of the Heavens, the grandest discoverer of the stars, that has ever
lived. Astronomy gave her a long career; she discovered no less than
seven comets herself, and her patient labors preserved her to the age of
ninety-eight.--And Mrs. Somerville, to whom we owe the English
translation of Laplace's Mecanique celeste, of whom Humboldt said, "In
pure mathematics, Mrs. Somerville is absolutely superior." Like Caroline
Herschel, she was almost a centenarian, appearing always much younger
than her years: she died at Naples, in 1872, at the age of
ninety-two.--So, too, the Russian Sophie Kovalevsky, descendant of
Mathias Corvinus, King of Hungary, who, an accomplished mathematician at
sixteen, married at eighteen, in order to follow the curriculum at the
University (then forbidden to unmarried women); arranging with her young
husband to live as brother and sister until their studies should be
completed. In 1888 the Prix Bordin of the Institut was conferred on
her.--And Maria Mitchell of the United States, for whom Le Verrier gave
a _fete_ at the Observatory of Paris, and who was exceptionally
authorized by Pope Pius IX to visit the Observatory of the Roman
College, at that time an ecclesiastical establishment, closed to
women.--And Madame Scarpellini, the Roman astronomer, renowned for her
works on shooting stars, whom the author had the honor of visiting, in
company with Father Secchi, Director of the Observatory mentioned above.

At the present time, Astronomy is proud to reckon among its most famous
workers Miss Agnes Clerke, the learned Irishwoman, to whom we owe,
_inter alia_, an excellent History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth
Century;--Mrs. Isaac Roberts, who, under the familiar name of Miss
Klumpke, sat on the Council of the Astronomical Society of France, and
is D. Sc. of the Faculty of Paris and head of the Bureau for measuring
star photographs at the Observatory of Paris (an American who became
English by her marriage with the astronomer Roberts, but is not
forgotten in France);--Mrs. Fleming, one of the astronomers of the
Observatory at Harvard College, U.S.A., to whom we owe the discovery of
a great number of variable stars by the examination of photographic
records, and by spectral photography;--Lady Huggins, who in England is
the learned collaborator of her illustrious husband;--and many others.

* * * * *

The following chapters, which aim at summing up the essentials of
Astronom