formed with the distinguished astronomer Flamsteed. This eminent man, pleased with the attainments of his friend, after having obtained for him other employment, soon discovered that the young Yorkshire scholar would be an acquisition to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and took him as his

assistant.

He was now only twenty-three, and having made many of the instruments used at the Observatory, in which he evinced mechanical skill and ingenuity of no common order, he was employed to construct the Mural Arch, which excited the admiration of Smeaton, the celebrated civil engineer. Subsequently, with a never flagging energy, he assisted Flamsteed with his well known catalogue of 3,000 stars. But this continued and severe labor was soon to tell upon his delicate constitution. His health became greatly impaired and he retired early in life to Little Horton.

By the deaths of his eldest brother, Thomas, and that gentleman's son, he had come into possession of the family estates. He never again removed from Little Horton for any great length of time. When he had recovered from the effects of the toil at Greenwich, he fitted up a room for his study in the old

Hall, into which he placed every description of astronomical instruments. The telescopes he made use of were of his own construction, and the lenses ground and admirably adjusted with his own hand. This room still remains and keeps much of its primitive appearance. An old oak table, in which cavities are worn by the long and incessant rubbing of his elbows while writing is yet part of its furniture.

His life now became that of a recluse, rarely holding personal communication with any one. Thoresby and a minister or two of his own religious persuasion sometimes visited him, and two residents of Bradford, the one a mathematician and the other an apothecary, were at favored times admitted to his study. These gentlemen, when they went to see him, rubbed a stone against a prescribed part of the outside wall of the house, and if he wished their company they were allowed to come in, otherwise they returned disappointed.

He was very abstemious and seldom took his meals regularly. In order that his reveries and calculations might not be interrupted and disconcerted, he had a square hole cut in the wainscot or partition between his room and the one adjoining, and before this hole he contrived a sliding-board, by which the

domestic could put his food into the room without making any noise or being perceived. As Sharp had opportunity he visited the spot for refreshment. When engaged on abstruse subjects, it frequently happened that breakfast, dinner and supper remained together untouched by him. Once, it is related, he was so absorbed in the solution of a profound mathematical problem that he neglected his meals for several days together. On this occasion, when his friends broke in upon his reverie, he complained with his accustomed mildness that they had deranged a series of investigations which it had taken him three days to make, and that he would have to begin the work almost anew.

After he had settled at Horton, he still continued to assist Flamsteed. The elaborate tables in the second volume of the "Historia Coelestis" were calculated by Sharp, and for this work he also prepared drawings of all the heavenly constellations. These drawings were subsequently sent to Amsterdam to be engraved by an eminent artist, and such was their excellence that the originals were esteemed superior to the engravings in finish and elegance.

Being a man of unwearied perseverance and accounted the most accurate computer of his day, he