diameter. Each of these thirty
parts was again divided into four equal portions, making in all one
hundred and twenty; and these, if necessary, may be more minutely
subdivided. The rest I left to ocular computation, which, in such small
sections, is quite as certain as any mechanical division. Suppose,
then, each of these thirty parts to be divided into sixty seconds,
according to the practice of astronomers. When the time of the
observation approached, I retired to my apartment, and, having closed
the windows against the light, I directed my telescope--previously
adjusted to a focus--through the aperture towards the Sun, and received
his rays at right angles upon the paper already mentioned. The Sun's
image exactly filled the circle, and I watched carefully and unceasingly
for any dark body that might enter upon the disc of light.

'Although the corrected computation of Venus' motions which I had before
prepared, and on the accuracy of which I implicitly relied, forbade me
to expect anything before three o'clock in the afternoon of the 24th,
yet since, according to the calculations of most astronomers, the
conjunction should take place sooner--by some even on the 23rd--I was
unwilling to depend entirely on my own opinion, which was not
sufficiently confirmed, lest by too much self-confidence I might
endanger the observation. Anxiously intent, therefore, on the
undertaking through the greater part of the 23rd, and on the whole of
the 24th, I omitted no available opportunity of observing her ingress. I
watched carefully on the 24th from sunrise to nine o'clock, and from a
little before ten until noon, and at one in the afternoon, being called
away in the intervals by business of the highest importance, which for
these ornamental pursuits I could not with propriety neglect.[3] But
during all this time I saw nothing in the Sun except a small and common
spot, consisting as it were of three points at a distance from the
centre towards the left, which I noticed on the preceding and following
days. This evidently had nothing to do with Venus. About fifteen minutes
past three in the afternoon, when I was again at liberty to continue my
labours, the clouds, as if by divine interposition, were entirely
dispersed, and I was once more invited to the grateful task of repeating
my observations. I then beheld a most agreeable spectacle--the object of
my sanguine wishes; a spot of unusual magnitude and of a perfectly
circular shape, w