great change, but glad to receive any small assistance.  South, who had been keeping up a series of attacks on Young, wrote to me to enquire how I stood in engagements of assistance to Young:  I replied that I should assist Young whenever he asked me, and that I disapproved of South’s course.—­The date of the first visitation of the (Cambridge) Observatory must have been near May 11th:  I invited South and Baily to my house; South and I were very near quarrelling about the treatment of Young.—­In a few days after Dr Young died:  I applied to Lord Melville for the superintendence of the Nautical Almanac:  Mr Croker replied that it devolved legally upon the Astronomer Royal, and on May 30th Pond wrote to ask my assistance when I could give any.  On June 6th I was invited to the Greenwich Visitation, to which I believe I went on the 10th.

“I had long desired to see Switzerland, and I wished now to see some of the Continental Observatories.  I was therefore glad to arrange with Mr Lodge, of Magdalene College (perhaps 10 years senior to myself), to make a little tour.  Capt.  W.H.  Smyth and others gave me introductions.  I met Lodge in London, and we started for Calais on July 27th 1829.  We visited a number of towns in Belgium (at Brussels I saw the beginning of the Observatory with Quetelet), and passed by Cologne, Frankfort, Fribourg, and Basle to Zurich.  Thus far we had travelled by diligence or posting:  we now procured a guide, and travelled generally on foot.  From the 13th to the 31st August we travelled diligently through the well-known mountainous parts of Switzerland and arrived at Geneva on the 31st August.  Here I saw M. Gautier, M. Gambard, and the beginning of the Observatory.  Mr Lodge was now compelled to return to Cambridge, and I proceeded alone by Chambery to Turin, where I made the acquaintance of M. Plana and saw the Observatory.  I then made a tour through north Italy, looking over the Observatories at Milan, Padua, Bologna, and Florence.  At Leghorn I took a passage for Marseille in a xebeque, but after sailing for three days the weather proved very unfavourable, and I landed at Spezia and proceeded by Genoa and the Cornici Road to Marseille.  At Marseille I saw M. Gambart and the Observatory, and passed by Avignon, Lyons, and Nevers to Orleans, where I visited my old host M. Legarde.  Thence by Paris, Beauvais, and Calais to London and Cambridge, where I arrived on the 30th October.  I had started with more than L140 and returned with 2s. 6d.  The expedition was in many ways invaluable to me.

“On my return I found various letters from scientific men:  some approving of my method for the mass of the Moon:  some approving highly of my printed observations, especially D. Gilbert, who informed me that they had produced good effect (I believe at Greenwich), and Herschel.—­On Nov. 13th I gave the Royal Astronomical Society a Paper about deducing the mass of the Moon from observations of Venus:  on Nov.