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The work of each was happily directed so as to supplement that of the other. With less perfect appliances, the Roman astronomer sought to render his extensive rather than precise; at Tulse Hill searching accuracy over a narrow range was aimed at and attained. To Father Secchi is due the merit of having executed the first spectroscopic survey of the heavens.
"Then the Italian woman put up a petition, not one word of which I could understand, but the gestures and the pointing showed that she begged to go on and enter the monastery and see the observatory. Father Secchi said, 'No, the Holy Father gave permission to one only, and alone I entered the monastery walls.
The two were of immense size, and very much alike, and bore the marks of a violent death; their age was determined to be about twenty-six years. When I entered the room, Father Secchi was examining the marks of martyrdom on them. Their throats had been cut with great violence, and the neck vertebræ were injured on the inside. The pomum Adami had been broken, or was not there; I forget which.
Now it appears under high light as a whitish spot, in the centre of which, as the rays begin to fall obliquely, a pit, scarcely two miles across, emerges into view. The crateral character of this comparatively minute depression was detected by Father Secchi, February 11, 1867. This is not all.
The constellations alone were visible, and it must be acknowledged that no astronomers, neither Faye, Chacornac, nor the Secchi, had ever been in such favourable conditions to observe them. In fact, nothing could equal the splendour of this starry world, bathed in limpid ether. Diamonds set in the celestial vault threw out superb flames.
Mounts Doerfel and Leibnitz formed two separate groups stretching nearly to the South Pole; the former group extends from the Pole to the 84th parallel on the eastern part of the orb; the second, starting from the eastern border, stretches from the 65th degree of latitude to the Pole. On their capriciously-formed ridge appeared dazzling sheets of light like those signalised by Father Secchi.
The results of his studies were made known in four remarkable letters, addressed, before the close of the year 1866, to Father Secchi, and published in the Bulletino of the Roman Observatory.
The tower which once served as a belfry may possibly be still of use to some Father Secchi to "tick Venus off in transit"; only never bring bell again to the partial-ruin, To damage him aloft, brain us below, When new vibrations bury both in brick. For which sane word, if not for all the pages of his poem, we may feel gratefully towards the writer. It is the word of Browning the moralist.
At a distance, and quite apart from the chromosphere, prominences have been perceived, both by Secchi and Young, to form, just as clouds form in a clear sky, condensation being replaced by ignition. Filaments were then thrown out downward towards the chromosphere, and finally the usual appearance of a "stemmed prominence" was assumed.
All observation of the lunar disc was impossible. The constellations alone claimed all their attention; and we must allow that the astronomers Faye, Charconac, and Secchi, never found themselves in circumstances so favorable for their observation. Indeed, nothing could equal the splendor of this starry world, bathed in limpid ether. Its diamonds set in the heavenly vault sparkled magnificently.
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