Thus, with instruments of gradually increasing power, Schröter studied during thirty-four years the topography of the moon and planets. The field was then almost untrodden; he had but few and casual predecessors, and has since had no equal in the sustained and concentrated patience of his hourly watchings. Both their prolixity and their enthusiasm are faithfully reflected in his various treatises. Yet the one may be pardoned for the sake of the other, especially when it is remembered that he struck out a substantially new line, and that one of the main lines of future advance. Moreover, his infectious zeal communicated itself; he set the example of observing when there was scarcely an observer in Germany; and under his roof Harding and Bessel received their training as practical astronomers. But he was reserved to see evil days. Early in 1813 the French under Vandamme occupied Bremen. On the night of April 20, the Vale of Lilies was, by their wanton destructiveness, laid waste with fire; the Government offices were destroyed, and with them the chief part of Schröter's property, including the whole stock of his books and writings. There was worse behind. A few days later, his observatory, which had escaped the conflagration, was broken into, pillaged, and ruined. His life was wrecked with it. He survived the catastrophe three years without the means to repair, or the power to forget it, and gradually sank from disappointment into decay, terminated by death, August 29, 1816. He had, indeed, done all the work he was capable of; and though not of the first quality, it was far from contemptible. He laid the foundation of the _comparative_ study of the moon's surface, and the descriptive particulars of the planets laboriously collected by him constituted a store of more or less reliable information hardly added to during the ensuing half century. They rested, it is true, under some shadow of doubt; but the most recent observations have tended on several points to rehabilitate the discredited authority of the Lilienthal astronomer. We may now briefly resume, and pursue in its further progress, the course of his studies, taking the planets in the order of their distances from the sun.