SKETCH OF GERARD MERC AT OR. 405 



his portfolio till such time as he should judge hest to make it known. 

 Being obliged to make his living by manual labor, Mercator selected 

 the making of mathematical instruments, with the designing, engrav- 

 ing, and illumination of maps, as his business. He thus entered upon 

 a career which he never left, and which was destined to bring him 

 fortune and glory. In order better to qualify himself for doing this 

 work, he began a thorough course of mathematics. He studied with 

 Gemma le Frison, who was in the habit of giving lessons at his house 

 to a number of high-born pupils, and practiced engraving with him. 

 He made rapid progress, and was able in a short time, having been 

 licensed by the university, himself to give lessons in geography and 

 astronomy ; and he made with a precision which was remarkable at 

 that time the instruments which his pupils had to use. In 1541 he 

 presented to Cardinal de Granville a very handsomely executed ter- 

 restrial globe, with which his Grace was so well pleased that he intro- 

 duced the author of it to the Emperor Charles V. He afterward 

 entered the service of that prince, but it is not exactly known in what 

 particular capacity. He is styled in his epitaph imperatoris domesti- 

 cus, but that merely signified that he was attached to the imperial 

 household. He made for his Majesty two other globes, a celestial 

 one of glass, and a terrestrial globe of wood, which were greatly ad- 

 mired as superior to any specimens that had been before produced. 

 They were unfortunately destroyed in the wars by which the Low 

 Countries were afterward overrun. In 1559 he removed to Duisburg, 

 where the Duke of Juliers and Cleves was contemplating the estab- 

 lishment of a university, and had assigned an honorable position in it 

 to Mercator. The duke conferred upon him the appointment and title 

 of his cosmographer. He published at that place a large number of 

 maps, but delayed the publication of his atlas for a considerable time, 

 out of regard to his friend Ortelius, who had also prepared a set of 

 maps, and through Mercator's accommodating spirit was given an op- 

 portunity to work off his stock without the embarrassment of com- 

 petition. It is to Mercator and Ortelius that the world owes the 

 enfranchisement of geography from the errors ingrafted upon it by 

 Ptolemy ; and the maps of these two fellow-workers were the most 

 exact known till those of Guillaume de ITsle and D'Anville were 

 published. 



Geography was in his time a mixture of facts and fancies, much 

 of what was taught in it having no better authority than old-time tra-* 

 ditions and the fabulous stories of travelers who addressed themselves 

 more to exciting wonder than to telling the truth. Maps were in a 

 worse condition than the descriptive accounts, and gave the most erro- 

 neous possible views of the relative situation of the various parts of the 

 earth. It was Mercator's work, to adapt an expression of Malte-Brun's, 

 to demonstrate the extreme imperfection of the systems of the ancients 

 and provoke their abolition. Modern geography, this distinguished 



