an injurious effect upon character, especially in the case of the
women. The young wife, not being called upon to exercise herself in
domestic economy, is apt to become idle, slovenly, and--in a certain
sense--worthless. The softening associations and influences, and even
the endearments, of "home," are lost. There is no _domesticity_.

In the evening of the 17th I went to the Broadway Tabernacle, to hear a
lecture on Astronomy from Professor Mitchell of Cincinnati, no ordinary
man. Although the admission fee was half-a-dollar, upwards of a
thousand persons were present. Without either diagrams or notes, the
accomplished lecturer kept his audience in breathless attention for
upwards of an hour. He seemed to be a devout, unassuming man, and threw
a flood of light on every subject he touched. His theme was the recent
discovery of the Leverrier planet; and perhaps you will not be
displeased if I give you a summary of his lucid observations. In
observing how the fluctuations of the planet Herschel had ultimately
led to this discovery, he said:

"For a long time no mind dared to touch the problem. At length a young
astronomer rises, unknown to fame, but with a mind capable of grasping
all the difficulties involved in any of these questions. I refer of
course to LEVERRIER. He began by taking up the movements of Mercury. He
was dissatisfied with the old computations and the old tables; and he
ventured to begin anew, and to compute an entirely new set of tables.
With these new tables, he predicted the _precise instant_ when the
planet Mercury, on the 18th of May, 1845, would touch the sun, and
sweep across it. The time rolls round when the planet is to be seen,
and his prediction verified or confuted. The day arrives, but, alas!
for the computer, the clouds let down their dark curtains, and veil the
sun from his sight. Our own Observatory had just been finished; and if