DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. SOS 



livAi of the universe — a power from whose limits we £.re still 

 far removed, and which, in its first feeble beginning, when 

 scarcely magnifying thirty-two linear diameters,* was yet eii 

 abled to penetrate into depths of space which until then had 

 remained closed to the eyes of man. The exact knowledge of 

 many of the heavenly bodies which belong to our solar system, 

 the eternal laws which regulate their revolution in their orbits, 

 and the more perfect insight into the true structure of the uni- 

 verse, are the characteristics of the age which I am here de- 

 lineating. The results produced by this epoch determine the 

 principal outlines of the great natural picture of the Cosmos, 

 and add to the earlier investigated contents of terrestrial space 

 the newly-acquired knowledge of the contents of the celestial 

 reo-ions, at least with reference to the w^ell-organized arrange- 

 ment of one planetary group. In my desire of assuming only 

 general views, I will confine myself to the consideration of 

 the most important objects of the astronomical labors of thd 

 seventeenth century. I would here refer to their influence 

 in powerfully inciting to great and unexpected mathematical 

 discoveries, and to more comprehensive and grander views of 

 the universe. 



T have already remarked that the age of Columbus, Gama, 

 and Magellan — the age of great maritime enterprises — coin- 

 cided in a most wonderful manner with many great events, 

 with the awakening of a feeling of religious freedom, with the 

 development of nobler sentiments for art, and with the diffu- 

 sion of the Copernican views regarding the system of the uni« 

 verse. Nicolaus Copernicus (who, in two letters still extant, 

 calls himself Koppernik) had already attained his twenty- 

 first year, an^ was engaged in making observations with the 

 astronomer Albert Brudzewski, at Cracow, when Columbus 

 discovered America. Hardly a year after the death of the 

 great discoverer, and after a six years' residence at Padua, 

 Bologna, and Rome, we find him returned to Cracow, and 

 busilv enirasfed in briniring about a thorough revolution in the 

 astronomical views of the universe. By the favor of his un- 

 cle, Lucas Waisselrode of Allen, bishop of Ermland, he was 

 lomixated, in lolO, canon of Frauenburg, where he labored 



* '* The telescopes which GaHIeo constructed, and others of which 

 he made use for observing Jupiter's satellites, the phases of Venus, and 

 the solar spots, possessed the gradually increasing powers of magnify- 

 ing four, seven, and thirty-two linear diametex's, but they never had a 

 higher power." (Arago, in the Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes pour 

 Van. 1842, p. 268.) 



