impoverished family, who left Bohemia under very different 

 circumstances from those attending their entrance. At the 

 capture of Prague by the Elector Palatine, eighteen years 

 after the death of Tycho Brahe, the astronomical apparatus 

 was in part destroyed and in part carried off or devoted to 



other uses. 



,o 



Among the relics of Brahe long treasured with utmost 

 care was one of his silver noses ; one of them, I say, because 

 an accident obliged him to provide several for emergencies. 

 Waking one morning from a sound sleep he found to his con- 

 sternation that his only silver nose, which he had laid on a 

 table at his bedside, has been broken to pieces by one of his 

 pet dogs whose unconscious play caused his master much 

 annoyance. After this catastrophe he had a little provision 

 of noses manufactured, fourteen in number, which he used 

 interchangeably as one does a handkerchief. A Bohemian 

 historian relates, more in jest than in earnest perhaps, how 

 Brahe bequeathed one of his silver noses to his Majesty 

 Christian IV, King of Denmark, who gave it to his favorite 

 Christine Munk, from whom after many wanderings it passed 

 into the possession of Voltaire, who took it to Potsdam for 

 the pleasure of Frederick the Great ; but after Voltaire's death 

 it was secured for the museum of art at Vienna, where it was 

 treasured with great care, even as Galileo's finger was pre- 

 served in alcohol at Florence. 



83 



