34 HISTORY OF ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERY. 



nected with long calculations. If Newton developed the cause of those laws, he started 

 to his -grand result from a point expressly prepared by Keppler, and left the solution of 

 the problem imperfect for Laplace to finish. It is obviously in wise accordance with the 

 happiness of mankind, that no nation possesses a monopoly of talent and fame, that many 

 of the most remarkable efforts of human genius owe a debt of obligation to the accom- 

 plishments of genius at another era, and in a different clime. The fact proclaims the 

 affinity of the species, between whom the mighty deep may roll, or the mountain rampart 

 rise. It evinces too their mutual dependence, and will be hailed as a motive by the con- 

 siderate mind, to the maintenance of universal amity. 



We have seen four of the European nations represented in the advance of astronomical 

 science Poland by Copernicus, Denmark by Tycho, Germany by Keppler, and Italy by 

 Galileo. The procession had been joined by Holland, France, and England, before the 

 middle of the seventeenth century ; but it will be impracticable to record the labours, or 

 even mention the names, of those who were then employed in the investigation of celestial 

 phenomena. The selection of a few of the most distinguished is imperative. To Hevelius, 

 one of the merchant princes of Dantzic, an example of the close alliance of commerce 

 with the fine arts and science which runs through the page of history, we owe the first 

 accurate delineation of the lunar surface, the discovery of a libration in longitude ; by 

 his observation of the comet of 1664, he further corroborated the view previously taken, 

 that such bodies are not sublunary, and approximated to the nature of their orbits. His 

 contemporary Huygens, after effecting various improvements in the telescope, discovered 

 one of the satellites of Saturn, that which is now termed the fourth, and obtained an 

 insight into the singular structure of the planet, an inexplicable appearance to all pre- 

 ceding observers. An anagram, in the year 1656, announced to the world the following 

 sentence by a transposition of letters, annulo cingitur, tenui, piano, nusquam coh&renta, 

 ad eclipticam, inclinatio, the planet is surrounded with a ring, thin, plane, nowhere 

 adhering, and inclined to the ecliptic. He justly observes, in a letter to his brother: 

 '' If any one shall gravely tell me that I have spent my time idly in a vain and fruitless 

 inquiry, after what I can never become sure of; the answer is, that at this rate, he would 

 put down all natural philosophy, as far as it Concerns itself in searching into the nature 

 of things. In such noble and sublime studies as these, it is a glory to arrive at proba- 

 bility, and the search itself rewards the pains. But besides the nobleness and pleasure 

 of the studies, may we not be so bold as to say, they are no small help to the advancement 

 of wisdom and morality ?" The discovery of the great nebula in Orion was accidentally 

 made by Huygens in the year 1656. Cassini, nurtured in France, soon afterwards added 

 four more satellites to the system of Saturn, those now called the first, second, third, and 

 fifth, and he detected the black list, or dark elliptical line bisecting the surface of the ring, 

 and dividing it into two. Astronomy is under immense obligations to a measure adopted 

 by the courts of France and England at nearly the same period, for the patronage of scien- 

 tific associations, and the founding of national observatories. The Royal Society of London 

 was incorporated by charter in the year 1662, and numbered among its early members 

 Boyle, Hooke, Wallis, Ward, Newton, and Flamstead. The Royal Academy of Sciences 

 at Paris was founded in the year 1666, and enrolled among its first members Auzout, 

 Picard, Roberval, and Richer. Upon the invitation of Louis XIV. Huygens left Holland 

 to become a royal academician, but being a Protestant, the revocation of the edict of 

 Nantes ultimately compelled him to return to his native soil. The edict did not effect 

 Cassini, a Catholic foreigner similarly invited ; and to him, with his son and grandson, the 

 French academy owes much of its early distinction. Besides his before-named discoveries, 

 he determined the periods of rotation of the principal planets, and observed the elliptical 

 form of Jupiter's disc owing to compression at the poles. 



