ve minutes before one o'clock,
the black ball five feet across and stuffed with cork, is raised halfway
up its shaft above the eastern turret of the observatory--at
two-and-a-half minutes before that hour, it rises to the top. Telescopes
from many a point, both up and down the river, are now pointed to this
dark spot above the Greenwich trees, and many an anxious mariner has his
time-pieces beside him, that their indications may be made true. Watch
the ball as you stand in the Park. It is now just raised. You must wait
two minutes and a half, and as you do so, you feel what a minute may be.
It seems a long, palpable, appreciable time, indeed. In the turret
below, stands a clock telling the true time, gained by a laborious
watching of the _clock-stars_; and beside the clock, is a man with a
practiced hand upon a trigger, and a practiced eye upon the face of the
dial. One minute--two minutes pass. Thirty seconds more, and the trigger
has released the Ball. As it leaves the top of the shaft, it is one
o'clock to the tenth of a second By the time it has reached the bottom
it is some five seconds later.

Leaving the Ball Turret, and the old building which it surmounts, the
new Observatory, where the chief work of the establishment is done,
claims our notice. This attention would scarcely be given to its outward
appearance for it is a long, low building, scarcely seen beyond its own
boundaries. The Greenwich Observatory is not a _show_ place, but an
eminently practical establishment. St. Petersburg and other cities have
much more gorgeous buildings devoted to astronomical purposes, and
Russia and other countries spend much more money on astronomy than
England does, yet the Greenwich Tables have a world-wide reputation, and
some of them are used as the groundwork for calculations in all
Observatories at home and abroad. The astronomer does not want marble
halls or grand saloons for his work. Galileo used a bell-tower at
Venice, and Kepler stood on the bridge at Prague to watch the stars. The
men, not the buildings, do the work. No disappointment, need be felt,
then, to find the modern Observatory a range of unadorned buildings
running east and west, with slits in the roof and in some of the walls.
Within these simple buildings are the instruments now used, displaying
almost the perfection of mechanical skill in their construction and
finish--beautifully adapted to the object they have to fulfill, and in
perfect order. They are