"I find letters from Dr Robinson and Col. Colby about determining longitudes of certain observatories by fire signals: I proposed chronometers as preferable. Also from Herschel, approving of my second volume of observations: and from F. Baily, disclaiming the origination of the attack on the old Nautical Almanac (with which I suppose I had reproached him). On July 30th I received a summons from South to a committee for improving the Nautical Almanac; and subsequently a letter from Baily about Schumacher's taking offence at a passage of mine in the Cambridge Observations, on the comparative merits of Ephemerides, which I afterwards explained to his satisfaction.
"On Aug. 24th my wife and I started for Edensor, and after a short stay there proceeded by Manchester to Cumberland, where we made many excursions. We returned by Edensor, and reached Cambridge on Oct. 6th, bringing my wife's sister Susanna on a visit. My mother had determined, as soon as my intention of marriage was known to her, to quit the house, although always (even to her death) entertaining the most friendly feelings and fondness for my wife. It was also judged best by us all that my sister should not reside with us as a settled inhabitant of the house. They fixed themselves therefore at Playford in the farm-house of the Luck's Farm, then in the occupation of my uncle Arthur Biddell. On Oct. 21st I have a letter from my sister saying that they were comfortably settled there.
"In this month of October (principally, I believe) I made some capital Experiments on Quartz, which were treated mathematically in a Paper communicated in the next year to the Cambridge Philosophical Society. In some of these my wife assisted me, and also drew pictures.—On Nov. 15th the Grace for paying me £198. 13s. 8d. to make my income up to £500 passed the Senate.—I made three journeys to London to attend committees, one a committee on the Nautical Almanac, and one a Royal Society Committee about two southern observatories.—On Dec. 31st I have a letter from Maclear (medical practitioner and astronomer at Biggleswade) about occultations.—In this December I had a quartz object-glass by Cauchaix mounted by Dollond, and presented it to the Observatory.—In this December occurred the alarm from agrarian fires. There was a very large fire at Coton, about a mile from the Observatory. This created the most extraordinary panic that I ever saw. I do not think it is possible, without having witnessed it, to conceive the state of men's minds. The gownsmen were all armed with bludgeons, and put under a rude discipline for a few days."
1831
"On Jan. 4th I went with my wife, first to Miss Sheepshanks in London, at 30, Woburn Place, and next to the house of my wife's old friend, the Rev. John Courtney, at Sanderstead, near Croydon. I came to London on one day to attend a meeting of the new Board of Visitors of the Greenwich Observatory. Formerly the Board of Visitors consisted of the Council of the Royal Society with persons invited by them (in which capacity I had often attended). But a reforming party, of which South, Babbage, Baily and Beaufort were prominent members, had induced the Admiralty to constitute a new Board, of which the Plumian Professor was a member. Mr Pond, the Astronomer Royal, was in a rather feeble state, and South seemed determined to bear him down: Sheepshanks and I did our best to support him. (I have various letters from Sheepshanks to this purpose.)—On Jan. 22nd we returned to Cambridge, and I set an Examination Paper for Smith's Prizes as usual.—On Jan. 30th I have a letter from Herschel about improving the arrangement of Pond's Observations. I believe that much of this zeal arose from the example of the Cambridge Observations.
"On Feb. 21st my Paper 'On the nature of the light in the two rays of Quartz' was communicated to the Philosophical Society: a capital piece of deductive optics. On Mar. 2nd I went to London, I suppose to attend the Board of Visitors (which met frequently, for the proposed reform of Pond's Observations, &c.). As I returned on the outside of the coach there occurred to me a very remarkable deduction from my ideas about the rays of Quartz, which I soon tried with success, and it is printed as an Appendix to the Paper above mentioned. On Mar. 6th my son George Richard was born."
Miscellaneous matters in the first half of this year are as follows:
"Faraday sends me a piece of glass for Amici (he had sent me a piece before).—On Apr. 9th I dispatched the Preface of my 1830 Observations: this implies that all was printed.—On Apr. 18th I began my Lectures and finished on May 24th. There were 49 names. A very good series of lectures.—I think it was immediately after this, at the Visitation of the Cambridge Observatory, that F. Baily and Lieut. Stratford were present, and that Sheepshanks went to Tharfield on the Royston Downs to fire powder signals to be seen at Biggleswade (by Maclear) and at Bedford (by Capt. Smyth) as well as by us at Cambridge.—On May 14th I received £100 for my article on the Figure of the Earth from Baldwin the publisher of the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.—I attended the Greenwich Visitation on June 3rd.—On June 30th the Observatory Syndicate made their report: satisfactory.
"On July 6th 1831 I started with my wife and infant son for Edensor, and went on alone to Liverpool. I left for Dublin on the day on which the loss of the 'Rothsay Castle' was telegraphed, and had a bad voyage, which made me ill during my whole absence. After a little stay in Dublin I went to Armagh to visit Dr Robinson, and thence to Coleraine and the Giant's Causeway, returning by Belfast and Dublin to Edensor. We returned to Cambridge on Sept. 9th.
"Up to this time the Observatory was furnished with only one large instrument, namely the 10-foot Transit. On Feb. 24th of this year I had received from Thomas Jones (62, Charing Cross) a sketch of the stone pier for mounting the Equatoreal which he was commissioned to make: and the pier was prepared in the spring or summer. On Sept. 20th part of the instrument was sent to the Observatory; other parts followed, and Jones himself came to mount it. On Sept. 16th I received Simms's assurance that he was hastening the Mural Circle.—In this autumn I seriously took up the recalculation of my Long Inequality of Venus and the Earth, and worked through it independently; thus correcting two errors. On Nov. 10th I went to Slough, to put my Paper in the hands of Mr Herschel for communication to the Royal Society. The Paper was read on Nov. 24th.—This was the year of the first Meeting of the British Association at York. The next year's meeting was to be at Oxford, and on Oct. 17th I received from the Rev. W. Vernon Harcourt an invitation to supply a Report on Astronomy, which I undertook: it employed me much of the winter, and the succeeding spring and summer.—The second edition of my Tracts was ready in October. It contained, besides what was in the first edition, the Planetary Theory, and the Undulatory Theory of Light. The Profit was £80.—On Nov. 14th I presented to the Cambridge Philosophical Society a Paper 'On a remarkable modification of Newton's Rings': a pretty good Paper.—In November the Copley Medal was awarded to me by the Royal Society for my advances in Optics.—Amongst miscellaneous matters I was engaged in correspondence with Col. Colby and Capt. Portlock about the Irish Triangulation and its calculation. Also with the Admiralty on the form of publication of the Greenwich and Cape Observations."