98 BAILLY. 
These epithets may perhaps appear extraordinary ; 
but they will be so only to those who have learnt the 
science of the stars in ancient poems, either in verse or 
in prose. 
The Chaldeans, luxuriously reclining on the perfumed 
terraced roofs of their houses in Babylon, under a con- 
stantly azure sky, followed with their eyes the general - 
and majestic movements of the starry sphere; they as- 
certained the respective displacements of the planets, the 
moon, the sun; they noted the date and hour of eclipses ; 
they sought out whether simple periods would not enable 
them to foretell these magnificent phenomena a long time 
beforehand. Thus the Chaldeans created, if I may be 
allowed the expression, Contemplative Astronomy. Their 
observations were neither numerous nor exact; they both 
made and discussed them without labour and without 
trouble. 
Such is not, by a great deal, the position of modern 
astronomers. Science has felt the necessity of the celes- 
tial motions being studied in their minutest details. 
Theories must explain these details; it is their touch- 
stone; it is by details that theories become confirmed or 
fall to the ground. Besides, in Astronomy, the most 
important truths, the most astonishing results, are based 
on the measurement of quantities of extreme minuteness. 
Such measures, the present bases of the science, require 
very fatiguing attention, infinite care, to which no learned 
man would bind himself, were he not sustained, and en- 
couraged by the hope of attaining some capital deter- 
mination, through an ardent and decided devotion to the 
subject. 
The modern astronomer, really worthy of the name, 
must renounce the distractions of society, and even the 
