merited by their loose nature, Bessel
deduced from them an orbit for that celebrated body, and presented the
work to Olbers, whose reputation in cometary researches gave a special
fitness to the proffered homage. The benevolent physician-astronomer of
Bremen welcomed with surprised delight such a performance emanating from
such a source. Fifteen years previously, the French Academy had crowned
a similar work; now its equal was produced by a youth of twenty, busily
engaged in commercial pursuits, self-taught, and obliged to snatch from
sleep the hours devoted to study. The paper was immediately sent to Von
Zach for publication, with a note from Olbers explaining the
circumstances of its author; and the name of Bessel became the common
property of learned Europe.

He had, however, as yet no intention of adopting astronomy as his
profession. For two years he continued to work in the counting-house by
day, and to pore over the _Mecanique Celeste_ and the Differential
Calculus by night. But the post of assistant in Schroeter's observatory
at Lilienthal having become vacant by the removal of Harding to
Gottingen in 1805, Olbers procured for him the offer of it. It was not
without a struggle that he resolved to exchange the desk for the
telescope. His reputation with his employers was of the highest; he had
thoroughly mastered the details of the business, which his keen
practical intelligence followed with lively interest; his years of
apprenticeship were on the point of expiring, and an immediate, and not
unwelcome prospect of comparative affluence lay before him. The love of
science, however, prevailed; he chose poverty and the stars, and went to
Lilienthal with a salary of a hundred thalers yearly. Looking back over
his life's work, Olbers long afterwards declared that the greatest
service which he had rendered to astronomy was that of having discerned,
directed, and promoted the genius of Bessel.[61]

For four years he continued in Schroeter's employment. At the end of that
time the Prussian Government chose him to superintend the erection of a
new observatory at Koenigsberg, which after many vexatious delays, caused
by the prostrate condition of the country, was finished towards the end
of 1813. Koenigsberg was the first really efficient German observatory.
It became, moreover, a centre of improvement, not for Germany alone, but
for the whole astronomical world. During two-and-thirty years it was the
scene of Bessel's la