360 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



with great pleasure and profit, and with complete sympathy in the 

 noble enthusiasm of the author, that I read the report of that gentle- 

 man, made to this House in 1842, upon the disposition of the Smith- 

 sonian bequest. He seems to have been imbued with a most exalted 

 sense of the sublimity of the great objects heretofore accomplished 

 and hereafter to be attained by the ardent and laborious pursuit of 

 astronomy. Sir, there is no mind not wholly destitute of elevation 

 and wholly ignorant of the stupendous wonders and glories of the 

 universe as revealed to the gaze of "star-eyed science," who could 

 read that able report and not be deeply affected by it. 1 quote the 

 following passage: 



The express object of an observatory is the increase of knowledge by new discov- 

 ery. The physical relations between the firmament 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 human life, 

 and, perhaps, of the earth itself. Who can conceive the idea of the earth without a 

 sun but must connect with it the extinction of light and heat, of all animal life, of 

 all vegetation and production, leaving the lifeless clod of matter to return to the 

 primitive state of chaos or to be consumed by elemental fire. The influence of the 

 moon of the planets, our next-door neighbors of the solar system of the fixed stars 

 scattered over the blue expanse, in multitudes exceeding the power of human com- 

 putation, and at distances of which imagination herself can form no distinct concep- 

 tion; the influence of all these upon the globe 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 extent inscrutable to his finite and limited faculties. The 

 extent to which they are discoverable is and must remain unknown, but to the vigi- 

 lance of a sleepless eye, to the toil of a tireless hand, and to the meditations of a think- 

 ing, combining, and analyzing mind secrets are successively revealed, not only of 

 the deepest import to the welfare of man in 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 then, stripping the bandage from his 

 eyes, bid him look undazzled at the throne of God. 



I quote this eloquent passage to show, b}^ the testimony of one who 

 understands the subject well, the character of the results to be expected 

 from the extensive cultivation of astronomical science. I think it will 

 be admitted that though the discoveries now to be expected in that field 

 will be well calculated to elevate the soul and fill it with wonder and 

 amazement, nothing of a very practical or directly useful nature in its 

 bearing upon the immediate pursuits of life is to be expected beyond 

 the increased accuracy and extent of observations necessary for nauti- 

 cal and topographical purposes. I am l>y no means disposed to under- 

 value the importance of this sublime branch of human knowledge. 

 Nor will I undertake to say that investigation of the heavens may not 

 produce new results, intimately connected with and highly important 

 to some of the economical purposes of life. What T mean to say is, 

 that the discoveries yet to be made promise only, or at least chiefly, 

 to gratify that high and laudable curiosity which seeks to know and 

 understand, as far as human intelligence may, the sublime and won- 



