Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/338

332 courses of lectures upon the natural, moral and political sciences. Above all no jobbing, no sinecure, no monkish stalls for lazy idlers."

Adams improved every opportunity for furthering his plan. In October, 1838, he wrote a long letter to the secretary of state ardently advocating the erection of an observatory from the Smithson fund. He estimated that for the founding of the institution two hundred and ten thousand dollars would be necessary. This he shortly raised to three hundred thousand dollars. In January, 1839, he presented his views on the subject in a resolution which he reported to the house. In 1839 he obtained from Rev. George B. Airy, the astronomer royal of Great Britain, a detailed statement respecting the expenditures of the Greenwich observatory. In each of the years 1839, 1840, 1842 and 1844, as the chairman of the committee of the house on the Smithson fund, he introduced a bill providing for an astronomical observatory. In the report which accompanied the bill of 1840, Adams, with a display of much learning, and some rhetoric, briefly recounted the history of astronomy, beginning with the first chapter of Genesis and ending with the founding of the observatory of Pulkowa near St. Petersburg in 1839.

The more ardently Adams advocated his favorite measure the less likelihood it had of meeting the approval of congress. Respecting the proper application of the income arising from the fund, the senate differed from the house. It wished to found one or more schools of learning and to encourage education, and it would not listen to Adams's proposal for a national observatory. On this latter point Adams's democratic opponents in congress were determined not to yield. The law of August 10, 1846, which provided for the application of the income of the Smithson fund, therefore, while it followed the general lines laid down by Adams, contained no provision for an astronomical observatory.

The fourth general movement for a national observatory is that with which the name of Lieutenant James M. Gilliss is connected. The scientific achievements of Gilliss are more remarkable than those of any other officer of our navy. He was wont to attribute his first impulses along scientific lines to a rather insignificant incident in his career. When he first came to Washington on duty as a midshipman, he heard the officers of the navy stigmatized as incompetent to conduct a scientific enterprise. He at once resolved to disprove the charge in his own person. In 1833 he obtained leave to prosecute a course of studies at the University of Virginia. Excessive application soon so impaired his health that he was compelled to give up his work before he had been a year in residence. In 1835 he resumed his studies at Paris and pursued them for six months.

In 1830 the Navy Department established in Washington the