fference
on his part, even the usual delays of office, would have prevented the
application from reaching the king before the expiration of the
twelvemonth within which all claims must, by the regulations, be
presented. No one can reflect upon the pressure of business which must
have existed in the foreign office at Copenhagen during the past year,
without feeling that the Count de Knuth must largely share his
sovereign's zeal for science, as well as his love of justice. Nothing
else will account for the attention bestowed at such a political crisis
on an affair of this kind. The same attention appears to have been given
to the subject by his successor, Count Moltka.

It was quite fortunate for the success of the application that the
office of charge d'affaires of the United States at Copenhagen happened
to be filled by a gentleman disposed to give it his prompt and
persevering support. A matter of this kind, of course, lay without the
province of his official duties. But no subject officially committed to
him by the instructions of his government could have been more zealously
pursued. On the very day on which my communication of the 8th of August
reached him, Mr. Fleniken addressed his letters to the minister of
foreign affairs and to the king, and he continued to give his attention
to the subject till the object was happily effected, and the medal
placed in his hands.

The event itself, however insignificant in the great world of politics
and business, is one of pleasing interest to the friends of American
science, and it has been thought proper that the following record of it
should be preserved in a permanent form. I have regretted the frequent
recurrence of my own name in the correspondence, and have suppressed
several letters of my own which could be spared, without rendering less
intelligible the communications of the other parties, to whom the
interest and merit of the transaction belong.

EDWARD EVERETT.

CAMBRIDGE, 1st February, 1849.

CORRESPONDENCE

HON. WILLIAM MITCHELL TO WILLIAM C. BOND, ESQ., CAMBRIDGE.

"Nantucket, 10 mo. 3d, 1847.

"MY DEAR FRIEND: I write now merely to say that Maria discovered a
telescopic comet at half-past ten on the evening of the first instant,
at that hour nearly vertical above Polaris five degrees. Last evening it
had advanced westwardly; this evening still further, and nearing the
pole. It does not bear illumination, but Maria has obtained its right
ascensi