but gained a thorough insight into the general naturc of the businessof his Krm ; and, entering into all his duties with uneoinmondiligenee, rapidly acquired the approbation and confidence of hisemployers; leading him to hope tliat the more responsible Situationof supereargo, in a voyage to the French and Spanish colonies andChina, might be offered to him. To prepare himself for this greatobject of his ambition, he commenced the study of the Freneh andSpatiish languages, and of navigation, taking for his guido in thatbranch the old work of Hamilton Moore. The rules and processesof nautical reckoning delivered in that work as precepts, withouttheir tlieoretical grounds, induced him to seek the latter elsewhere.He procured a populär treatise on astronomy. This directed himin the right course; and, proceeding from book to book, and mas-tering their difficulties as best he might, he found at length aneffectual bar to further progress in his entire unacquaintanee withmathematics. He immediately entered on a course of mathematicalreading, and now we hear no more of commercial projects, or ofthe voyage he had so ardently desired. Every leisure hour (andthey were chieflv in the night) was devoted to astronomical andmathematical reading. Practice was also combined with theory.By the aid of a rüde woodcn sextant, which he got constructed bya carpenter, and a common clock, he began to make observationsfor time ; and great was his joy when the occultation of a consi-derable star by the moon, which he was fortunate enough toobserve, gave him the longitude of Bremen with considerable ap-proximation. The rapidity of his progress from this time was trulyastonishing. Trains of original research and Icarned inquiry openedout before him at an age when the generality of students, underthe most favourable circumstances, hardly advance beyond theelements ofscience. Already in his twentieth year, he had exe-cvited the reduction of Harriott's and Torporley's observations ofthe comet of 1607, which has become so celebrated by the greatdiscovery of its periodical return by Halley. These observationshad been but recently rescued from oblivion by Baron Zach, in hissearch among Harriott's papers, in the possessio!! of the Earl ofEgremont; and, being the first observations of this remarkablebody made with any kind of instrumental aid, their reduction wasan object of undeniable importance. This task Bessel executed inso masterly a manner, as to call forth the wärmest eulogies fromOlbers to whom he communicated them.and to excite the strengestdesire in him to secure for astronomy one whose future eminencein that science he clearly foresaw, and in no sparing or measuredterms predicted. This performance, his first published work, ap-peared in Zach's Monuthliche Correspondcnz, and was imme-diately followed by a theoretical roemoir, of great merit, " On thecalculation of the true anomaly in orbits nearly parabolic." Soexpert had he become in cometic calculations, that Olbers, havingplaced in his hands, on the night of the ist of November, 1805,four observations of the comet of that year, he returned them tohim the next morning, with the elements, whose calculation hadoccupied him only four hours.

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