&c., and by increased reputation from the matters in which I was now engaged, the power of thus commanding an increase of income.  I should then have, independent of my Fellowship, some competent income, and a house over my head.  I was quite aware that some time might elapse, but now for the first time I saw my way clearly.  The care of the Observatory had been for two or three years attached to the Plumian Professorship.  A Grace was immediately prepared, entrusting the temporary care of the Observatory to Dr French, to me, Mr Catton, Mr Sheepshanks, and Mr King (afterwards Master of Queens’ College).  On Dec. 6th I have a note from Mr King about going to the Observatory.

“On Dec. 6th my Paper on corrections of the elements of the Solar Tables was presented to the Royal Society.  On Dec. 9th, at 1 h. 4 m. a.m. (Sunday morning), I arrived at the result of my calculations of the new inequality.  I had gone through some fluctuations of feeling.  Usually the important part of an inequality of this kind depends entirely on the eccentricities of the orbits, but it so happened that from the positions of the axes of the orbits, &c., these terms very nearly destroyed each other.  After this came the consideration of inclinations of orbits; and here were sensible terms which were not destroyed.  Finally I arrived at the result that the inequality would be about 3”; just such a magnitude as was required.  I slipped this into Whewell’s door.  This is, to the time of writing (1853), the last improvement of any importance in the Solar Theory.  Some little remaining work went on to Dec. 14th, and then, being thoroughly tired, I laid by the work for revision at some future time.  I however added a Postscript to my Royal Society Paper on Solar Errors, notifying this result.

“On Dec. 19th I went to Bury.  While there I heard from Whewell that Woodhouse was dead.  I returned to Cambridge and immediately made known that I was a candidate for the now vacant Plumian Professorship.  Of miscellaneous scientific business, I find that on Oct. 13th Professor Barlow of Woolwich prepared a memorial to the Board of Longitude concerning his fluid telescope (which I had seen at Woodford), which was considered on Nov. 1st, and I had some correspondence with him in December.  In June and August my Trigonometry was printing.

“On Jan. 5th, 1828, I came from London.  It seems that I had been speculating truly ‘without book’ on perturbations of planetary elements, for on Jan. 17th and 18th I wrote a Paper on a supposed error of Laplace, and just at the end I discovered that he was quite right:  I folded up the Paper and marked it ‘A Lesson.’  I set two papers of questions for Smith’s Prizes (there being a deficiency of one Examiner, viz. the Plumian Professor).