292 HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY. 



academies may extend still further the range of their 

 studies. College professors, in their turn, are in danger 

 i sf of settling down into mere retailers of other men's ideas, 

 M \ without aspiring to add any thing to the stock of human 

 knowledge, unless they are surrounded by institutions 

 whose leading object is the increase of knowledge. An 

 astronomical observatory, therefore, is a center of genial 

 influence, which directly or indirectly imparts life and 

 efficiency to all the subordinate institutions of education. 

 It is also a place where men of business may acquire new 

 ideas of the wonders of the material universe ; where men, 

 whose days are spent in toiling for the acquisition of 

 wealth, may learn that there are mines of intellectual 

 riches more inexhaustible than the mines of California. 

 Men who from morning to night are engaged in the 

 duties of an arduous profession, or in the labors of the 

 counting-house or exchange, often feel the need of recrea- 

 tion when the hours of business are over. What mode 

 of recreation is more rational what is better fitted to in- 

 spire the mind with noble sentiments than to direct the 

 thoughts to the wonders of the material universe, to the 

 vastness of the visible creation, as exhibited to the 

 eye of an astronomer with the assistance of the tele- 

 scope ? 



