172 Notices respecting New Books. 



made use of in the work before us. As its title shows, it carries 

 the history down to the year 1793 : the subsequent period will 

 form the subject of a second volume. 



The foundation of the Observatory resulted directly and im- 

 mediately from the creation of the Academy of Sciences in 1666. 

 This was at first called the New Academy, and was installed in 

 the buildings of a house in the Hue Vivien belonging to one of 

 Colbert's sons. In the garden of this house, those members of 

 the Academy who were astronomers — Picard, Auzout, and others — 

 made observations of the stars. But long before this the idea of a 

 regular observatory had been started. Morin in 1634 had pro- 

 posed that one should be erected on Mont Valerien ; and in 1(365, 

 Auzout, in dedicating to the King his ephemerides of the comet of 

 1664, strongly urged the desirability of establishing a building for 

 the express purpose of astronomical observations. It was in 1667 

 that the observatory was commenced, the architect being Perrault ; 

 only the first story Avas completed ^hen Cassini arrived in Paris in 

 1669. Although, as M. Wolf points out, it was impossible at that 

 time to foresee what the progress of astronomy would shortly 

 require in regard to methods of observation, Cassini did himself 

 contend for considerable modifications in the original plan. 

 M. "Wolf takes a view of his appointment and work very different 

 from that with which we are familiar in the pages of Uelambre, 

 and much more favourable to him. A native of the county of 

 Nice when it was included in the dominions of Savoy, his first 

 appointment was at Bologna; when Colbert invited him (and 

 many other learned men) to Paris he came intending to make, like 

 Huygens, only a temporary stay, but ultimately was induced to 

 remain, and, though he never spoke the French language with 

 fluency, became naturalized and married a French lady. When he 

 died in 1712 (three years before Louis XIV., in whose name he had 

 been invited to France) he was in the eighty-eighth year of his age, 

 but had been for some time totally blind. His eldest son was 

 killed at the battle of La Hogue in 1692 ; it was the second, 

 Jacques, who succeeded his father at the Observatory, and during a 

 visit to England become acquainted with Newton and Flamsteed. 

 (Halley, it will be remembered, had visited Paris in 1680 and 

 observed there, in company with the eider Cassini, the great comet 

 of that year, in regard to which Newton first applied, his principle 

 of universal gravitation to comets.) The third Cassini (Cesar 

 Francois) took the title of de Thury from an estate acquired by his 

 father ; and his son the fourth (named like his great ancestor 

 J. D. Cassinij is commonly called the Count de Thury. We have 

 already mentioned his intention to write a history of the Observatory, 

 and the trouble that he took to collect the documents which have 

 so greatly aided our present author in the first part of his noble 

 work, very interesting to all astronomers. Cassini IV. formed 

 schemes for greatly improving the buildings and instruments of the 

 Observatory ; but the great Revolution in France upset scientific as 

 well as all other arrangements, and led to his resignation in 

 1793, though he did not die till 1S45, in the ninety-eighth year of 



