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ternational and Domestic Exchanges into successful operation, and 

 it is to be hoped that the community will be awakened and inter- 

 ested in this highly important subject. 



I cannot better enter upon the discussion of the grand and sub- 

 lime topic of astronomy than by prefixing the eloquent language 

 of the Hon. JOHN QUTNCY ADAMS, in his report to Congress on the 

 Smithsonian Fund, made on the 26th January, 1839, and from 

 which I have already quoted. (See report No. 857, 27th Congress, 

 2d session.) The venerable chairman remarks : 



II The express object of an observatory is the increase of know- 

 4 ledge by new discovery. The physical relations between the fir- 

 c rnanent of heaven and the globe allotted by the Creator of all to 

 ' be the abode of man are discoverable only by the organ of the eye. 

 ' Many of these relations are indispensable to the existence of hu- 

 ' man life, and perhaps of the earth itself. Who can conceive the 



* idea of a world without a sun, but must connect it with the ex- 



* tinctions of light and heat, of all animal life, of all vegetation and 

 ' production ; leaving the lifeless clod of matter to return to the 

 1 primitive state of chaos, or to be consumed by elemental fire ? 

 ' The influence of the moon of the planets, our next door neigh- 

 ' bors of the solar system of the fixed stars scattered over the 

 1 blue expanse in multitudes exceeding the power of human com- 



* putation, and at distances of which imagination herself can form 

 4 no distinct conception ; the influence of all these upon the globe 

 1 which we inhabit, and upon the condition of man, its dying and 



* deathless inhabitant, is great and mysterious, and, in the search 

 ' for final causes, to a great degree inscrutable to his finite and 

 i limited faculties. The extent to which they are discoverable is 

 ' and must remain unknown ; but to the vigilance of a sleepless 

 ' eye, to the toil of a tireless hand, and to the meditations of a 

 ' thinking, combining, and analyzing mind, secrets are successively 

 ' revealed not only of the deepest import to the welfare of man in 

 4 his earthly career, but which seem to lift him from the earth to 

 ' the threshold of his eternal abode ; to lead him blindfold up to 

 ' the council chamber of Omnipotence ; and there, stripping the 

 ' bandage from his eyes, bid him look undazzled at the throne of 

 ' God." 



The study of the heavens, and all the phenomena connected 

 therewith, is one which has occupied mankind from the earliest 

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