Emperor not to marry as his sons would bring him only mis- 

 fortune, a prophecy that was destined to be fulfilled. Had 

 the astrologer been truly able to foresee his own destiny by 

 observation of the stars, he would have known that his at- 

 tendance at these festivities in honor of Rudolph formed the 

 first link in a chain of events which was to terminate with 

 his death at his Majesty's court. 



Soon after his return to Denmark, Frederick II, appreci- 

 ating the claims of science, summoned Brahe to Copenhagen 

 and offered to give him a grant for life of the Island of Huen, 

 and to construct and supply with astronomical instruments 

 an observatory on a scale of liberality previously unknown, 

 also to furnish a residence for his family and his assistants. 

 The next twenty-one years of Brahe's life were passed in the 

 study of the heavenly bodies at the superbly equipped and 

 palatial Uraniborg; his patron, King Frederick, gave him a 

 pension and productive property, which he did not use selfish- 

 ly, for he entertained with great hospitality the visitors who 

 sought to greet the first astronomer of the age, and he edu- 

 cated and supported numbers of young men under his own 

 roof, training them to observe, to think and to reason. At 

 Uraniborg his skill and assiduity as an observer, his vast 

 collection of notes on the planets and his improvements oi the 

 lunar theory, won for him a position unsurpassed by any 

 astronomer of ancient or of modern times. 



The Danish poet Peter Andreas Heiberg has pictured in 

 verse the Uraniborg observatory: 



"A gate in the wall eastward 

 Showed like a mighty mouth; 

 There was another westward, 

 And spires stood north and south. 

 The castle dome, high rearing 

 Itself, a spirelet bore, 

 Where stood, 'for the wind veering, 

 A Pegasus, gilt o'er." 



