wn
observatory. Not long after the suppression we find Monsignor Filippo
Luigi Gilii placed in charge of the reorganized Roman Observatory by
Cardinal Zelada, who had been appointed Vatican Librarian in 1780, and
who found the old Gregorian tower available as a centre of
astronomical observation and investigation of which Rome had been
deprived since the suppression of the Roman College. After the
restoration of the Jesuits early in the nineteenth century, the Roman
College was opened once more and distinguished Jesuits, some of them
with world-wide reputations, did their work there. With the occupation
of Rome by the Italian government in 1870 the Jesuits were banished,
the Roman College with its observatory was once more deprived of the
learned expert direction of the Fathers of the Order, and once more
efforts were made for the re-establishment of a Vatican observatory
which is now in existence and under the direction of a Jesuit.

Another of the distinguished scientists of the eighteenth century who
taught for a time at Rome was Father Beccaria, whose name is well
known in the history of electricity. When not yet forty years of age
he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, always a much
envied distinction, and as a consequence of his election some of his
important papers relating to electricity and various astronomical
subjects were sent to the Royal Society {480} and published by them.
While no great discovery in physical science is attached to his name,
few men did as much as he to awaken enthusiasm and experimental
investigation into science in his time. He was one of the pioneers of
the great scientific movement of the nineteenth century. Priestley
called him one of the most eminent of all the workers in electricity
on the Continent, and Professor Chrystal, in his article on
electricity, in the Encyclopedia Britannica (ninth edition), gives him
an important place. He had been trained to be a professor of
experimental physics for his Order, and at this time every one of the
teaching orders with colleges at Rome had distinguished men among
their faculties.

The well-known astronomer, Father Piazzi, whose discovery of Ceres,
the first of the planetoids found in the space between Mars and
Jupiter, caused great excitement among astronomers, and whose
subsequent work in astronomy brought him membership in many of the
scientific academies of Europe, had been for some time a student and a
teacher in Rom