Setting the telescope takes some minutes, and the Professor ejected us from the room at the top of the building on to a balcony, from which we had a most lovely view of the neighbouring country. By means of a very good small telescope placed on a swivel, we could see most distinctly the Military Retreat (the Chelsea of America), beautifully situated upon a high hill about three miles off. We saw also through this telescope the Smithsonian Institute, which we were glad to be able to study in this way in detail, as we found we should not have time to go to it. It is a very large building of the architecture of the twelfth century, and the only attempt at Mediaeval architecture which we have seen in the United States. The view of the Potomac and of the hill and buildings of George Town was very extensive and remarkable; but before we had feasted our eyes sufficiently on it, we were summoned to see one of the most lovely sights I ever witnessed. Though it was mid-day, and the sun was shining most brilliantly, we saw the exquisitely sharp crescent of Venus in the pale sky, and about half the apparent size of the moon. The object-glass of the instrument was divided into squares, and she passed rapidly across the field of the telescope, sailing, as it were, in ether; by the slightest motion of a tangent-screw of great length, we were able to bring her back as often as we liked, to the centre of the field. This mechanical process might, however, have been rendered unnecessary, had the machinery attached to the instrument been wound up; for when this is the case, if the telescope is directed to any star or point in the heavens, it continues to point to it for the whole twenty-four hours in succession, the machine revolving round in the plane to which it is set. The instrument is a very powerful one, and, like the smaller one we looked through before, was made by Fraunhofer, a famous optician at Munich. There are some other very wonderful instruments which we had not time to see, as we had to make desperate haste to get some dinner, and be off by the late train to Baltimore. But before I take leave of this subject, I must return for a minute or two to that most perfectly lovely creature Venus. She was a true crescent; we could imagine we saw the jagged edge of the inner side of the crescent, but the transition from the planet to the delicate sky was so gradual, that as far as this inner edge was concerned, this was probably only imagination. Her colouring on this jagged side was of the most transparent silvery hue. The outer edge was very sharply defined against the sky, and her colour shaded off on this side to a pale golden yellow with a red or pink tint in it; this being the side she was presenting to the sun. No words can express her beauty. She is the planet that I told you lately looked so very large.