ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETIES AND ASTRONOMERS. 819 



making it his real profession, for means for sounding the celes- 

 tial spaces are now within the reach of nearly every one. You 

 may ask what pleasure there is in being an amateur in astronomy. 

 I answer, Try it, and, when you have once tasted of the tree of 

 science, you will never be able to leave it. Day and night the 

 observer will always find subjects to study in the sky. In the 

 daytime, the sun, its apparent motion, its dimensions, the spots on 

 its disk indicating convulsions in its luminous atmosphere, eclipses, 

 transits of the inferior planets, and the mysterious spectroscopic 

 revelations of solar light offer themselves as subjects for investi- 

 gation of the highest importance and the greatest interest. The 

 hours of the night are preferred by the astronomer for his work ; 

 and he then gives himself up to his favorite occupation while 

 others are taking their rest. A dark veil is spread over every- 

 thing of active life ; but above, in the sky, the curtain has risen, 

 and a magnificient spectacle awaits the astronomer. Those thou- 

 sands of stars which Newton and Galileo and Kepler and Coperni- 

 cus and Ptolemy and Hipparchus contemplated, show themselves 

 now in all their glory ; they are resplendent with light, and 

 remind us of the glory of those who discovered them or who 

 have studied their motions. The astronomer, in view of this 

 incomparable spectacle, is affected by a profound emotion, and 

 feels himself growing larger before those mysteries which he has 

 been able to sound, and he rises from his contemplation with 

 invigorated mind. 



All has changed on the earth, he says, but the sky is still the 

 same. The plow has passed over powerful cities, extensive ter- 

 ritories, once teeming with life and occupied by mighty na- 

 tions, and the languages they spoke have been forgotten, but 

 the stars that shone in their eyes shine for us, and the same 

 eclipses recur, invariable in their unchanging cycles ; those 

 people observed them, and we are observing them in our turn ; 

 the same equinoxes bring the spring flowers into bloom, and the 

 same solstices mature the harvests. The sun, moon, planets, 

 satellites, constellations, stars, and milky way are there now as 

 they were centuries ago, revealing their majestic beauty to the 

 observer, and raising fold by fold the veils with which Nature 

 has enveloped their mysteries. 



Astronomy formerly held a much larger place than it does to- 

 day in the attention of the people. In fact, as Houzeau has well 

 said, our peoples have no idea of the necessity the men of the 

 beginnings of history were under of referring constantly to the 

 celestial movements. "We are in the midst of so numerous clocks 

 that no one need be ignorant of the time of day, and they are so 

 well regulated by the aid of the meridian glasses of observatories 

 that the masses hardly know that they require attention. Our 



