Chapter V: The Choice of a Life (1)

In looking back, after a long lapse of years, I can not refrain from a feeling of astonishment, to think how little remembrance I possess of the occurrences of that day--one of the most memorable that ever dawned for France--the eventful 29th of July, that closed the reign of terror by the death of the tyrant! It is true that all Paris was astir at daybreak; that a sense of national vengeance seemed to pervade the vast masses that filled the streets, which now were scenes of the most exciting emotion. I can only account for the strange indifference that I felt about these stirring themes, by the frequency with which similar, or what, to me, at least, appeared similar scenes had already passed before my eyes.

One of the most remarkable phases of the revolution was, the change it produced in all the social relations, by substituting an assumed nationality for the closer and dearer ties of kindred and affection. France was every thing--the family nothing; every generous wish, every proud thought, every high ambition or noble endeavor belonged to the country. In this way, whatever patriotism may have gained, certainly all the home affections were utterly wrecked; the humble and unobtrusive virtues of domestic life seemed mean and insignificant beside the grand displays of patriotic devotion which each day exhibited.

Hence grew the taste for that "life of the streets," then so popular; every thing should be "en evidence." All the emotions which delicacy would render sacred to the seclusion of home, were now to be paraded to the noonday. Fathers were reconciled to rebellious children before the eyes of multitudes; wives received forgiveness from their husbands in the midst of approving crowds; leave-takings, the most affecting, partings, for those never to meet again, the last utterings of the death-bed, the faint whispers of expiring affection, the imprecations of undying hate, all, all were exhibited in public, and the gaze of the low, the vulgar, and the debauched, associated with the most agonizing griefs that ever the heart endured. The scenes, which now are shrouded in all the secrecy of domestic privacy, were then the daily life of Paris; and to this cause alone can I attribute the hardened indifference with which events the most terrible and heart-rending were witnessed. Bred up amidst such examples, I saw little matter for emotion in scenes of harrowing interest. An air of mockery was on every thing, and a bastard classicality destroyed every semblance of truth in whatever would have been touching and affecting.

The commotion of Paris on that memorable morning was, then, to my thinking, little more than usual. If the crowds who pressed their way to "The Place de la Revolution" were greater; if the cries of vengeance were in louder utterance; if the imprecations were deeper and more terrible, the ready answer, that satisfied all curiosity, was--it was Robespierre, who was on his way to be executed. Little knew I what hung upon that life! and now the fate of millions depended upon the blood that morning was to shed. Too full of myself and my own projects, I disengaged myself from the crowds that pressed eagerly toward the Tuileries, and took my way by less frequented streets in the direction of the Boulevard Mont Parnasse.

I wished, if possible, to see the Pere once more, to take a last farewell of him, and ask his blessing, too; for still a lingering faith in the lessons he had taught me, continued to haunt my mind, amidst all the evil influences with which my wayward life surrounded me. The further I went from the quarter of the Tuileries, the more deserted and solitary grew the streets. Not a carriage or horseman was to be seen; scarcely a foot-passenger. All Paris had, apparently, assembled on the "Place de la Revolution;" and the very beggars had quitted their accustomed haunts to repair thither. Even the distant hum of the vast multitude faded away, and it was only as the wind bore them, that I could catch the sounds of the hoarse cries that bespoke a people's vengeance; and now I found myself in the little silent street which once had been my home. I stood opposite the house where we used to live, afraid to enter it, lest I might compromise the safety of her I wished to save, and yet longing once more to see the little chamber where we once sat together--the chimney-corner where, in the dark nights of winter, I nestled, with my hymn-book, and tried to learn the rhymes that every plash of the falling hail against the windows routed; to lie down once more in the little bed, where so often I had passed whole nights of happy imaginings--bright thoughts of a peaceful future, that were never to be realized!

Half-choking with my emotion, I passed on, and soon saw the green fields, and the windmill-covered hill of Montmartre, rising above the embankment of the Boulevards; and now the ivy-clothed wall of the garden, within which stood the chapel of St. Blois. The gate lay ajar, as of old, and pushing it open, I entered. Every thing was exactly as I had left it--the same desolation and desertion every where--so much so, that I almost fancied no human foot had crossed its dreary precincts since last I was there. On drawing nigh to the chapel, I found the door fast barred and barricaded, as before; but a window lay open, and on examining it closer, I discovered the marks of a recent foot-track on the ground and the window-sill. Could the Pere Michel have been there? was the question that at once occurred to my mind. Had the poor priest come to take a last look and a farewell of a spot so dear to him? It could scarcely have been any other. There was nothing to tempt cupidity in that humble little church; an image of the "Virgin and Child" in wax was the only ornament of the altar. No, no; pillage had never been the motive of him who entered here.

Thus reasoning, I climbed up to the window, and entered the chapel. As my footsteps echoed through the silent building, I felt that sense of awe and reverence so inseparably connected with a place of worship, and which is ever more impressive still, as we stand in it alone. The present, however, was less before me than the past, of which every thing reminded me. There was the seat the marquise used to sit in; there the footstool I had so often placed at her feet. How different was the last service I had rendered her! There the pillar, beside which I have stood spell-bound, gazing at that fair face, whose beauty arrested the thoughts that should have wended heavenward, and made my muttered prayers like offerings to herself. The very bouquet of flowers--some peri's hand had placed beneath the shrine--withered and faded, was there still. But where were they whose beating hearts had throbbed with deep devotion? How many had died upon the scaffold!--how many were still lingering in imprisonment, some in exile, some in concealment, dragging out lives of misery and anxiety. What was the sustaining spirit of such martyrdom? I asked myself again and again. Was it the zeal of true religion, or was it the energy of loyalty, that bore them up against every danger, and enabled them to brave death itself with firmness?--and if this faith of theirs was thus ennobling, why could not France be of one mind and heart? There came no answer to these doubts of mine, and I slowly advanced toward the altar, still deeply buried in thought. What was my surprise to see that two candles stood there, which bore signs of having been recently lighted. At once the whole truth flashed across me--the Pere had been there; he had come to celebrate a mass--the last, perhaps, he was ever to offer up at that altar. I knew with what warm affection he loved every object and every spot endeared to him by long time, and I fancied to myself the overflowing of his heart, as he entered once more, and for the last time, the little temple, associated with all the joys and sorrows of his existence. Doubtless, too, he had waited anxiously for my coming; mayhap, in the prayers he offered, I was not forgotten. I thought of him kneeling there, in the silence of the night, alone, as he was, his gentle voice the only sound in the stillness of the hour; his pure heart throbbing with gratitude for his deliverance, and prayerful hopes for those who had been his persecutors. I thought over all this, and, in a torrent of emotions, I knelt down before the altar to pray. I know not what words I uttered, but his name must some how have escaped my lips; for suddenly a door opened beside the altar, and the Pere Michel, dressed in his full vestments, stood before me. His features, wan and wasted as they were, had regained their wonted expression of calm dignity; and by his look I saw that he would not suffer the sacred spot to be profaned by any outburst of feeling on either side.

"Those dreadful shouts tell of another massacre," said he, solemnly, as the wind bore toward us the deafening cries of the angry multitude. "Let us pray for the souls' rest of the departed."

"Then will your prayers be offered for Robespierre, for Couthon, and St. Just," said I, boldly.

"And who are they who need more the saints' intercession--who have ever been called to judgment with such crimes to expiate--who have ever so widowed France, and so desecrated her altars? Happily a few yet remain where piety may kneel to implore pardon for their iniquity. Let us recite the Litany for the Dead," said he, solemnly, and at once began the impressive service.

As I knelt beside the rails of the altar, and heard the prayers which, with deep devotion, he uttered. I could not help feeling the contrast between that touching evidence of Christian charity, and the tumultuous joy of the populace, whose frantic bursts of triumph were borne on the air.

"And now come with me, Maurice," said he, as the mass was concluded. "Here, in this little sacristy, we are safe from all molestation; none will think of us on such a day as this."

And as he spoke, he drew his arm around me, and led me into the little chamber where once the precious vessels and the decorations of the church were kept.

"Here we are safe," said he, as he drew me to his side on the oaken bench, which formed all the furniture of the room. "To-morrow, Maurice, we must leave this, and seek an asylum in another land; but we are not friendless, my child--the brothers of the 'Sacred Heart' will receive us. Their convent is in the wilds of the Ardennes, beyond the frontiers of France, and there, beloved by the faithful peasantry, they live in security and peace. We need not take the vows of their order, which is one of the strictest of all religious houses; but we may claim their hospitality and protection, and neither will be denied us. Think what a blessed existence will that be, Maurice, my son, to dwell under the same roof with these holy men, and to imbibe from them the peace of mind that holiness alone bestows; to awake at the solemn notes of the pealing organ, and to sink to rest with the solemn liturgies still chanting around you; to feel an atmosphere of devotion on every side, and to see the sacred relics whose miracles have attested the true faith in ages long past. Does it not stir thy heart, my child, to know that such blessed privileges may be thine?"

I hung my head in silence, for in truth, I felt nothing of the enthusiasm with which he sought to inspire me. The Pere quickly saw what passed in my mind, and endeavored to depict the life of the monastery as a delicious existence, embellished by all the graces of literature, and adorned by the pleasures of intellectual converse. Poetry, romance, scenery, all were pressed into the service of his persuasions; but how weak were such arguments to one like me, the boy whose only education had been what the streets of Paris afforded--whose notions of eloquence were formed on the insane ravings of "The Mountain," and whose idea of greatness were centred in mere notoriety.

My dreamy look of inattention showed him again that he had failed; and I could see in the increased pallor of his face, the quivering motion of his lip, the agitation the defeat was costing him.

"Alas! alas!" cried he, passionately, "the work of ruin is perfect; the mind of youth is corrupted, and the fountain of virtue defiled at the very source. Oh! Maurice, I had never thought this possible of thee, the child of my heart!"

A burst of grief here overcame him; for some minutes he could not speak. At last he arose from his seat, and wiping off the tears that covered his cheeks, with his robe, spoke, but in a voice whose full round tones contrasted strongly with his former weak accents.

"The life I have pictured seems to thee ignoble and unworthy, boy. So did it not appear to Chrysostom, to Origen, and to Augustin, to the blessed saints of our church, the eldest born of Christianity. Be it so. Thine, mayhap is not the age, nor this the era in which to hope for better things. Thy heart yearns for heroic actions--thy spirit is set upon high ambitions--be it so. I say, never was the time more fitting for thee. The enemy is up; his armies are in the field; thousands and tens of thousands swell the ranks, already flushed with victory. Be a soldier, then. Ay, Maurice, buckle on the sword--the battle-field is before thee. Thou hast made choice to seek the enemy in the far-away countries of heathen darkness, or here in our own native France, where his camp is already spread. If danger be the lure that tempts thee--if to confront peril be thy wish--there is enough of it. Be a soldier, then, and gird thee for the great battle that is at hand. Ay! boy, if thou feelest within thee the proud darings that foreshadow success, speak the word, and thou shalt be a standard-bearer in the very van."

I waited not for more; but springing up, I clasped my arms around his neck, and cried, in ecstasy, "Yes! Pere Michel, you have guessed aright; my heart's ambition is to be a soldier and I want but your blessing to be a brave one."

"And thou shalt have it. A thousand blessings follow those who go forth to the good fight. But thou art yet young, Maurice--too young for this. Thou needest time and much teaching, too. He who would brave the enemy before us, must be skillful as well as courageous. Thou art as yet but a child."

"The general said he liked boy-soldiers," said I, promptly; "he told me so himself."

"What general--who told thee?" cried the Pere in trembling eagerness.

"General Lacoste, the Chef-d'-Etat, major of the army of the Rhine; the same who gave me a rendezvous for to-morrow at his quarters."

It was not till I had repeated my explanation again and again, nor, indeed, until I had recounted all the circumstances of my last night's adventure, that the poor Pere could be brought to see his way through a mystery that had almost become equally embarrassing to myself. When he did, however, detect the clew, and when he had perceived the different tracks on which our minds were traveling, his grief burst all bounds. He inveighed against the armies of the Republic as hordes of pillagers and bandits, the sworn enemies of the church, the desecrators of her altars. Their patriotism he called a mere pretense to shroud their infidelity. Their heroism was the bloodthirstiness of democratic cruelty. Seeing me still unmoved by all this passionate declamation, he adopted another tactic, and suddenly asked me if it were for such a cause as this my father had been a soldier?

"No!" replied I, firmly; "for when my father was alive, the soil of France had not been desecrated by the foot of the invader. The Austrian, the Prussian, the Englishman had not yet dared to dictate the laws under which we were to live."

He appeared thunderstruck at my reply, repealing, as it seemed to him, the extent of those teachings, whose corruptions he trembled at.

"I knew it, I knew it," cried he, bitterly, as he wrung his hands. "The seed of the iniquity is sown--the harvest-time will not be long in coming! And so, boy, thou hast spoken with one of these men--these generals, as they call themselves, of that republican horde?"

"The officer who commands the artillery of the army of the Rhine may write himself general with little presumption," said I, almost angrily.

"They who once led our armies to battle were the nobles of France--men whose proud station was the pledge for their chivalrous devotion. But why do I discuss the question with thee? He who deserts his faith may well forget that his birth was noble. Go, boy, join those with whom your heart is already linked. Your lesson will be an easy one--you have nothing to unlearn. The songs of the Girondins are already more grateful to your ear than our sacred canticles. Go, I say, since between us, henceforth, there can be no companionship.

"Will you not bless me, Pere," said I, approaching him in deep humility; "will you not let me carry with me thy benediction?"

"How shall I bless the arm that is lifted to wound the Holy Church? how shall I pray for one whose place is in the ranks of the infidel? Hadst thou faith in my blessing, boy, thou hadst never implored it in such a cause. Renounce thy treason--and not alone my blessing, but thou shalt have a 'Novena' to celebrate thy fidelity. Be of us, Maurice, and thy name shall be honored, where honor is immortality."

The look of beaming affection with which he uttered this, more than the words themselves, now shook my courage, and, in a conflict of doubt and indecision, I held down my head without speaking. What might have been my ultimate resolve, if left completely to myself, I know not; but at that very moment a detachment of soldiers marched past in the street without. They were setting off to join the army of the Rhine, and were singing in joyous chorus the celebrated song of the day, "Le chant du depart." The tramp of their feet--the clank of their weapons--their mellow voices--but, more than all, the associations that thronged to my mind, routed every other thought, and I darted from the spot, and never stopped till I reached the street.

A great crowd followed the detachment, composed partly of friends of the soldiers, partly of the idle loungers of the capital. Mixing with these, I moved onward, and speedily passed the outer boulevard, and gained the open country.

(_To be continued._)

[From Household Words.]

THE PLANET-WATCHERS OF GREENWICH.

There is a morsel of Greenwich Park, which has, for now nearly two centuries, been held sacred from intrusion. It is the portion inclosed by the walls of the Observatory. Certainly a hundred thousand visitors must ramble over the surrounding lawns, and look with curious eye upon the towers and outer boundaries of that little citadel of science, for one who finds admission to the interior of the building. Its brick towers, with flanking turrets and picturesque roofs, perched on the side of the gravelly hill, and sheltered round about by groups of fine old trees, are as well known as Greenwich Hospital itself. But what work goes on inside its carefully preserved boundary, and under those movable, black-domed roofs, is a popular mystery. Many a holiday-maker's wonder has been excited by the fall, at one o'clock, of the huge, black ball, high up there, by the weather vane on the topmost point of the eastern turret. He knows, or is told if he asks a loitering pensioner, that the descent of the ball tells the time as truly as the sun; and that all the ships in the river watch it to set their chronometers by, before they sail; and, that, all the railway clocks, and all the railway trains over the kingdom are arranged punctually by its indications. But how the heavens are watched to secure this punctual definition of the flight of time, and what other curious labors are going on inside the Observatory, is a sealed book. The public have always been, of necessity, excluded from the Observatory walls, for the place is devoted to the prosecution of a science whose operations are inconsistent with the bustle, the interruptions, the talk, and the anxieties of popular curiosity and examination.

But when public information and instruction are the objects, the doors are widely opened, and the press and its _attaches_ find a way into this, as into many other sacred and forbidden spots. Only last week one of "our own contributors" was seen in a carriage on the Greenwich railway, poring over the paper in the last Edinburgh Review that describes our national astronomical establishment, and was known afterward to have climbed the Observatory hill, and to have rung and gained admission at the little, black, mysterious gate in the Observatory wall. Let us see what is told in his report of what he saw within that sacred portal.

In the park on a fine day all seems life and gayety--once within the Observatory boundary, the first feeling is that of isolation. There is a curious stillness about the place, and the foot-step of the old pensioner, who closes the gate upon a visitor, echoes again on the pavement as he goes away to wake up from his astronomical or meteorological trance one of the officers of this sanctum. Soon, under the guidance of the good genius so invoked, the secrets of the place begin to reveal themselves.

The part of the Observatory so conspicuous from without is the portion least used within. When it was designed by Christopher Wren, the general belief was that such buildings should be lofty, that the observer might be raised toward the heavenly bodies whose motions he was to watch. More modern science has taught its disciples better; and in Greenwich--which is an eminently practical Observatory--the working part of the building is found crouching behind the loftier towers. These are now occupied as subsidiary to the modern practical building. The ground floor is used as a residence by the chief astronomer; above is the large hall originally built to contain huge moveable telescopes and quadrants--such as are not now employed. Nowadays, this hall occasionally becomes a sort of scientific counting-house--irreverent but descriptive term--in which, from time to time, a band of scientific clerks are congregated to post up the books, in which the daily business of the planets has been jotted down by the astronomers who watch those marvelous bodies. Another portion is a kind of museum of astronomical curiosities. Flamstead and Halley, and their immediate successors, worked in these towers, and here still rest some of the old, rude tools with which their discoveries were completed, and their reputation, and the reputation of Greenwich, were established. As time has gone on, astronomers and opticians have invented new, and more perfect, and more luxurious instruments. Greater accuracy is thus obtainable, at a less expenditure of human patience and labor; and so the old tools are cast aside. One of them belonged to Halley, and was put up by him a hundred and thirty years ago; another is an old brazen quadrant, with which many valuable observations were made in by-gone times; and another, an old iron quadrant, still fixed in the stone pier to which it was first attached. Some of the huge telescopes that once found place in this old Observatory, have been sent away. One went to the Cape of Good Hope, and has been useful there. Another of the unsatisfactory, and now unused instruments, had a tube twenty-five feet long, whose cool and dark interior was so pleasant to the spiders that, do what they would, the astronomers could not altogether banish the persevering insects from it. Spin they would; and, spite of dusting and cleaning, and spider-killing, spin they did; and, at length, the savans got more instruments and less patience, and the spiders were left in quiet possession. This has been pleasantly spoken of as an instance of poetical justice. It is but fair that spiders should, at times, have the best of astronomers, for astronomers rob spiders for the completion of their choicest instruments. No fabric of human construction is fine enough to strain across the eyepiece of an important telescope, and opticians preserve a particular race of spiders, that their webs may be taken for that purpose. The spider lines are strained across the best instruments at Greenwich and elsewhere; and when the spinners of these beautifully fine threads disturbed the accuracy of the tube in the western wing of the old Observatory, it was said to be but fair retaliation for the robberies the industrious insects had endured.

A narrow stair leads from the unused rooms of the old Observatory to its leaded roof, whence a magnificent view is obtained; the park, the hospital, the town of Greenwich, and the windings of the Thames, and, gazing further, London itself comes grandly into the prospect. The most inveterate astronomer could scarcely fail to turn for a moment from the wonders of the heavens to admire these glories of the earth. From the leads, two turrets are reached, where the first constantly active operations in this portion of the building, are in progress.

At the present time, indeed, these turrets are the most useful portions of the old building. In one is placed the well-known contrivance for registering, hour after hour, and day after day, the force and direction of the wind. To keep such a watch by human vigilance, and to make such a register by human labor, would be a tedious, expensive, and irksome task; and human ingenuity taxed itself to make a machine for perfecting such work. The wind turns a weather-cock, and, by aid of cog-wheels the motion is transferred to a lead pencil fixed over a sheet of paper, and thus the wind is made to write down the direction which itself is blowing. Not far distant is a piece of metal, the flat side of which is ever turned by the weather-cock to meet the full force of the wind, which, blowing upon it, drives it back against a spring. To this spring is affixed a chain passing over, pullies toward another pencil, fixed above a sheet of paper, and moving faithfully, more or less, as the wind blows harder or softer. And thus the "gentle zephyr" and the fresh breeze, and the heavy gale, and, when it comes, the furious hurricane, are made to note down their character and force. The sheet of paper on which the uncertain element, the wind, is bearing witness against itself, is fixed upon a frame moved by clock-work. Steady as the progress of time, this ingenious mechanism draws the paper under the suspended pencils. Thus each minute and each hour has its written record, without human help or inspection. Once a day only, an assistant comes to put a new blank sheet in the place of that which has been covered by the moving pencils, and the latter is taken away to be bound up in a volume. The book might with truth be lettered, "The History of the Wind; written by Itself"--an AEolian autobiography.

Close by is another contrivance for registering in decimals of an inch the quantity of rain that falls. The drops are caught, and passing down a tube, a permanent mark is made by which the quantity is determined.

The eastern turret is devoted to the Time Ball and its mechanism. Far out at sea--away from all sources of information but those to be asked of the planets, his compass, his quadrant, his chronometer, and his almanack, the mariner feels the value of _time_ in a way which the landsman can scarcely conceive. If his chronometer is right, he may feel safe; let him have reason to doubt its accuracy, and he knows how the perils surrounding him are increased. An error of a few seconds in his time may place him in danger--an error of a few minutes may lead him to steer blindly to his certain wreck. Hence his desire when he is leaving port to have his time-pieces right to a second; and hence the expenditure of thought, and labor, and money, at the Greenwich Observatory, to afford the shipping of the great port of London, and the English navy, the exact time--true to the tenth of a second, or six hundredth of a minute--and to afford them also a book, the Nautical Almanack, containing a mass of astronomical facts, on which they may base their calculations, with full reliance as to their accuracy. Every day for the last seventeen years, at five minutes before one o'clock, the black ball five feet across and stuffed with cork, is raised halfway up its shaft above the eastern turret of the observatory--at two-and-a-half minutes before that hour, it rises to the top. Telescopes from many a point, both up and down the river, are now pointed to this dark spot above the Greenwich trees, and many an anxious mariner has his time-pieces beside him, that their indications may be made true. Watch the ball as you stand in the Park. It is now just raised. You must wait two minutes and a half, and as you do so, you feel what a minute may be. It seems a long, palpable, appreciable time, indeed. In the turret below, stands a clock telling the true time, gained by a laborious watching of the _clock-stars_; and beside the clock, is a man with a practiced hand upon a trigger, and a practiced eye upon the face of the dial. One minute--two minutes pass. Thirty seconds more, and the trigger has released the Ball. As it leaves the top of the shaft, it is one o'clock to the tenth of a second By the time it has reached the bottom it is some five seconds later.

Leaving the Ball Turret, and the old building which it surmounts, the new Observatory, where the chief work of the establishment is done, claims our notice. This attention would scarcely be given to its outward appearance for it is a long, low building, scarcely seen beyond its own boundaries. The Greenwich Observatory is not a _show_ place, but an eminently practical establishment. St. Petersburg and other cities have much more gorgeous buildings devoted to astronomical purposes, and Russia and other countries spend much more money on astronomy than England does, yet the Greenwich Tables have a world-wide reputation, and some of them are used as the groundwork for calculations in all Observatories at home and abroad. The astronomer does not want marble halls or grand saloons for his work. Galileo used a bell-tower at Venice, and Kepler stood on the bridge at Prague to watch the stars. The men, not the buildings, do the work. No disappointment, need be felt, then, to find the modern Observatory a range of unadorned buildings running east and west, with slits in the roof and in some of the walls. Within these simple buildings are the instruments now used, displaying almost the perfection of mechanical skill in their construction and finish--beautifully adapted to the object they have to fulfill, and in perfect order. They are fixed on solid piers of masonry, deeply imbedded in the earth, to secure freedom from vibration--a quality better obtained when the foundations are on sand or gravel than when on rock.

To describe the instruments by their technical names, and to go into any particulars of the instruments they have superseded, would take space, only to do the work of a scientific treatise. Enough, therefore, to say, that there are the telescopes best adapted to the chief duty of the place, which is, watching the moon whenever she is visible; watching the _clock-stars_, by which the true time is calculated more exactly than it could be from observations of the sun alone; and watching other planetary bodies as they pass the meridian. Eclipses, occultations, and other phenomena, of course, have their share of attention, and add to the burden of the observer's duties.

The staff of the Observatory includes a chief astronomer, Mr. Airy, with a salary of L800 a year; and six assistants who are paid, L470, L290, L240, L150, L130, and L130, respectively. This does not include the officers of the Meteorological branch of the establishment, to be spoken of hereafter; and which consists of Mr. Glaisher, with L240 a year, one assistant at L120, and two additional computers. At times, when these scientific laborers have collected more observations than they are able to work out; additional help is summoned, in shape of the body of scientific clerks before spoken of; who, seated at desks, cast up the accounts the planetary bodies, including such regular old friends as the moon and fixed stars, but not forgetting those wandering celestial existences that rush, from time to time, over the meridian, and may be fairly called the chance customers of the astronomer.

Though the interior of the Observatory seems so still, the life of those employed there has its excitements. Looking through telescopes forms a small part only of their duty--and that duty can not be done when the weather is unfavorable. On cloudy days the observer is idle; in bright weather he is busy; and a long continuance of clear days and nights gives him more employment than he can well complete. Summer, therefore, is his time of labor; winter his time of rest. It appears that in our climate the nights, on the whole, are clearer than the days, and evenings less cloudy than mornings. Every assistant takes his turn as an observer, and a chain of duty is kept up night and day; at other periods, the busiest portion of the twenty-four hours at the Observatory, is between nine in the morning and two in the afternoon. During this time they work in silence, the task being to complete the records of the observations made, by filling in the requisite columns of figures upon printed forms, and then adding and subtracting them as the case requires. While thus engaged, the assistant who has charge of an instrument looks, from time to time, at his star regulated clock, and when it warns him that his expected planet is nearly due, he leaves his companions, and quietly repairs to the room where the telescope is ready. The adjustment of this has previously been arranged with the greatest nicety. The shutter is moved from the slit in the roof, the astronomer sits upon an easy chair with a movable back. If the object he seeks is high in the heavens, this chair-back is lowered till its occupant almost lies down; if the star is lower, the chair-back is raised in proportion. He has his note-book and metallic pencil in hand. Across the eye-piece of the telescope are stretched seven lines of spider-web, dividing the field of view. If his seat requires change, the least motion arranges it to his satisfaction, for it rests upon a railway of its own. Beside him is one of the star-clocks, and as the moment approaches for the appearance of the planet, the excitement of the moment increases. "The tremble of impatience for the entrance of the star on the field of view," says an Edinburgh Reviewer, "is like that of a sportsman whose dog has just made a full point, and who awaits the rising of the game. When a star appears, the observer, in technical language, _takes a second from the clock face_; that is, he reads the second with his eye, and counts on by the ear the succeeding beats of the clock, naming the seconds mentally. As the star passes each wire of the transit, he marks down in his jotting-book with a metallic pencil the second, _and the second only_, of his observation, with such a fraction of a second as corresponds, in his judgment, to the interval of time between the passage of the star, and the beat of the clock which preceded such passage."

An experienced observer will never commit an error in this mental calculation, exceeding the tenth of a second, or six hundredth of a minute. When the star has been thus watched over the seven cobweb lines (or wires), the observer jots down the hour and minute, in addition to the second, and the task is done. Stars, not very near the sun, may be seen in broad daylight, but, at night, it is requisite to direct a ray of light from a lamp, so far to enlighten the field of the telescope, as to permit the spider lines to be seen running across the brighter ground on which the expected star is to be visible.

The adjustment of the instruments is a task of great nicety. If they are out of trim only a shadow of a shade of a hair's-breadth, the desired accuracy is interfered with, and they have to be re-adjusted. Temperature is of course an important element in their condition, and a slight sensibility may do mischief. The warmth of the observer's body, when approaching the instruments, has been known to affect their accuracy; and to avoid such sources of error, instruments have at times been cased in flannel, that the non-conducting powers of that homely fabric might screen the too-sensitive metal.

Sunday is a comparative holiday at the Observatory, for then, except when any extraordinary phenomena are expected, the only duty done is to drop the Time Ball, and observe the moon's place. The moon is never neglected, and her motions have been here watched, during the last hundred and seventy years, with the most pertinacious care--to the great service of astronomy, and the great benefit of navigation.

The library should not pass unnoticed. It is small; but being devoted to works upon astronomy, and the kindred sciences, there is ample room for all that has hitherto been written on the subject, or that can, for many generations, be produced. The observations of a lifetime spent in watching the stars may be printed in marvelously few pages. A glance through the Greenwich Astronomical Library gives a rough general idea of what the world has done and is doing for the promotion of this science. Russia contributes large, imperial-looking tomes, that tell of extended observations made under the munificent patronage of a despot; Germany sends from different points a variety of smaller, cheaper-looking, yet valuable contributions; France gives proofs of her genius and her discoveries; but _her_ forte is not in observation. The French are bad observers. They have no such proofs of unremitting, patient toil in search of facts, as those afforded in the records of the Greenwich Tables of the Moon. Indeed, Greenwich, as we have already said, is a working Observatory; and those who go into its library, and its fire-proof manuscript-room, and see how its volumes of observations have been growing from the small beginnings of the days of Flamstead and Halley, to those of our later and more, liberal times, will have good reason to acknowledge that the money devoted to this establishment has been well employed.

One other spot must be noticed as among the notable things in this astronomical sanctum. It is the Chronometer-room, to which, during the first three Mondays in the year, the chief watch-makers of London send in their choicest instruments for examination and trial. The watches remain for a good portion of a year; their rates being noted, day by day, by two persons; and then the makers of the best receive prizes, and their instruments are purchased for the navy. Other competitors obtain certificates of excellence, which bring customers from the merchant service; while others pass unrewarded. To enter the room where these admirable instruments are kept, suggests the idea of going into a Brobdingnag watch-factory. Round the place are ranged shelves, on which the large watches are placed, all ticking in the most distinct and formidable way one against another. When they first arrive, in January, they are left to the ordinary atmospheric temperature for some months. Their rates being taken under these circumstances, a large stove in the center of the apartment is lighted, and heat got up to a sort of artificial East India or Gold Coast point. Tried under these influences, they are placed in an iron tray over the stove, like so many watch-pies in a baker's dish, and the fire being encouraged, they are literally kept baking, to see how their metal will stand that style of treatment. While thus hot, their rates are once more taken; and then, after this fiery ordeal, such of them as their owners like to trust to an opposite test, are put into freezing mixtures! Yet, so beautifully made are these triumphs of human ingenuity--so well is their mechanism 'corrected' for compensating the expansion caused by the heat, and the contraction induced by the cold--that an even rate of going is established, so nearly, that its variation under opposite circumstances becomes a matter of close and certain estimate.

The rates of chronometers on trial for purchase by the Board of Admirality, at the Observatory, are posted up and printed in an official form. Upon looking to the document for last year, we find a statement of their performances during six months of 1849, with memoranda of the exact weeks during which the chronometers were exposed to the open air at a north window; the weeks the Chronometer-room was heated by a stove, the chronometers being dispersed on the surrounding shelves; and the weeks during which they were placed in the tray above the stove. The rate given during the first week of trial is in every case omitted; like newly entered schoolboys their early vagaries are not taken into account; but after that, every merit and every fault is watched with jealous care, and, when the day of judgment comes, the order of the arrangement of the chronometers in the list is determined solely by consideration of their irregularities of rate as expressed in the columns, "Difference between greatest and least," and, "Greatest difference between one week and the next."

The Royal Observatory, according to a superstition not wholly extinct, is the head-quarters, not only of Astronomy, but of Astrology. The structure is awfully regarded, by a small section of the community which ignorance has still left among us, as a manufactory of horoscopes, and a repository for magic mirrors and divining-rods. Not long ago a well-dressed woman called at the Observatory gate to request a hint as to the means of recovering a lost sum of money; and recently, somebody at Brighton dispatched the liberal sum of five shillings in a post-office order to the same place, with a request to have his nativity cast in return! Another, only last year, wrote as follows: "I have been informed that there are persons at the Observatory who will, by my inclosing a remittance and the hour of my birth, give me to understand _who is to be my wife_? An early answer, stating all particulars, will oblige," &c.

This sketch descriptive of its real duties and uses are not necessary to relieve the Greenwich Observatory from the charge of being an abode of sorcerers and astrologers. A few only of the most ignorant can yet entertain such notions of its character; but they are not wholly unfounded. Magicians, whose symbols are the Arabic numerals, and whose _arcana_ are mathematical computations, daily foretell events in that building with unerring certainty. They pre-discover the future of the stars down to their minutest evolution and eccentricity. From data furnished from the Royal Observatory, is compiled an extraordinary prophetic Almanack from which all other almanacks are copied. It foretells to a second when and where each of the planets may be seen in the heavens at any minute for the next three years. The current number of the Nautical Almanack is for the Year of Grace 1853.

In this quiet sanctuary, then, the winds are made to register their own course and force, and the rain to gauge its own quantity as it falls; the planets are watched to help the mariner to steer more safely over the seas; and the heavens themselves are investigated for materials from which their future as well as their past history may be written.

RAPID GROWTH OF AMERICA.

Every one who visits America has something to say of the rapidity with which towns spring up in the West. Sir Charles Lyell, however, mentions some facts which remind us very forcibly how close to our own times was the settlement of the first English colony upon the continent. At Plymouth he sees the tombs of the first pilgrims, who came out in the Mayflower. Some of the houses which they built of brick brought from Holland, are still remaining, with their low rooms and paneled walls. In some private houses he saw many venerated heir-looms, kept as relics of the first settlers; among others, an antique chair of carved wood, which came over in the Mayflower, and which still retains the marks of the staples which fixed it to the floor of the cabin. He also saw a chest, or cabinet, which had belonged to Peregrine White, the first child born in the colony. Part of the rock upon which the pilgrim fathers landed has been removed to the centre of the town, and, with the names of forty-two of their number inscribed upon it, inclosed within an iron railing. This is the American _Roll of Battle Abbey_. But to return to Peregrine White, the first child born in the colony: Colonel Perkins, the munificent founder of the asylum for the blind, where we found our friend Laura Bridgman, informed Sir Charles Lyell, in 1846, "that there was but one link wanting in the chain of personal communication between himself and Peregrine White." White was known to a man of the name of Cobb, whom Colonel Perkins visited, in 1807, with some friends, who still survive. This Cobb remembered when there were many Indians near Plymouth; the inhabitants of the town frequently firing a cannon to frighten them, to which cannon the Indians gave the name of "Old Speakum." So that, in this case, one link is sufficient to connect men now alive with the first whites born in New England, and with the time when Indians were in the neighborhood of the first town that was settled.

As a pendant to this, we may mention something connected with the originals of that other continent which our race is peopling at the antipodes. A few weeks ago, we were dining at the table of a naval officer, well known in the scientific and literary world, upon which occasion he mentioned, that being off the infant town of Sydney, in New South Wales, in the year 1806, he ate some of the first home-bred bullock which was killed in the colony. The son of the first governor having just returned from the colony, which he had now made his home, happening to be of our party, added, that "since that time their progress had been so rapid, that this year they were to melt down two million sheep for their tallow."

There are three events in the history of the world which will bear comparison with this rapid extension of the English race. The first--and this has always appeared to us to be the most striking occurrence in history--is the marvelous manner in which a handful of Greeks, under Alexander and his successors, overran and held for a long period the whole of the East. The wonder is increased when we consider the difficulty of maintaining communications in that part of the world. They, in a great measure, changed the language and ideas of the East. The Gospel was written in Greek; and the law of Moses, the writings of the Hebrew prophets, were translated into Greek on the banks of the Nile. A Greek kingdom was ever able to maintain itself for a long period of time on the very confines of Tartary; and specimens of the Graeco-Bactrian coinage are even to this day abundant in that part of the world. All this, however, passed away, and has not left any very obvious traces on the present state of things. The second event was the establishment of the Roman empire. Strongly as we are disposed to maintain that, on a general view of human affairs, every thing happens for the best, yet we may say of the Roman empire that it was in many respects a giant evil. No man of great original genius ever spoke the Roman language; in the sense in which many Greeks, and among ourselves Bacon, Shakspeare, and Newton, were men of original genius. There was a time when there were men of spirit and ability in every Greek city: there was a time when the Roman empire governed the world and there was not one great man from Britain to the Euphrates. Having fulfilled its destiny--which seems to have been the introduction into the Western World of the ideas of unity, law, and order, though unintentionally on its part, for it was nothing but a military despotism--it perished as it deserved, and its language is now nowhere spoken.

The third event was the irruption of the Barbarians. That a higher civilization followed this every body knows; but how many centuries did it take to civilize the Barbarians?

Now these, the three great events of past history, are all dwarfed very much when compared with what we are now, doing. We are sending out every year, literally, hundreds of thousands of civilized men to people two continents in opposite hemispheres, and on opposite sides of the globe. In North America there are already twenty millions of our race. This population doubles every twenty-two years. Australia will inevitably become "the Queen of the South." Now that literature has given permanency to language, no other tongue than ours will ever be spoken upon these continents. We can see no limit to the spread of our laws, literature, and language. Greek and Roman greatness are really, in comparison, nothing to this. And, compared with the millions of civilized men which we have sent and are sending to occupy so large a portion of the earth's surface, how insignificant becomes the irruption of some savage, or half-savage hordes, into Italy, France, Spain, and England!

At a time when civilization is at a standstill, if not retrograding, upon the continent of Europe, it is very delightful, particularly to an Englishman, to have such a picture to contemplate.--_Frazer's Magazine._

[From the London Times.]

LORD COKE AND LORD BACON.