Meanwhile the press of the country had taken up Maury’s cause, and a few examples from the newspapers will show how high the feeling ran. The _Scientific American_ wrote, “To use the language of the Philadelphia _Inquirer_, we regard the action of the Board ‘as an insult upon the virtue and general intelligence of the country’.... (Maury’s) eminent services have been acknowledged by almost every government in Europe. Prussia and Sweden have struck gold medals to his honor. The Russian Ambassador has publicly thanked him by the direction of his government. England has not been sparing of her tribute of admiration in Parliament, and has adopted his plans in her own navy, while the great French Industrial Exhibition awards to his charts her highest premiums. His own country, on the contrary, declares him a clog and an incumbrance on its navy, and unworthy of promotion. We trust Congress will set this matter right. Better dispense with the services of the entire Board of ‘ten minutes inquisitors’ than of this eminent man. We understand that it had been proposed in Philadelphia, in case Lieutenant Maury retired from the Observatory, to present him with a testimonial of $50,000, as an acknowledgment of his services, and as a mark of the disapprobation of the action of the Board. We doubt not that this sum might easily be raised in our great commercial cities. Yes, twice that if necessary”. The New York _Herald_ held the Board up for ridicule, in the following fashion: “I understand there is now in press, and will shortly appear, a history of the lives and eminent services of the late Retiring Board, entitled ‘Lights and Shadows of the Fifteen’. It will embrace all the shades in the lives of those fifteen Spartans, from their entrance into the service up to their ‘Thermopylae defeat’ of 201 brothers in arms, by which gallant action they ‘promoted themselves’. It will be the commencement of a new epoch in the naval history of the country, and will be rich, racy, and spicy”.