DISCOVERIES IN THE CELtSIIAL SPACES. 683 



far removed, and which in its first feeble beginning, when 

 scarcely magnifying thirty-two linear diameters,* was yet 

 enabled to penetrate into depths of space which until then 

 had remained closed to the eyes of man. The exact know- 

 ledge of many of the heavenly bodies which belong to our 

 solar system, the eternal laws which regulate their revolution 

 in their orbits, and the more perfect insight into the true 

 structure of the universe, are the characteristics of the age 

 which I am here delineating. The results produced by this 

 epoch determine the principal outlines of the great natural 

 picture of the Cosmos, and add to the earlier investigated 

 contents of terrestial space the newly acquired knowledge of 

 the contents of the celestial regions, at least with reference to 

 the well-organised arrangement of one planetary group. In 

 my desire of assuming only general views, I will confine 

 myself to the consideration of the most important objects of 

 the astronomical labours of the seventeenth century. I would 

 here refer to their influence in powerfully inciting to great 

 and unexpected mathematical discoveries, and to more 

 comprehensive and grander views of the universe. 



I have already remarked that the age of Columbus, Gama, 

 and Magellan the age of great maritime enterprises coin- 

 cided in a most wonderful manner with many great events, 

 with the awakening of a feeling of religious freedom, with the 

 development of nobler sentiments for art, and with the diffu- 

 sion of the Copernican views regarding the system of the uni- 

 verse, Nicolaus Copernicus (who in two letters still extant calls 

 himself Koppernik,) had already attained his twenty-first year, 

 and was engaged in making observations with the astronomer 

 Albert Brudzewski, at Cracow, when Columbus discovered 

 America. Hardly a year after the death of the great disco- 

 verer, and after a six years' residence at Padua, Bologna, and 

 Rome, we find him returned to Cracow, and busily engaged 

 in bringing about a thorough revolution in the astronomical 

 views of the universe. By the favour of his uncle, Lucas 



* " The telescopes which Galileo constructed, and others of which he 

 made use for observing Jupiter's satellites, the phases of Venus, and the 

 solar spots, possessed the gradually increasing powers of magnifying four, 

 geven, and thirty-two linear diameters, but they never had a higher 

 power. (Arago, in the Annuaire du Lureau des Longitudes 

 fan 1842, p. 26&.) 



