THE LIFE OF CONRAD MARTENS 



hobbies, and buried the melancholy that haunts us all by finding 

 play for his hands. He was a capable carpenter, woodcarver 

 and turner ; but his master hobby was astronomy. In all his 

 note-books that I have examined there are, interlarded with work- 

 shop receipts and hints on water-colour practice, long and carefully 

 written extracts on the science that seems rarely to have been 

 far from his thoughts. From these excerpts (mostly drawn from 

 popular cyclopedias and from books demoded in the hour he used 

 them), from his boyish fondness for " the instrument " and its 

 paraphernalia, but chiefly from the absence of calculations, I scent 

 the true amateur astronomer, to whom the building of the teles- 

 cope is the Great Adventure ; and who hopes, not to make fresh 

 discoveries, but to vivify his reading by gazing enraptured on 

 Jupiter's moons, the Ring of Saturn, the great Nebula in Orion 

 above all, to enjoy the showman's privilege of astonishing his 

 visitors with the real and authentic Mountains in the Moon. 



Martens had yielded to the seductions of his siren shortly after 

 his arrival in Sydney, for in 1835 he ordered from England " A two 

 foot achromatic Telescope by Dolland, pancratic eye tube, tripod 

 stand with leather case and sling," how rarely runs the cata- 

 logue ! but he had to possess himself in patience until the 7th of 

 March, 1838, a cruel stretch for any amateur to wait upon the 

 coming of his chimera. 



But he sighed for an instrument worthy of his enthusiasm, and 

 in 1860 set about constructing a six-inch reflector. The cast- 

 ing of the speculum for this telescope must have afforded our 

 amateur Herschel unspeakable bliss. He was then at the height 

 of his production, and selling his work for good prices : but he 

 must have enjoyed the break; for what in the world is more 

 pleasant than to steal from the continuity of well-paid work, to 

 play truant with the doxy of your heart ? Martens failed in his 

 first essay the speculum cracking as it cooled but succeeded 

 in his third attempt by adding arsenic to the zinc and copper. 

 Follows thereon the grand business of grinding and polishing, and 

 in a kind of ecstasy he noted down (and underlined) " Babbage, 

 Dictionary^ of Manufactures. Good Hints upon Speculum 

 Polishing." 



16 



