the Observatory the directors would be locked in. He made his way directly to the residence of the Professor of Astronomy and asked to see his lady. She proved to be a lady in the best sense of the word, and in ten minutes Professor Mitchel, whose powers of conversation were unequalled, had so interested her in his object that she went to the Observatory and called her husband to come and see him, and asked him to take him into the Observatory, which he readily consented to do. The whole night was spent in the Observatory, the Yankee professor recording and copying observations in quantities that astonished the English astronomer. At daylight he was back to the station; and by the time Professor Airy had swallowed his breakfast, Mitchel was at his residence in Greenwich, ready for another interview. The Astronomer Royal, supposing that his advice about going to Cambridge had not been taken, was colder than ever, and when Mitchel told him he had been there, he uttered an exclamation which was nearly equivalent to accusing him of falsehood. Mitchel replied by describ ing the Observatory, the telescope and professor there, even to the minutest particulars, and then exhibiting his copious records of the night's observations. The Astronomer Royal was by this time thoroughly thawed. "This beats any thing I ever heard of," he exclaimed; then added, as if to make amends for his previous coldness: "You must dine with me to-day." At the dinner-table he was seated by Mrs. Airy, and she was so much pleased with her guest that before the dinner was over she said to her husband: "I have a favor to ask of you - - that you will take Professor Mitchel into the Observatory, and let him have every facility to perfect himself while he remains." "It is granted on one condition," replied the astronomer good humoredly, "and that is, that while he is in the Observatory he shall keep that tongue of his still."

The privilege, thus granted, was used up to the last available moment, and when the time came for the sailing of the steamer, the compilation and extension of the notes he had made sufficed to occupy the voyage. At the commencement of the next term in the college he was at his post, as ready for his duties as if he had but visited one of the lakes or the falls of the Upper Mississippi. On the fourth of July, 1843, the corner-stone of the new Observatory was laid, the venerable John Quincy Adams pronouncing the oration on the occasion. It was not, however, till the autumn of 1844 that its fine telescope was mounted and observations commenced. A considerable debt still rested upon it, and an endowment fund was needed for the support of the director. To extinguish this debt and procure the means of endowment, Professor Mitchel, who had resigned his professorship in 1844 to enter upon his duties as director of the Observatory, resolved to deliver courses of lectures on astronomy in the large cities of the country, the avails of which should be applied to these purposes. His fame as a lecturer had preceded him, and he was everywhere welcomed by very large audiences, all of

whom were delighted with the clearness and felicity of his explanations of astronomical phenomena, and the wondrous charm he threw over his subject. At the delivery of these lectures in New-York, an incident occurred within the writer's observation which indicated in the strongest possible manner the charm of his eloquence. He was delivering his course in the old Broadway Tabernacle, and that vast building was packed with an intelligent and deeply interested audience; it was, we believe, his fourth or fifth lecture, and the reporter of the Herald, which had given verbatim reports of the entire course, was busily at work. The subject of the lecture was the vast extent of the universe; he had stated, with a vividness of description which has never been surpassed, Mædler's theory of a central sun in y Hercules, and had raised his audience to the loftiest pitch of awe and reverence by the suggestion that this central point around which the island universes revolved, too remote for mortal eye, even assisted by the most powerful telescope, to discern, might be the special dwelling-place of Jehovah, who had said, "Clouds and darkness are the habitation of my throne," and closed his lecture by repeating, as he only could do it, the grand, sublime dream of Jean Paul Richter, as rendered by De Quincey, commencing: "And God called a man in dreams, and said, Come, I will show thee the glories of my House." Up to this moment the busy fingers of the reporter had transferred to paper the glowing words of the speaker, and for the first sentence or two he strove against the sense of grandeur and sublimity which was overpowering; but at length, dashing down his pencil, he listened, entirely forgetful of his duty in the delight and awe with which he was overwhelmed, and the next morning frankly confessed that his emotion had been too great to permit him to report the concluding portion of the lecture.

The lectures were entirely successful, and in connection with some donations and legacies, produced a sufficient endowment fund to render the position of director a comfortable one. The next few years were devoted with great assiduity and success to the prosecution of his astronomical discoveries. His mechanical genius here found scope in the invention of instruments for the admeasurement of the parallax of remote stars; a magnetic clock which should, when connected with the telegraphic wires, give the mean time of the different observatories; an apparatus for recording right ascensions and declinations by electro-magnetic aid to within one one thousandth of a second of time, and for the measurement with great accuracy of large differences of declination, such as the ordinary method by micrometer could not at all reach. He discovered the planet Neptune, from the calculations of Leverrier, before it had been discovered by any other astronomer in this country, and within one or two days after its discovery by Adams in England. He also discovered the exact period of the rotation of Mars, and the companion of Antares or Cor scorpii. He devoted much time, at the request of the German

astronomer W. Struve, to the re-measurement of the double stars south of the equator, discovered and catalogued by that eminent astronomer, and in the progress of this re-measurement made several interesting discoveries. In July, 1846, he commenced the publication of the Sidereal Messenger, the first periodical attempted in the United States, devoted exclusively to astronomy. It was continued two years, but finally abandoned for want of patronage.

But he was too active and energetic to be satisfied with labors which would have overtasked a man of ordinary physical powers. During this period he was for much of the time Engineer in Chief of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad, procured the greater part of the subscriptions to its stock, and went to Europe and negotiated its bonds. He was also for ten years in command of a volunteer corps in Cincinnati, and at one time Adjutant-General of Ohio. His severer labors were diversified by an occasional lecturing tour and the preparation of a volume of his lectures, a popular algebra, and some other books for the press. In 1859 he was offered the directorship of the Dudley Observatory, at Albany, which he accepted, retaining at the same time that of the Observatory at Cincinnati. In the succeeding winter he delivered, in New-York and Brooklyn, a new course of lectures, on the "Astronomy of the Bible," which were subsequently published in a volume. He also prepared a popular text-book on astronomy, for the use of colleges and high schools. His directorship at Albany was fruitful in astronomical discoveries.

Thus useful and honored, contributing to the promotion of an important science, and aiding in the dissemination of knowledge, he might easily have claimed that his services were not needed in the war which all men saw to be now approaching. But he had no disposition to reason thus. When the President issued his call for volunteers, on the fifteenth of April, 1861, no one of the nation's sons, educated in her military school, sprang forward with a heartier alacrity to draw the sword in her defence.

At that vast concourse of citizens which met at Union Park, New-York, on the twentieth of April, 1861, among the many eloquent appeals to the people to rise in defence of the nation's insulted honor none were more impressive or produced a more powerful effect on the audience than that which burst from the lips of O. M. Mitchel. The substance of that address, as taken down by the reporters at the time, has been preserved. It was as follows: "I am infinitely indebted to you for this evidence of your kindness. I know I am a stranger among you. I have been in your State but a little while; but I am with you heart and soul, and mind and strength, and all that I have and am belongs to you and to our common country, and to nothing else. I have been announced to you as a citizen of Kentucky. Once I was, because I was born there. I love my native State as you love your native State. I love my adopted State of Ohio as

you love your adopted State, if such you have; but, my friends, I am not now a citizen of any State. I owe allegiance to no State, and never did, and, God helping me, I never will. I owe allegiance to the Government of the United States. A poor boy, working with my own hands, at the age of twelve turned out to take care of myself as best I could, and beginning by earning but four dollars per month, I worked my way onward until this glorious Government gave me a chance at the Military Academy at West-Point. There I landed with a knapsack on my back, and, I tell you God's truth, just a quarter of a dollar in my pocket. There I swore allegiance to the Government of the United States. I did not abjure the love of my own State, nor of my adopted State, but all over that rose proudly, triumphantly, and predominant my love for our common country. And now, to-day, that common country is assailed, and, alas! alas! that I am compelled to say it, assailed in some sense by my own countrymen. My father and my mother were from Old Virginia, and my brothers and sisters from Old Kentucky. I love them all; I love them dearly. I have my brothers and friends in the South now, united to me by the fondest ties of love and affection. I would take them in my arms to-day, with all the love that God has put into this heart; but if I found them in arms, I would be compelled to smite them down. You have found officers of the army who have been educated by the Government, who have drawn their support from the Government for long years, who, when called upon by their country to stand for the Constitution and the right, have basely, ignominiously, and traitorously either resigned their commissions or deserted to traitors, rebels, and enemies. What means all this? How can it be possible that men should act in this way? There is no question but one. If we ever had a government and constitution, or if we ever lived under such, have we ever recognized the supremacy of right? I say, in God's name, why not recognize it now? Why not to-day? why not forever? Suppose these friends of ours from Old Ireland, suppose he who has made himself one of us, when a war should break out against his own country, should say, 'I cannot fight against my own countrymen,' is he a citizen of the United States? They are no countrymen longer when war breaks out. The rebels and the traitors in the South we must set aside; they are not our friends. When they come to their senses we will receive them with open arms; but till that time, while they are trailing our glorious banner in the dust, when they scorn it, condemn it, curse it, and trample it under foot, then I must smite. In God's name I will smite, and as long as I have strength I will do it. Oh! listen to me, listen to me; I know these men, I know their courage, I have been among them, I have been with them, I have been reared with them. They have courage, and do not you pretend to think they have not. I tell you what it is, it is no child's play you are entering upon. They will fight, and with a determination and a power which is well-nigh irresistible. Make up your mind

to it. Let every man put his life in his hand and say: 'There is the altar of my country; there I will sacrifice my life. I, for one, will lay my life down. It is not mine any longer. Lead me to the conflict. Place me where I can do my duty. There I am ready to go. I care not where it leads me.' My friends, that was the spirit that was in this city on yesterday. I am told of an incident that occurred, which drew the tears to my eyes, and I am not much used to the melting mood at all. And yet I am told of a man in your city who had a beloved wife and two children depending upon his personal labor, day by day, for their support. He went home, and said: 'Wife, I feel it my duty to enlist and fight for my country.' 'That is just what I have been thinking of, too,' said she; 'God bless you; may you come back without harm, but if you die in defence of the country, the God of the widow and the fatherless will take care of me and my children.' That same wife came to your city; she knew precisely where her husband was to pass as he marched away. She took her position on the pavement, and finding a flag, she begged leave just to stand beneath those sacred folds and take a last fond look on him she, by possibility, might never see again. The husband marched down the street, their eyes met; a sympathetic flash went from heart to heart. She gave one shout, and fell senseless upon the pavement; and there she lay for not less than thirty minutes in a swoon. It seemed to be the departing of her life; but all the sensibility was sealed up, it was all sacrifice. She was ready to meet this tremendous sacrifice upon which we have entered, and I trust you are all ready. I am ready. God help me to do my duty. I am ready to fight in the ranks or out of the ranks. Having been educated in the Academy; having been in the army for seven years; having served as commander of a volunteer company for ten years; and having served as an Adjutant-General, I feel I am ready for something. I only ask to be permitted to act, and in God's name give me something to do."

Professor Mitchel's actions were as patriotic as his words. He tendered, at the earliest possible moment, his services to the Government in any capacity in which they saw fit to employ him. At first, however, there was no position which the Government regarded as such as was suited to him, whose worth and abilities they well knew, which was not already filled by some one who, if less capable, could not well be displaced. There were also other obstacles to his immediately entering upon the service. The affairs of the two observatories must be so arranged that they could without detriment be left to others; his business affairs, in which his sons had become interested, must also be placed on a different footing; and last, though by no means least, the companion of his life, who for many years had been an invalid, but had for some months manifestly improved in health, was again smitten down, and this time with mortal sickness, in August, 1861, just as all other obstacles were removed and he had accepted the command,