o him," said Mr. Adams,
"the establishment of an Astronomical Observatory, with a salary for an
astronomer and assistant, for nightly observations and periodical
publications; annual courses of lectures upon the natural, moral, and
political sciences. Above all, no jobbing, no sinecure, no monkish
stalls for lazy idlers. I urged the deep responsibility of the nation to
the world and to all posterity worthily to fulfil the great object of
the testator. I only lamented my inability to communicate half the
solicitude with which my heart is on this subject full, and the
sluggishness with which I failed properly to pursue it." "Mr. Van
Buren," Mr. Adams added, "received all this with complacency and
apparent concurrence of opinion, seemed favorably disposed to my views
and willing to do right, and asked me to name any person whom I thought
might be usefully consulted."

The phenomena of the heavens were constantly observed and often recorded
by Mr. Adams. Thus, on the 3d of October, 1838, he writes: "As the clock
struck five this morning, I saw the planets Venus and Mercury in
conjunction, Mercury being about two thirds of a sun's disk below and
northward of Venus. Three quarters of an hour later Mercury was barely
perceptible, and five minutes after could not be traced by my naked eye,
Venus being for ten minutes longer visible. I ascertained, therefore,
that, in the clear sky of this latitude, Mercury, at his greatest
elongation from the sun, may be seen by a very imperfect naked eye, in
the morning twilight, for the space of one hour. I observed, also, the
rapidity of his movements, by the diminished distance between these
planets since the day before yesterday."

In the following November he again writes: "To make observations on the
movements of the heavenly bodies has been, for a great portion of my
life, a pleasure of gratified curiosity, of ever-returning wonder, and
of reverence for the great Creator and Mover of these innumerable
worlds. There is something of awful enjoyment in observing the rising
and the setting of the sun. That flashing beam of his first appearing
upon the horizon; that sinking of the last ray beneath it; that
perpetual revolution of the Great and Little Bear around the pole; that
rising of the whole constellation of Orion from the horizon to the
perpendicular position, and his ride through the heavens with his belt,
his nebulous sword, and his four corner stars of the first magnitude,
are sou