Scientific Lectures. 45 



SCIENTIFIC LECTURE.-II. 



THE TELESCOPE. 



By Profesbor Stepiiek Alexander. 



Prof. S. Alexander, of the college of jSTew Jersey, Princeton, delivered 

 the second scientific lecture before the American Institute, Friday 

 night, December 4, 1868, in Steinway Hall, upon the Telescope and 

 its relations. Prof. Alexander, on being introduced to the audience, 

 spoke as follows : 



That is a noble figure of John Bunyan in his " Holy War," in 

 which the senses are presented as the gates of man's soul, the inlets 

 of knowledge from without. And amongst these and noblest of them 

 all is the eye gate, the messages through which come from afar, and 

 are borne upon the very wings of the morning. Quite as interesting, 

 in some aspects, as the eye itself, is that wonderful emanation, or rather 

 influence, through which we are enabled to see the light itself. All 

 beautiful and glorious as it is when entering through the unbarred 

 gates of the morning, it gilds with glory the drapery of the sky, 

 reveals the distant mountain tops, and unvails that it may adorn the 

 fair face of nature. Even its shreds and patches are beautiful as they 

 sparkle in the diamond, or twinkle in the dew-drop. It comes back 

 all blushing itself because it has kissed the cheek of the blushing rose ; 

 it arrays the lily in its robe of spotless wdiite without breaking its 

 stem ; paints, without breaking it, the merest bubble, and that with 

 the very colors which iringe the insect's wings, or arrays in all the 

 gorgeousness of the rainbow, the already half broken and dispersed 

 flower. Ah ! beautiful and glorious is light. But most grand, most 

 beautiful, and most glorious is it when it reveals to us from afar the 

 glories of the great panoply that surrounds ns, when it ornaments its 

 jewels are blazing suns, tlie altar vestment of His attire, who covereth 

 Himself with light as with a garment, and spreadeth out the heavens 

 like a curtain. Most interesting, in the next place, is the adaptation 

 of the eye to light, and of the eye to the light ; but what a simple, w^hat 



