nce, directed his inclination and his
father's choice towards a mercantile career. In his fifteenth year,
accordingly, he entered the house of Kuhlenkamp and Sons, in Bremen, as
an apprenticed clerk. He was now thrown completely upon his own
resources. From his father, a struggling Government official, heavily
weighted with a large family, he was well aware that he had nothing to
expect; his dormant faculties were roused by the necessity for
self-dependence, and he set himself to push manfully forward along the
path that lay before him. The post of supercargo on one of the trading
expeditions sent out from the Hanseatic towns to China and the East
Indies was the aim of his boyish ambition, for the attainment of which
he sought to qualify himself by the industrious acquisition of suitable
and useful knowledge. He learned English in two or three months; picked
up Spanish with the casual aid of a gunsmith's apprentice; studied the
geography of the distant lands which he hoped to visit; collected
information as to their climates, inhabitants, products, and the courses
of trade. He desired to add some acquaintance with the art (then much
neglected) of taking observations at sea; and thus, led on from
navigation to astronomy, and from astronomy to mathematics, he groped
his way into a new world.

It was characteristic of him that the practical problems of science
should have attracted him before his mind was as yet sufficiently
matured to feel the charm of its abstract beauties. His first attempt at
observation was made with a sextant, rudely constructed under his own
directions, and a common clock. Its object was the determination of the
longitude of Bremen, and its success, he tells us himself,[60] filled
him with a rapture of delight, which, by confirming his tastes, decided
his destiny. He now eagerly studied Bode's _Jahrbuch_ and Von Zach's
_Monatliche Correspondenz_, overcoming each difficulty as it arose with
the aid of Lalande's _Traite d'Astronomie_, and supplying, with amazing
rapidity, his early deficiency in mathematical training. In two years he
was able to attack a problem which would have tasked the patience, if
not the skill, of the most experienced astronomer. Amongst the Earl of
Egremont's papers Von Zach had discovered Harriot's observations on
Halley's comet at its appearance in 1607, and published them as a
supplement to Bode's Annual. With an elaborate care inspired by his
youthful ardour, though hardly