Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/38

 2 4 HISTORY OF THE [1820-30 was found upon examination to have been altered so as to be out of form, and a new one having been supplied by the liberality of one of the Curators of the Observatory, William Gray, Esq., it has been remounted in a new tube provided with eye-pieces, and the instrument has thus been rendered very perfect. The portable transit by Jones has disappeared, and we see that the equatorial was replaced in 1857 : but the sidereal clock by Barraud is still in the Observatory and keeps fair time, as the present observer kindly informs me. He adds that Dr. Pearson also presented the conical roof of the Observatory, which had served as the roof of a summer-house in his rectory garden at South Kilworth, and was constructed under the direction of the celebrated Smeaton. It may perhaps be added that there had been an Observatory in York before that due to Dr. Pearson's stimulus, viz., that of Edward Pigott, who gave its longitude (from occulta- tions) to Maskelyne in 1787 (4 m 25 s W.). It was from this Obser- vatory that Goodricke observed Algol and 8 Cephei in 1782 ; and Goodricke's papers are still preserved in (Dr.Pearson's)Observatory. The school at East Sheen started by Dr. Pearson did not by any means close when he went to South Kilworth. Our Fellow, Admiral Sir H. Purey-Cust, was a scholar 1866-70, and has kindly supplied some picturesque details about it, partly from the Temple Grove Register (by H. W. Waterfield, 1905). Temple Grove, formerly called Sheen Grove, was built in 1610. It has been generally supposed that Sir William Temple lived there, and that with him, as secretary, lived Jonathan Swift, better known as Dean Swift. Here Swift became acquainted with the beautiful and accomplished Stella, born at this place and the daughter of Sir William Temple's steward. (The same claim is, however, made for Moor Park, another residence of Sir William Temple.) " The property descended to the first Lord Palmerston, who subsequently sold it to Sir John Barnard. In or about 1810 it was bought by Dr. William Pearson, who came from Parson's Green and apparently brought a school with him. On part of the estate he built the Observatory, where an inscription round the central pillar runs as follows : To the memory of the Right Hon. Spencer Perceval, who was cruelly murdered on the nth of May 1812, on which day this edifice was also founded, the subjacent pillar is dedicated by his grateful friend W. Pearson." Both Dr. Pearson (headmaster, 1810-17) and Dr. Pinckney (headmaster, 1817-1835) lived in the Observatory after retiring from the headmaster ship. There is a tradition that Benjamin Disraeli was at the school, based on a passage in Coningsby describing how the hero was sent to a " fashionable school " (cp. the extract from the Council