and well proportioned; his great head is covered with white hair, his features are regular and handsome. When he is introduced to any one he thrusts both hands into the pockets of his pantaloons, and bows"; and he told her that it was not necessary for her to present her letters—he knew her without.
With the Airys she went to Cambridge and visited Whewell, of whom—"An Englishman is proud, a Cambridge man is the proudest of Englishmen, and Dr. Whewell the proudest of Cambridge men." He was very severe, even to discourtesy, on Americans, and imperious in manner; and escorted Miss Mitchell to church wearing "a long gown reaching nearly to his feet, of rich scarlet, and adorned with flowing ribbons," which did not match the robe but were nearly crimson. At Cambridge she met Mr. Adams, the English calculator of the place of Neptune, and Prof. Sedgwick, then an old man of seventy-four. She was cordially entertained by Sir John and Lady Herschel; visited Le Verrier at his home in Paris; and at Rome was called upon by Father Secchi, and was admitted to the observatory where Mrs. Somerville and the daughter of Sir John Herschel had been refused; that observatory for which the Papal Government furnishes nice machinery to keep the telescope accurately up with the motion of the earth on its axis; "the same motion for declaring whose existence Galileo suffered; the two hundred years have done their work." At Florence she called on Mrs. Somerville, who, though seventy-seven years old, looked twenty years younger and came tripping into the room, speaking at once with all the vivacity of a young person, was interested in every new improvement, as much at home in the drawing room as in science, and asked many questions in regard to the progress of science in America. At Berlin she saw Humboldt, who was much obliged to her for calling to see him, talked intelligently to her about current affairs in the United States, told her the latest news from home, and showed her Clinton, N. Y., on the map when she did not know where it was.
A few months after the death of Mrs. Mitchell, in 1861, the family removed to Lynn, Mass., where Miss Mitchell had bought property, to which she transferred her observatory, and where she remained until she was called, in 1865, to be Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Observatory at Vassar College. This involved a change of occupation, and one that would, to a certain extent, divert her attention from what had been her lifework of observing. "But she was so much interested in the movement for the higher education of women, an interest which deepened as her work went on, that she gave up in a measure her scientific life, and threw herself heart and soul into this work." She further, in the course of time, gave up her work on the Nau-
