But in the character of an observer Delambre was conspicuous. In conducting his part of the Survey, we cannot help admiring his fortitude as well as skill. In a letter to Lalande, written in 1797, he thus expresses himself, and it is no exaggerated instance of the impediments he frequently met with: “I had about six hours’ work, and I could not do it in less than ten days. In the morning I mounted to the signal, which I left at sunset. The nearest inn was that at Salers, to which it took me three hours to go, and as much to return, and the road was the worst I have met with. At last I resolved to take up my lodging in a neighbouring cowhouse; I say neighbouring, because it was only at the distance of an hour’s walk. During these ten days I could not take off my clothes; I slept upon hay, and lived on milk and cheese. All this time I could hardly ever get sight of the two objects at once; and during the observations, as well as in the long intervals which they left, I was alternately burned by the sun, frozen by the wind, and drenched by the rain. I passed thus ten or twelve hours every day, exposed to all the inclemency of the weather; but nothing annoyed me so much as the inaction.” It was with extreme difficulty that permission to encounter these inconveniences was granted. The republican government, which, in its hurry to change the weights and measures,[6] had ordered the commission, began to fear lest a latent tinge of royalism in some one of their agents might infect the new standard. At least such a suspicion forces itself upon us, when we find that “The Committee of Public Safety, considering how important it was to the amelioration of the public mind that those employed by government,” in the Survey for instance, “should be distinguished,” not by their knowledge of the theodolite and repeating circle, but “by their republican virtues and hatred of kings,” struck Delambre and others off the list, and would have served Méchain in the same way (who was on the frontier, with public money in his possession), had not they found within themselves the suspicion that he would play them false. But we must not be less than just to the instances of liberal feeling which the most bigoted times produce. When Delambre returned to Paris, he was allowed, after some hesitation, to retain the diploma of the Royal Society of London, written in Latin, with the arms of the King of England upon it. Footnote 6: For some of our readers we may state that the object was the measurement of the earth’s circumference, or rather the deduction of it from the measurement of a part, in order that the metre might be made an exact aliquot part of the circumference.