178 STEVENSON. 



a structure reared painfully and noiselessly by men indifferent to 

 this world's affairs, caring little for fame, and even less for wealth. 

 Facts were gathered, principles were discovered, each falling 

 into its own place until at last the brilliant crown shone out and 

 the w^orld thought it saw a miracle. 



This done, I shall endeavor to draw a moral which it is hoped 

 will be found worthy of consideration. 



The heavenly bodies were objects of adoration from the earliest 

 antiquity ; they were guides to caravans on the desert as well as 

 to mariners far from land ; they marked the beginning of seasons 

 or, as in Egypt, the limits of vast periods embracing many hun- 

 dreds of years. Maps were made thousands of years ago 

 showing their positions, the path of the sun was determined 

 rudely, the influence of the sun and moon upon the earth was 

 .recognized in some degree and their influence upon man was in- 

 ferred. Beyond these matters man with unaided vision and 

 with knowledge only of elementary mathematics could not go. 



Mathematical investigations by Arabian students prepared the 

 means by which, after Europe's revival of learning, one without 

 wealth gave a new life to astronomy. Copernicus, early trained 

 in mathematics, during the last thirty years of his life spent the 

 hours stolen from his work us a clerk and charity physician in 

 mathematical and astronomical studies, which led him to reject 

 the complex Ptolemaic system and to accept in modified form 

 that bearing the name of Pythagoras. Tycho Brahe followed. 

 A mere star-gazer at first, he became an earnest student, im- 

 proved the instruments employed, and finally secured recogni- 

 tion from his sovereign. For twenty-five years he sought facts, 

 disregarding none, but seldom recognizing economic importance 

 in any. His associate, Kepler, profiting by his training under 

 Brahe, carried the work far beyond that of his predecessors — 

 and this in spite of disease, domestic sorrows and only too fre- 

 quent experience of abject poverty. He divested the Coper- 

 nicus hypothethis of many crudities and discovered the laws 

 which have been utilized by astronomers in all phases of their 

 work. He ascertained the causes of the tides ; with the aid of 

 the newly invented telescope made studies of eclipses and oc- 



