally different subject of 
algebraical equations 1 
Very similar too, mutatis mutandis , was the case of Le Verrier. 
Bom to excel in astronomical mathematics on paper, what had he 
to do with telescopes ! Why, the very, and most particular, praise 
which all the world had given him in 1846, was, — “ Other astrono- 
mers have occasionally discovered a little planet, by finding in the 
sky with their telescopes a diminutive star, which varies its place 
slightly from night to night : but here, in M. Le Verrier, is a man 
who has discovered a planet without looking through a telescope at 
all; without even casting a single glance at the sky; he saw his 
grand planet at the end of his pen ! ” If that praise, then given so 
freely, was genuine and honest, why take that man away from his 
glorious pen work, and make him begin mechanical operations 
which he has no taste for : which he has shown he can transcend 
in their occasional results by totally different methods ? 
But the imperial will had ordained it; and forthwith, from 1853 
to 1870, Le Verrier was known as Director of the Observatory of Paris: 
showing too, there, in many brilliant respects, how much a rigid 
sense of mere duty may enable a man to perform in almost any 
line. Though the world at large will be thankful chiefly, that in 
all this second portion of his career, Le Verrier never allowed him- 
self to be entirely absorbed in the continually increasing circle of 
his official employments ; but held as closely as ever to his soul’s 
private task, viz., the mathematical investigations, and then the 
