ce is cut off, will they
starve? It is an illustration of moral power that, little island as that
of Great Britain is, its power is the great power of the world.

"Crowded as the people are, they are healthy. I never saw, I thought, so
many ruddy faces as met me at once in Liverpool. Dirty children in the
street have red cheeks and good teeth. Nowhere did I see little children
whose minds had outgrown their bodies. They do not live in the
school-room, but in the streets. One continually meets little children
carrying smaller ones in their arms; little girls hand in hand walk the
streets of London all day. There are no free schools, and they have
nothing to do. Beggars are everywhere, and as importunate as in Italy.
For a well-behaved common people I should go to Paris; for clean
working-women I should look in Paris.

"I saw a little boy in England tormenting a smaller one. He spat upon
his cap, and then declared that the little one did it. The little one
sobbed and said he didn't. I gave the little one a penny; he evidently
did not know the value of the coin, and appealed to the bigger boy. 'Is
it a penny?' he asked, with a look of amazement. 'Yes,' said the bigger.
Off ran the smaller one triumphant, and the bigger began to cry, which I
permitted him to do."

CHAPTER VII

1857-1858

FIRST EUROPEAN TOUR CONTINUED--LEVERRIER AND THE PARIS
OBSERVATORY--ROME--HARRIET HOSMER--OBSERVATORY OF THE COLLEGIO
ROMANO--SECCHI

At this time, the feeling between astronomers of Great Britain and those
of the United States was not very cordial. It was the time when Adams
and Leverrier were contending to which of them belonged the honor of the
discovery of the planet Neptune, and each side had its strong partisans.

Among Miss Mitchell's papers we find the following with reference to
this subject:

"... Adams, a graduate of Cambridge, made the calculations which showed
how an unseen body must exist whose influences were felt by Uranus. It
was a problem of great difficulty, for he had some half-dozen quantities
touching Uranus which were not accurately known, and as many wholly
unknown concerning the unseen planet. We think it a difficult question
which involves three or four unknown quantities with too few
circumstances, but this problem involved twelve or thirteen, so that x,
y, z reached pretty high up into the alphabet. But Adams, having worked
the problem, carried his work to Airy, the Astronomer Royal of England,