THE USES OF ASTRONOMY.

AN ORATION

Delivered at Albany, on the 28th of August, 1856

BY

EDWARD EVERETT,

ON THE

OCCASION OF THE INAUGURATION OF THE
DUDLEY ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY,

WITH A

CONDENSED REPORT OF THE PROCEEDINGS,

AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE

DEDICATION OF NEW YORK STATE GEOLOGICAL HALL.

NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY ROSS & TOUSEY,
103 NASSAU STREET.
1856.

CONTENTS

A NOTE EXPLANATORY.

A. MAVERICK.

New York, October 1, 1856.

TWO NEW INSTITUTIONS OF SCIENCE;

AND

THE SCENES WHICH ATTENDED THEIR CHRISTENING.

In the month of August last, two events took place in the city of Albany,
which have more than an ephemeral interest. They occurred in close
connection with the proceedings of a Scientific Convention, and the memory of
them deserves to be cherished as a recollection of the easy way in which Science
may be popularized and be rendered so generally acceptable that the people will
cry, like Oliver Twist, for more. It is the purpose of this small publication to
embody, in a form more durable than that of the daily newspaper, the record of
proceedings which have so near a relation to the progress of scientific research.
A marked feature in the ceremonies was the magnificent Oration of the Hon.
Edward Everett, inaugurating the Dudley Observatory of Albany; and it is
believed that the reissue of that speech in its present form will be acceptable
to the admirers of that distinguished gentleman, not less than to the lovers of
Science, who hung with delight upon his words.

THE DEDICATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL HALL.

On Wednesday, August 27, 1856, the State Geological Hall of New York was
dedicated with appropriate ceremonies. For the purpose of affording accommodation
to the immense crowds of people who, it was confidently anticipated,
would throng to this demonstration and that of the succeeding day, at which Mr.
Everett spoke, a capacious Tent was arranged with care in the center of Academy
Park, on Capitol Hill; and under its shelter the ceremonies of the inauguration
of both institutions were conducted without accident or confusion; attended
on the first day by fully three thousand persons, and on the second by a number
which may be safely computed at from five to seven thousand.

The announcement that Hon. Wm. H. Seward would be present at the dedication
of the Geological Hall, excited great interest among the citizens; but the
hope of his appearance proved fallacious. His place was occupied by seven
picked men of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of
whom (Prof. Henry) declared his inability to compute the problem why seven
men of science were to be considered equal to one statesman. The result justified
the selections of the committee, and although the Senator was not present,
[4]the seven Commoners of Science made the occasion a most notable one by the
flow of wit, elegance of phrase, solidity and cogency of argument, and rare discernment
of natural truths, with which their discourse was garnished.

The members of the American Association marched in procession to the Tent,
from their place of meeting in the State Capitol. On the stage were assembled
many distinguished gentlemen, and in the audience were hundreds of ladies.
Gov. Clark and Ex-Governors Hunt and Seymour, of New York, Sir Wm. Logan,
of Canada, Hon. George Bancroft, and others as well known as these, were
among the number present. The tent was profusely decorated. Small banners
in tri-color were distributed over the entire area covered by the stage, and
adorned the wings. The following inscriptions were placed over the front of the
rostrum,—that in honor of “The Press” occupying a central position:

The proceedings of the day were opened with prayer by Rev. Geo. W. Bethune, D.D.,
of Brooklyn.

Hon. Garrit Y. Lansing, of Albany, then introduced Professor Louis Agassiz,
of Cambridge, Mass., who was the first of the “seven men of science”
to entertain his audience, always with the aid of the inevitable black-board,
without which the excellent Professor would be as much at a loss as a chemist
without a laboratory. Professor Agassiz spoke for an hour, giving his views of
a new theory of animal development. He began by saying:—

PROFESSOR HITCHCOCK ON REMINISCENCES.

Erastus C. Benedict, Esq. of New York, introduced Prof. Hitchcock, of
Amherst, as a gentleman whose name was very familiar, who had laid aside,
voluntarily, the charge of one of the largest colleges in New England, but who
could never lay aside the honors he had earned in the literature and science of
geology.

After a few introductory observations, Prof. Hitchcock said:—

Of the New York State Survey he said:—

And of Geological Surveys in general:—

The history of the American Association was then given:—

Prof. H. said of this particular occasion:—

SIR WILLIAM LOGAN ASKS “THE WAY TO ALBANY.”

Sir William E. Logan, of Canada, in a brief speech acknowledged the services
rendered by the New-York Survey to Canada. He should manifest ingratitude
if he declined to unite in the joyful occasion of inaugurating the Museum which
was to hold forever the evidence of the truth of its published results. The
Survey of Canada had been ordered, and the Commission of five years twice
renewed; and the last time, the provision for it was more than doubled. It
happened to him, as Mr. Agassiz had said: after crossing the ocean first, the first
thing he asked was, “Which is the way to Albany?” and when he arrived here,
he found that with the aid of Prof. Hall’s discoveries, he had only to take up the
different formations as he had left them on the boundary line, and follow them
into Canada. It was both a convenience and a necessity to adopt the New-York
nomenclature, which was thus extended over an area six times as large as New-York.
In Paris he heard De Vernier using the words Trenton and Niagara, as
if they were household words. He was delighted to witness the impatience
with which Barron inquired when the remaining volumes of the Paleontology of
New-York would be published. Your Paleontological reputation, said he, has
made New-York known, even among men not scientific, all over Europe. I hope
you will not stop here, but will go on and give us in equally thorough, full, and
magnificent style, the character of the Durassic and Cretaceous formations.

PROFESSOR HENRY ON DUTCHMEN.

Professor Henry was at a loss to know by what process they had arrived at
the conclusion that seven men of science must be substituted to fill the place of
one distinguished statesman whom they had expected to hear. He prided
[8]himself on his Albany nativity. He was proud of the old Dutch character, that
was the substratum of the city. The Dutch are hard to be moved, but when
they do start their momentum is not as other men’s in proportion to the velocity,
but as the square of the velocity. So when the Dutchman goes three times as
fast, he has nine times the force of another man. The Dutchman has an immense
potentia agency, but it wants a small spark of Yankee enterprise to touch it off.
In this strain the Professor continued, making his audience very merry, and
giving them a fine chance to express themselves with repeated explosions of
laughter.

PROFESSOR DAVIES ON THE PRACTICAL NATURE OF SCIENCE.

Prof. Charles Davies was introduced by Ex-Governor Seymour, and spoke
briefly, but humorously and very much to the point, in defense of the practical
character of scientific researches. He said that to one accustomed to speak only
on the abstract quantities of number and space, this was an unusual occasion,
and this an unusual audience; and inquired how he could discuss the
abstract forms of geometry, when he saw before him, in such profusion,
the most beautiful real forms that Providence has vouchsafed to the life
of man. He proposed to introduce and develop but a single train of thought—the
unchangeable connection between what in common language is called
the theoretical and practical, but in more technical phraseology, the ideal
and the actual. The actual, or true practical, consists in the uses of the
forces of nature, according to the laws of nature; and here we must distinguish
between it and the empirical, which uses, or attempts to use, those
forces, without a knowledge of the laws. The true practical, therefore, is the
result, or actual, of an antecedent ideal. The ideal, full and complete, must
exist in the mind before the actual can be brought forth according to the laws of
science. Who, then, are the truly practical men of our age? Are they not those
who are engaged most laboriously and successfully in investigating the great
laws? Are they not those who are pressing out the boundaries of knowledge,
and conducting the mind into new and unexplored regions, where there may yet
be discovered a California of undeveloped thought? Is not the gentleman from
Massachusetts (Professor Agassiz) the most practical man in our country in the
department of Natural History, not because he has collected the greatest number
of specimens, but because he has laid open to us all the laws of the animal kingdom?
Are the formulas written on the black-board by the gentleman from
Cambridge (Prof. Pierce) of no practical value, because they cannot be read by
the uninstructed eye? A single line may contain the elements of the motions of
all the heavenly bodies; and the eye of science, taking its stand-point at the
center of gravity of the system, will see in the equation the harmonious revolutions
of all the bodies which circle the heavens. It is such labors and such
generalizations that have rendered his name illustrious in the history of mathematical
science. Is it of no practical value that the Chief of the Coast Survey
(Prof. Bache), by a few characters written upon paper, at Washington, has determined
the exact time of high and low tide in the harbor of Boston, and can
determine, by a similar process, the exact times of high and low water at every
point on the surface of the globe? Are not these results, the highest efforts of
science, also of the greatest practical utility? And may we not, then, conclude
that there is nothing truly practical which is not the consequence of an antecedent
ideal?

Science is to art what the great fly-wheel and governor of a steam-engine
are to the working part of the machinery—it guides, regulates, and controls the
whole. Science and art are inseparably connected; like the Siamese Twins,
they cannot be separated without producing the death of both.

How, then, are we to regard the superb specimens of natural history, which
the liberality, the munificence; and the wisdom of our State have collected at
the Capitol? They are the elements from which we can here determine all that
belongs to the Natural History of our State; and may we not indulge the hope,
[9]that science and genius will come here, and, striking them with a magic wand,
cause the true practical to spring into immortal life?

Remarks were also uttered by Prof. Chester Dewey, President Anderson, and
Rev. Dr. Cox.

And thus ended the Inauguration of the State Geological Hall.

We turn to the Observatory, in regular order of succession.

INAUGURATION OF DUDLEY OBSERVATORY.

The Inauguration of the Dudley Observatory took place under the same tent
which was appropriated to the dedication of the Geological Hall, and on the
day following that event. An immense audience was assembled, drawn by the
announcement of Mr. Everett’s Oration.

At a little past three o’clock the procession of savans arrived from the Assembly
Chamber, escorted by the Burgesses Corps. Directly in front of the speaker’s
stand sat Mrs. Dudley, the venerable lady to whose munificence the world is
indebted for this Observatory. She was dressed in an antique, olive-colored silk,
with a figure of a lighter color, a heavy, red broché shawl, and her bonnet,
cap, &c., after the strictest style of the old school. Her presence added a new
point of interest.

Prayer having been uttered by Rev. Dr. Sprague, of Albany, Thomas W. Olcott,
Esq., introduced to the audience Ex-Governor Washington Hunt, who spoke
briefly in honor of the memory of Charles E. Dudley, whose widow has founded
and in part endowed this Observatory with a liberality so remarkable.

Remarks were offered by Dr. B. A. Gould and Prof. A. D. Bache, and
Judge Harris read the following letter from Mrs. Dudley, announcing another
munificent donation in aid of the new Observatory—$50,000, in addition to the
$25,000 which had been already expended in the construction of the building.
The letter was received with shouts of applause, Prof. Agassiz rising and leading
the vast assemblage in three vehement cheers in honor of Mrs. Dudley!

Albany, Thursday, Aug. 14, 1856.

I remain, Gentlemen, your obedient servant,
BLANDINA DUDLEY.

Judge Harris then introduced the Orator of the occasion, Hon. Edward
Everett, whose speech is given verbatim in these pages.

THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY.

During the Sessions of the American Association, the new Astronomical
Instruments of Dudley Observatory were described in detail by Dr. B. A. Gould,
who is the Astronomer in charge. We condense his statements:—

WHAT THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY IS.

It stands a mile from the Capitol, in the city of Albany, upon the crest of a
hill, so difficult of approach, as to be in reality a Hill of Science. There are two
ways of getting to it. In both cases there are rail fences to be clambered over,
and long grass to wade through, settlements to explore, and a clayey road
to travel; but these are minor troubles. The elevation of the hill above tide-water
[11]is, perhaps, 200 feet; its distance from the Capitol about a mile and a
half. The view for miles is unimpeded; and the Observatory is belted about
with woods and verdant lawns. There could not be a finer location or a purer
air. The plateau contains some fifteen acres.

The Observatory is constructed in the form of a Latin cross. Its eastern arm
is an apartment 22 by 24 feet, in which the meridian circle is to be placed. The
western arm is a room of the same dimensions, intended for the transit instrument.
From the north and south faces of both rooms are semi-circular apsides,
projecting 6 feet 6 inches, containing the Collimator piers and the vertical openings
for observation. The entire length of each room is, therefore, 37 feet. In
the northern arm are placed the library, 23 feet by 27 feet; two computing
rooms, 12 feet by 23 feet each; side entrance halls, staircases, &c. The southern
arm contains the principal entrance, consisting of an arched colonnade of four
Tuscan columns, surrounded by a pediment. A broad flight of stone steps leads
to this colonnade; and through the entrance door beneath it to the main central
hall, 28 feet square, in which are placed (in niches) the very beautiful electric
clock and pendulum presented by Erastus Corning, Esq. The center of this hall
is occupied by a massive pier of stone, 10 feet square, passing from the basement
into the dome above, and intended for the support of the great heliometer.
Directly opposite the entrance door is a large niche, in which it is proposed to
place the bust of the late Mr. Dudley. Immediately above this hall is the equatorial
room, a circular apartment, 22 feet 6 inches in diameter, and 24 feet high,
covered by a low conical roof, in which and in the walls are the usual observing
slits. The drum, or cylindrical portion, of this room is divided into two parts—the
lower one fixed, the upper, revolving on cast-iron balls moving in grooved
metal plates, can command the entire horizon.

The building is in two stories—the upper of brick, with freestone quoins,
impost and window and door dressings, rests upon a rusticated basement of freestone,
six feet high. The style adopted is the modern Italian, of which it is a
very excellent specimen. The building has been completed some time; but, in
consequence of the size of the instruments now procured being greater than that
originally contemplated, sundry alterations were required in the Transit and
Meridian Circle rooms. These consist of the semi-circular projections already
mentioned, and which, by varying the outlines of the building, will add greatly
to its beauty and picturesqueness.

The piers for the Meridian Circle and Transit have, after careful investigation,
been procured from the Lockport quarries. The great density and uniformity
of the structure of the stone, and the facility with which such large
masses as are required for this purpose can be procured there, have induced
the selection of these quarries. The stones will weigh from six and a half to
eight tons each.

The main building was erected from the drawings of Messrs. Woollett and
Ogden, Architects, Albany; the additions and the machinery have been
designed by Mr. W. Hodgins, Civil Engineer; and the latter is now being constructed
under his superintendence, in a very superior manner, at the iron works
of Messrs. Pruyn and Lansing, Albany.

The entire building is a tasteful and elegant structure, much superior in
architectural character to any other in America devoted to a similar purpose.

ORATION.

Fellow Citizens Of Albany:—

Assembled as we are, under your auspices, in this ancient and hospitable
city, for an object indicative of a highly-advanced stage of scientific culture,
it is natural, in the first place, to cast a historical glance at the past. It
seems almost to surpass belief, though an unquestioned fact, that more than
a century should have passed away, after Cabot had discovered the coast of
North America for England, before any knowledge was gained of the noble
river on which your city stands, and which was destined by Providence to
determine, in after times, the position of the commercial metropolis of the
Continent. It is true that Verazzano, a bold and sagacious Florentine navigator,
in the service of France, had entered the Narrows in 1524, which he
describes as a very large river, deep at its mouth, which forced its way
through steep hills to the sea; but though he, like all the naval adventurers
of that age, was sailing westward in search of a shorter passage to India,
he left this part of the coast without any attempt to ascend the river; nor
can it be gathered from his narrative that he believed it to penetrate far into
the interior.

VOYAGE OF HENDRICK HUDSON.

Near a hundred years elapsed before that great thought acquired substance
and form. In the spring of 1609, the heroic but unfortunate Hudson,
one of the brightest names in the history of English maritime adventure,
but then in the employment of the Dutch East India Company, in a vessel
of eighty tons, bearing the very astronomical name of the Half Moon, having
been stopped by the ice in the Polar Sea, in the attempt to reach the East
by the way of Nova Zembla, struck over to the coast of America in a high
northern latitude. He then stretched down southwardly to the entrance of
Chesapeake Bay (of which he had gained a knowledge from the charts and
descriptions of his friend, Captain Smith), thence returning to the north,
entered Delaware Bay, standing out again to sea, arrived on the second of
September in sight of the “high hills” of Neversink, pronouncing it “a
good land to fall in with, and a pleasant land to see;” and, on the following
morning, sending his boat before him to sound the way, passed Sandy Hook,
[14]and there came to anchor on the third of September, 1609; two hundred
and forty-seven years ago next Wednesday. What an event, my friends, in
the history of American population, enterprise, commerce, intelligence, and
power—the dropping of that anchor at Sandy Hook!

DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSON RIVER.

Here he lingered a week, in friendly intercourse with the natives of New
Jersey, while a boat’s company explored the waters up to Newark Bay.
And now the great question. Shall he turn back, like Verazzano, or ascend
the stream? Hudson was of a race not prone to turn back, by sea or by
land. On the eleventh of September he raised the anchor of the Half Moon,
passed through the Narrows, beholding on both sides “as beautiful a land
as one can tread on;” and floated cautiously and slowly up the noble stream—the
first ship that ever rested on its bosom. He passed the Palisades,
nature’s dark basaltic Malakoff, forced the iron gateway of the Highlands,
anchored, on the fourteenth, near West Point; swept onward and upward,
the following day, by grassy meadows and tangled slopes, hereafter to be
covered with smiling villages;—by elevated banks and woody heights, the
destined site of towns and cities—of Newburg, Poughkeepsie, Catskill;—on
the evening of the fifteenth arrived opposite “the mountains which lie from
the river side,” where he found “a very loving people and very old men;”
and the day following sailed by the spot hereafter to be honored by his own
illustrious name. One more day wafts him up between Schodac and Castleton;
and here he landed and passed a day with the natives,—greeted with
all sorts of barbarous hospitality,—the land “the finest for cultivation he
ever set foot on,” the natives so kind and gentle, that when they found he
would not remain with them over night, and feared that he left them—poor
children of nature!—because he was afraid of their weapons,—he, whose
quarter-deck was heavy with ordnance,—they “broke their arrows in pieces,
and threw them in the fire.” On the following morning, with the early
flood-tide, on the 19th of September, 1609, the Half Moon “ran higher up,
two leagues above the Shoals,” and came to anchor in deep water, near the
site of the present city of Albany. Happy if he could have closed his
gallant career on the banks of the stream which so justly bears his name,
and thus have escaped the sorrowful and mysterious catastrophe which
awaited him the next year!

CHAMPLAIN’S VOYAGE AND THE GROWTH OF COLONIES.

But the discovery of your great river and of the site of your ancient city,
is not the only event which renders the year 1609 memorable in the annals
of America and the world. It was one of those years in which a sort of
sympathetic movement toward great results unconsciously pervades the
races and the minds of men. While Hudson discovered this mighty river
[15]and this vast region for the Dutch East India Company, Champlain, in the
same year, carried the lilies of France to the beautiful lake which bears his
name on your northern limits; the languishing establishments of England
in Virginia were strengthened by the second charter granted to that colony;
the little church of Robinson removed from Amsterdam to Leyden, from
which, in a few years, they went forth, to lay the foundations of New
England on Plymouth Rock; the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands,
after that terrific struggle of forty years (the commencement of which
has just been embalmed in a record worthy of the great event by an
American historian) wrested from Spain the virtual acknowledgment of their
independence, in the Twelve Years’ Truce; and James the First, in the
same year, granted to the British East India Company their first permanent
charter,—corner-stone of an empire destined in two centuries to overshadow
the East.

GALILEO’S DISCOVERIES

One more incident is wanting to complete the list of the memorable
occurrences which signalize the year 1609, and one most worthy to be
remembered by us on this occasion. Cotemporaneously with the events
which I have enumerated—eras of history, dates of empire, the starting-point
in some of the greatest political, social, and moral revolutions in our
annals, an Italian astronomer, who had heard of the magnifying glasses
which had been made in Holland, by which distant objects could be brought
seemingly near, caught at the idea, constructed a telescope, and pointed it
to the heavens. Yes, my friends, in the same year in which Hudson discovered
your river and the site of your ancient town, in which Robinson
made his melancholy hegira from Amsterdam to Leyden, Galileo Galilei,
with a telescope, the work of his own hands, discovered the phases of Venus
and the satellites of Jupiter; and now, after the lapse of less than two centuries
and a half, on a spot then embosomed in the wilderness—the covert
of the least civilized of all the races of men—we are assembled—descendants
of the Hollanders, descendants of the Pilgrims, in this ancient and prosperous
city, to inaugurate the establishment of a first-class Astronomical
Observatory.

EARLY DAYS OF ALBANY.

One more glance at your early history. Three years after the landing of
the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Fort Orange was erected, in the center of what is
now the business part of the city of Albany; and, a few years later, the
little hamlet of Beverswyck began to nestle under its walls. Two centuries
ago, my Albanian friends, this very year, and I believe this very month of
August, your forefathers assembled, not to inaugurate an observatory, but
to lay the foundations of a new church, in the place of the rude cabin which
had hitherto served them in that capacity. It was built at the intersection
[16]of Yonker’s and Handelaar’s, better known to you as State and Market
streets. Public and private liberality coöperated in the important work.
The authorities at the Fort gave fifteen hundred guilders; the patroon of that
early day, with the liberality coëval with the name and the race, contributed
a thousand; while the inhabitants, for whose benefit it was erected, whose
numbers were small and their resources smaller, contributed twenty beavers
“for the purchase of an oaken pulpit in Holland.” Whether the largest part
of this subscription was bestowed by some liberal benefactress, tradition has
not informed us.

NEW AMSTERDAM

Nor is the year 1656 memorable in the annals of Albany alone. In that
same year your imperial metropolis, then numbering about three hundred
inhabitants, was first laid out as a city, by the name of New Amsterdam.[A]
In eight years more, New Netherland becomes New York; Fort Orange and
its dependent hamlet assumes the name of Albany. A century of various
fortune succeeds; the scourge of French and Indian war is rarely absent
from the land; every shock of European policy vibrates with electric
rapidity across the Atlantic; but the year 1756 finds a population of
300,000 in your growing province. Albany, however, may still be regarded
almost as a frontier settlement. Of the twelve counties into which the province
was divided a hundred years ago, the county of Albany comprehended
all that lay north and west of the city; and the city itself contained but
about three hundred and fifty houses.

TWO HUNDRED YEARS.

One more century; another act in the great drama of empire; another
French and Indian War beneath the banners of England; a successful Revolution,
of which some of the most momentous events occurred within your
limits; a union of States; a Constitution of Federal Government; your population
carried to the St. Lawrence and the great Lakes, and their waters
poured into the Hudson; your territory covered with a net-work of canals
and railroads, filled with life and action, and power, with all the works of
peaceful art and prosperous enterprise with all the institutions which constitute
and advance the civilization of the age; its population exceeding that
of the Union at the date of the Revolution; your own numbers twice as
large as those of the largest city of that day, you have met together, my
Friends, just two hundred years since the erection of the little church of
Beverswyck, to dedicate a noble temple of science and to take a becoming
public notice of the establishment of an institution, destined, as we trust,
to exert a beneficial influence on the progress of useful knowledge at home
and abroad, and through that on the general cause of civilization.

SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.

You will observe that I am careful to say the progress of science “at home
and abroad;” for the study of Astronomy in this country has long since, I
am happy to add, passed that point where it is content to repeat the observations
and verify the results of European research. It has boldly and successfully
entered the field of original investigation, discovery, and speculation;
and there is not now a single department of the science in which the names
of American observers and mathematicians are not cited by our brethren
across the water, side by side with the most eminent of their European contemporaries.

This state of things is certainly recent. During the colonial period and
in the first generation after the Revolution, no department of science was, for
obvious causes, very extensively cultivated in America—astronomy perhaps
as much as the kindred branches. The improvement in the quadrant, commonly
known as Hadley’s, had already been made at Philadelphia by
Godfrey, in the early part of the last century; and the beautiful invention of
the collimating telescope was made at a later period by Rittenhouse, an
astronomer of distinguished repute. The transits of Venus of 1761 and 1769
were observed, and orreries were constructed in different parts of the country;
and some respectable scientific essays are contained and valuable observations
are recorded in the early volumes of the Transactions of the Philosophical
Society, at Philadelphia, and the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences at Boston and Cambridge. But in the absence of a numerous class
of men of science to encourage and aid each other, without observatories
and without valuable instruments, little of importance could be expected in
the higher walks of astronomical life.

AMERICAN OBSERVATIONS.

The greater the credit due for the achievement of an enterprise commenced
in the early part of the present century, and which would reflect honor
on the science of any country and any age; I mean the translation and commentary
on Laplace’s Mécanique Celeste, by Bowditch; a work of whose
merit I am myself wholly unable to form an opinion, but which I suppose
places the learned translator and commentator on a level with the ablest
astronomers and geometers of the day. This work may be considered as
opening a new era in the history of American science. The country was still
almost wholly deficient in instrumental power; but the want was generally
felt by men of science, and the public mind in various parts of the country
began to be turned towards the means of supplying it. In 1825, President
John Quincy Adams brought the subject of a National Observatory before
Congress. Political considerations prevented its being favorably entertained
at that time; and it was not till 1842, and as an incident of the exploring
expedition, that an appropriation was made for a dépôt for the charts and
[18]instruments of the Navy. On this modest basis has been reared the National
Observatory at Washington; an institution which has already taken and
fully sustains an honorable position among the scientific establishments of
the age.

Besides the institution at Washington, fifteen or twenty observatories have
within the last few years, been established in different parts of the country,
some of them on a modest scale, for the gratification of the scientific taste and
zeal of individuals, others on a broad foundation of expense and usefulness.
In these establishments, public and private, the means are provided for the
highest order of astronomical observation, research, and instruction. There
is already in the country an amount of instrumental power (to which addition
is constantly making), and of mathematical skill on the part of our men
of science, adequate to a manly competition with their European contemporaries.
The fruits are already before the world, in the triangulation of several
of the States, in the great work of the Coast Survey, in the numerous scientific
surveys of the interior of the Continent, in the astronomical department
of the Exploring Expedition, in the scientific expedition to Chili, in the brilliant
hydrographical labors of the Observatory at Washington, in the published
observations of Washington and Cambridge, in the Journal conducted by the
Nestor of American Science, now in its eighth lustrum; in the Sidereal Messenger,
the Astronomical Journal, and the National Ephemeris; in the great
chronometrical expeditions to determine the longitude of Cambridge, better
ascertained than that of Paris was till within the last year; in the prompt
rectification of the errors in the predicted elements of Neptune; in its identification
with Lalande’s missing star, and in the calculation of its ephemeris;
in the discovery of the satellite of Neptune, of the eighth satellite of Saturn,
and of the innermost of its rings; in the establishment, both by observation
and theory, of the non-solid character of Saturn’s rings; in the separation and
measurement of many double and triple stars, amenable only to superior
instrumental power, in the immense labor already performed in preparing
star catalogues, and in numerous accurate observations of standard stars; in
the diligent and successful observation of the meteoric showers; in an extensive
series of magnetic observations; in the discovery of an asteroid and ten
or twelve telescopic comets; in the resolution of nebulæ which had defied
every thing in Europe but Lord Rosse’s great reflector; in the application
of electricity to the measurement of differences in longitude; in the ascertainment
of the velocity of the electro-magnetic fluid, and its truly wonderful
uses in recording astronomical observations. These are but a portion of the
achievements of American astronomical science within fifteen or twenty years,
and fully justify the most sanguine anticipations of its further progress.

How far our astronomers may be able to pursue their researches, will
depend upon the resources of our public institutions, and the liberality of
wealthy individuals in furnishing the requisite means. With the exception
of the observatories at Washington and West Point, little can be done, or be
[19]expected to be done, by the government of the Union or the States; but
in this, as in every other department of liberal art and science, the great
dependence,—and may I not add, the safe dependence?—as it ever has been,
must continue to be upon the bounty of enlightened, liberal, and public-spirited
individuals.

THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY.

It is by a signal exercise of this bounty, my Friends, that we are called
together to-day. The munificence of several citizens of this ancient city,
among whom the first place is due to the generous lady whose name has
with great propriety been given to the institution, has furnished the means
for the foundation of the Dudley Observatory at Albany. On a commanding
elevation on the northern edge of the city, liberally given for that purpose
by the head of a family in which the patronage of science is hereditary, a
building of ample dimensions has been erected, upon a plan which combines
all the requisites of solidity, convenience, and taste. A large portion of the
expense of the structure has been defrayed by Mrs. Blandina Dudley; to
whose generosity, and that of several other public-spirited individuals, the
institution is also indebted for the provision which has been made for an
adequate supply of first-class instruments, to be executed by the most eminent
makers in Europe and America; and which, it is confidently expected,
will yield to none of their class in any observatory in the world.[A]

With a liberal supply of instrumental power; established in a community
to whose intelligence and generosity its support may be safely confided, and
whose educational institutions are rapidly realizing the conception of a university;
countenanced by the gentleman who conducts the United States
Coast Survey with such scientific skill and administrative energy; committed
to the immediate supervision of an astronomer to whose distinguished talent
had been added the advantage of a thorough scientific education in the most
renowned universities of Europe, and who, as the editor of the American
Astronomical Journal, has shown himself to be fully qualified for the high
trust;—under these favorable circumstances, the Dudley Observatory at
Albany takes its place among the scientific foundations of the country and
the world.

WONDERS OF ASTRONOMY.

It is no affected modesty which leads me to express the regret that this
interesting occasion could not have taken place under somewhat different
auspices. I feel that the duty of addressing this great and enlightened assembly,
comprising so much of the intelligence of the community and of the
science of the country, ought to have been elsewhere assigned; that it should
have devolved upon some one of the eminent persons, many of whom I see
before me, to whom you have been listening the past week, who, as observers
[20]and geometers, could have treated the subject with a master’s power; astronomers,
whose telescopes have penetrated the depths of the heavens, or
mathematicians, whose analysis unthreads the maze of their wondrous
mechanism. If, instead of commanding, as you easily could have done, qualifications
of this kind, your choice has rather fallen on one making no pretensions
to the honorable name of a man of science,—but whose delight it
has always been to turn aside from the dusty paths of active life, for an interval
of recreation in the green fields of sacred nature in all her kingdoms,—it
is, I presume, because you have desired on an occasion of this kind, necessarily
of a popular character, that those views of the subject should be
presented which address themselves to the general intelligence of the community,
and not to its select scientific circles. There is, perhaps, no branch
of science which to the same extent as astronomy exhibits phenomena which,
while they task the highest powers of philosophical research, are also well
adapted to arrest the attention of minds barely tinctured with scientific culture,
and even to teach the sensibilities of the wholly uninstructed observer.
The profound investigations of the chemist into the ultimate constitution of
material nature, the minute researches of the physiologist into the secrets of
animal life, the transcendental logic of the geometer, clothed in a notation,
the very sight of which terrifies the uninitiated,—are lost on the common
understanding. But the unspeakable glories of the rising and the setting sun;
the serene majesty of the moon, as she walks in full-orbed brightness through
the heavens; the soft witchery of the morning and the evening star; the imperial
splendors of the firmament on a bright, unclouded night; the comet,
whose streaming banner floats over half the sky,—these are objects which
charm and astonish alike the philosopher and the peasant, the mathematician
who weighs the masses and defines the orbits of the heavenly bodies, and
the untutored observer who sees nothing beyond the images painted upon
the eye.

WHAT IS AN ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY?

An astronomical observatory, in the general acceptation of the word, is a
building erected for the reception and appropriate use of astronomical
instruments, and the accommodation of the men of science employed in
making and reducing observations of the heavenly bodies. These instruments
are mainly of three classes, to which I believe all others of a strictly
astronomical character may be referred.

1. The instruments by which the heavens are inspected, with a view to
discover the existence of those celestial bodies which are not visible to the
naked eye (beyond all comparison more numerous than those which are),
and the magnitude, shapes, and other sensible qualities, both of those which
are and those which are not thus visible to the unaided sight. The instruments
of this class are designated by the general name of Telescope, and are
of two kinds,—the refracting telescope, which derives its magnifying power
[21]from a system of convex lenses; and the reflecting telescope, which receives
the image of the heavenly body upon a concave mirror.

2d. The second class of instruments consists of those which are designed
principally to measure the angular distances of the heavenly bodies from
each other, and their time of passing the meridian. The transit instrument,
the meridian circle, the mural circle, the heliometer, and the sextant, belong
to this class. The brilliant discoveries of astronomy are, for the most part,
made with the first class of instruments; its practical results wrought out
by the second.

3d. The third class contains the clock, with its subsidiary apparatus, for
measuring the time and making its subdivisions with the greatest possible
accuracy; indispensable auxiliary of all the instruments, by which the positions
and motions of the heavenly bodies are observed, and measured, and
recorded.

THE TELESCOPE.

The telescope may be likened to a wondrous cyclopean eye, endued with
superhuman power, by which the astronomer extends the reach of his vision
to the further heavens, and surveys galaxies and universes compared with
which the solar system is but an atom floating in the air. The transit may
be compared to the measuring rod which he lays from planet to planet, and
from star to star, to ascertain and mark off the heavenly spaces, and transfer
them to his note-book; the clock is that marvelous apparatus by which he
equalizes and divides into nicely measured parts a portion of that unconceived
infinity of duration, without beginning and without end, in which all
existence floats as on a shoreless and bottomless sea.

In the contrivance and the execution of these instruments, the utmost
stretch of inventive skill and mechanical ingenuity has been put forth. To
such perfection have they been carried, that a single second of magnitude or
space is rendered a distinctly visible and appreciable quantity. “The arc of
a circle,” says Sir J. Herschell, “subtended by one second, is less than the
200,000th part of the radius, so that on a circle of six feet in diameter, it
would occupy no greater linear extent than 1-5700 part of an inch, a quantity
requiring a powerful microscope to be discerned at all.”[A] The largest body
in our system, the sun, whose real diameter is 882,000 miles, subtends, at a
distance of 95,000,000 miles, but an angle of little more than 32; while so
admirably are the best instruments constructed, that both in Europe and
America a satellite of Neptune, an object of comparatively inconsiderable
diameter, has been discovered at a distance of 2,850 millions of miles.

UTILITY OF ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS.

The object of an observatory, erected and supplied with instruments of
this admirable construction, and at proportionate expense, is, as I have
[22]already intimated, to provide for an accurate and systematic survey of the
heavenly bodies, with a view to a more correct and extensive acquaintance
with those already known, and as instrumental power and skill in using it
increase, to the discovery of bodies hitherto invisible, and in both classes to
the determination of their distances, their relations to each other, and the
laws which govern their movements.

Why should we wish to obtain this knowledge? What inducement is
there to expend large sums of money in the erection of observatories, and in
furnishing them with costly instruments, and in the support of the men of
science employed in making, discussing, and recording, for successive generations,
those minute observations of the heavenly bodies?

In an exclusively scientific treatment of this subject, an inquiry into its
utilitarian relations would be superfluous—even wearisome. But on an
occasion like the present, you will not, perhaps, think it out of place if I
briefly answer the question, What is the use of an observatory, and what
benefit may be expected from the operations of such an establishment in a
community like ours?

1. In the first place, then, we derive from the observations of the heavenly
bodies which are made at an observatory, our only adequate measures
of time, and our only means of comparing the time of one place with the
time of another. Our artificial time-keepers—clocks, watches, and
chronometers—however ingeniously contrived and admirably fabricated, are but a
transcript, so to say, of the celestial motions, and would be of no value without
the means of regulating them by observation. It is impossible for them,
under any circumstances, to escape the imperfection of all machinery the
work of human hands; and the moment we remove with our time-keeper
east or west, it fails us. It will keep home time alone, like the fond traveler
who leaves his heart behind him. The artificial instrument is of incalculable
utility, but must itself be regulated by the eternal clock-work of the
skies.

RELATIONS BETWEEN NATURAL PHENOMENA AND DAILY LIFE.

This single consideration is sufficient to show how completely the daily
business of life is affected and controlled by the heavenly bodies. It is they—and
not our main-springs, our expansion balances, and our compensation
pendulums—which give us our time. To reverse the line of Pope:

But for all the kindreds and tribes and tongues of men—each upon their
own meridian—from the Arctic pole to the equator, from the equator to the
Antarctic pole, the eternal sun strikes twelve at noon, and the glorious constellations,
far up in the everlasting belfries of the skies, chime twelve at
midnight;—twelve for the pale student over his flickering lamp; twelve
[23]amid the flaming glories of Orion’s belt, if he crosses the meridian at that
fated hour; twelve by the weary couch of languishing humanity; twelve in
the star-paved courts of the Empyrean; twelve for the heaving tides of the
ocean; twelve for the weary arm of labor; twelve for the toiling brain;
twelve for the watching, waking, broken heart; twelve for the meteor which
blazes for a moment and expires; twelve for the comet whose period is measured
by centuries; twelve for every substantial, for every imaginary thing,
which exists in the sense, the intellect, or the fancy, and which the speech
or thought of man, at the given meridian, refers to the lapse of time.

Not only do we resort to the observation of the heavenly bodies for the
means of regulating and rectifying our clocks, but the great divisions of day
and month and year are derived from the same source. By the constitution
of our nature, the elements of our existence are closely connected with celestial
times. Partly by his physical organization, partly by the experience of
the race from the dawn of creation, man as he is, and the times and seasons
of the heavenly bodies, are part and parcel of one system. The first great
division of time, the day-night (nychthemerum), for which we have no precise
synonym in our language, with its primal alternation of waking and
sleeping, of labor and rest, is a vital condition of the existence of such a
creature as man. The revolution of the year, with its various incidents of
summer and winter, and seed-time and harvest, is not less involved in our
social, material, and moral progress. It is true that at the poles, and on the
equator, the effects of these revolutions are variously modified or wholly disappear;
but as the necessary consequence, human life is extinguished at the
poles, and on the equator attains only a languid or feverish development.
Those latitudes only in which the great motions and cardinal positions of
the earth exert a mean influence, exhibit man in the harmonious expansion
of his powers. The lunar period, which lies at the foundation of the month,
is less vitally connected with human existence and development; but is
proved by the experience of every age and race to be eminently conducive
to the progress of civilization and culture.

But indispensable as are these heavenly measures of time to our life and
progress, and obvious as are the phenomena on which they rest, yet owing
to the circumstance that, in the economy of nature, the day, the month, and
the year are not exactly commensurable, some of the most difficult questions
in practical astronomy are those by which an accurate division of time,
applicable to the various uses of life, is derived from the observation of the
heavenly bodies. I have no doubt that, to the Supreme Intelligence which
created and rules the universe, there is a harmony hidden to us in the
numerical relation to each other of days, months, and years; but in our
ignorance of that harmony, their practical adjustment to each other is a
work of difficulty. The great embarrassment which attended the reformation
of the calendar, after the error of the Julian period had, in the lapse of
centuries, reached ten (or rather twelve) days, sufficiently illustrates this
[24]remark. It is most true that scientific difficulties did not form the chief
obstacle. Having been proposed under the auspices of the Roman pontiff,
the Protestant world, for a century and more, rejected the new style. It
was in various places the subject of controversy, collision, and bloodshed.[A]
It was not adopted in England till nearly two centuries after its introduction
at Rome; and in the country of Struve and the Pulkova equatorial, they
persist at the present day in adding eleven minutes and twelve seconds to
the length of the tropical year.

GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE.

2. The second great practical use of an Astronomical Observatory is connected
with the science of geography. The first page of the history of our
Continent declares this truth. Profound meditation on the sphericity of the
earth was one of the main reasons which led Columbus to undertake his
momentous voyage; and his thorough acquaintance with the astronomical
science of that day was, in his own judgment, what enabled him to overcome
the almost innumerable obstacles which attended its prosecution.[A] In return,
I find that Copernicus in the very commencement of his immortal work De Revolutionibus
Orbium Cœlestium, fol. 2, appeals to the discovery of America as
completing the demonstration of the sphericity of the earth. Much of our
knowledge of the figure, size, density, and position of the earth, as a member
of the solar system, is derived from this science; and it furnishes us the
means of performing the most important operations of practical geography.
Latitude and longitude, which lie at the basis of all descriptive geography,
are determined by observation. No map deserves the name, on which the
position of important points has not been astronomically determined. Some
even of our most important political and administrative arrangements depend
upon the coöperation of this science. Among these I may mention the land
system of the United States, and the determination of the boundaries of the
country. I believe that till it was done by the Federal Government, a uniform
system of mathematical survey had never in any country been applied
to an extensive territory. Large grants and sales of public land took place
before the Revolution, and in the interval between the peace and the adoption
of the Constitution; but the limits of these grants and sales were ascertained
by sensible objects, by trees, streams, rocks, hills, and by reference to adjacent
portions of territory, previously surveyed. The uncertainty of boundaries
thus defined, was a never-failing source of litigation. Large tracts of
land in the Western country, granted by Virginia under this old system of
special and local survey, were covered with conflicting claims; and the controversies
to which they gave rise formed no small part of the business of the
Federal Court after its organization. But the adoption of the present land-system
brought order out of chaos. The entire public domain is now scientifically[25]
surveyed before it is offered for sale; it is laid off into ranges, townships,
sections, and smaller divisions, with unerring accuracy, resting on the
foundation of base and meridian lines; and I have been informed that under
this system, scarce a case of contested location and boundary has ever
presented itself in court. The General Land Office contains maps and plans,
in which every quarter-section of the public land is laid down with mathematical
precision. The superficies of half a continent is thus transferred in
miniature to the bureaus of Washington; while the local Land Offices contain
transcripts of these plans, copies of which are furnished to the individual
purchaser. When we consider the tide of population annually flowing into
the public domain, and the immense importance of its efficient and economical
administration, the utility of this application of Astronomy will be duly estimated.

I will here venture to repeat an anecdote, which I heard lately from a son
of the late Hon. Timothy Pickering. Mr. Octavius Pickering, on behalf of
his father, had applied to Mr. David Putnam of Marietta, to act as his legal
adviser, with respect to certain land claims in the Virginia Military district,
in the State of Ohio. Mr. Putnam declined the agency. He had had much
to do with business of that kind, and found it beset with endless litigation.
“I have never,” he added, “succeeded but in a single case, and that was a
location and survey made by General Washington before the Revolution; and
I am not acquainted with any surveys, except those made by him, but what
have been litigated.”

At this moment, a most important survey of the coast of the United
States is in progress, an operation of the utmost consequence, in reference to
the commerce, navigation, and hydrography of the country. The entire
work, I need scarce say, is one of practical astronomy. The scientific establishment
which we this day inaugurate is looked to for important coöperation
in this great undertaking, and will no doubt contribute efficiently to its
prosecution.

Astronomical observation furnishes by far the best means of defining the
boundaries of States, especially when the lines are of great length and run
through unsettled countries. Natural indications, like rivers and mountains,
however indistinct in appearance, are in practice subject to unavoidable
error. By the treaty of 1783, a boundary was established between the
United States and Great Britain, depending chiefly on the course of rivers and
highlands dividing the waters which flow into the Atlantic Ocean from those
which flow into the St. Lawrence. It took twenty years to find out which
river was the true St. Croix, that being the starting point. England then
having made the extraordinary discovery that the Bay of Fundy is not a
part of the Atlantic Ocean, forty years more were passed in the unsuccessful
attempt to re-create the highlands which this strange theory had annihilated;
and just as the two countries were on the verge of a war, the controversy
was settled by compromise. Had the boundary been accurately
[26]described by lines of latitude and longitude, no dispute could have arisen.
No dispute arose as to the boundary between the United States and Spain,
and her successor, Mexico, where it runs through untrodden deserts and
over pathless mountains along the 42d degree of latitude. The identity of
rivers may be disputed, as in the case of the St. Croix; the course of mountain
chains is too broad for a dividing line; the division of streams, as experience
has shown, is uncertain; but a degree of latitude is written on the
heavenly sphere, and nothing but an observation is required to read the
record.

QUESTIONS OF BOUNDARY.

But scientific elements, like sharp instruments, must be handled with
scientific accuracy. A part of our boundary between the British Provinces
ran upon the forty-fifth degree of latitude; and about forty years ago, an
expensive fortress was commenced by the government of the United States, at
Rouse’s Point, on Lake Champlain, on a spot intended to be just within
our limits. When a line came to be more carefully surveyed, the fortress
turned out to be on the wrong side of the line; we had been building an
expensive fortification for our neighbor. But in the general compromises of
the Treaty of Washington by the Webster and Ashburton Treaty in 1842,
the fortification was left within our limits.[A]

Errors still more serious had nearly resulted, a few years since, in a war
with Mexico. By the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in 1848, the boundary
line between the United States and that country was in part described by
reference to the town of El Paso, as laid down on a specified map of the
United States, of which a copy was appended to the treaty. This boundary
was to be surveyed and run by a joint commission of men of science. It
soon appeared that errors of two or three degrees existed in the projection of
the map. Its lines of latitude and longitude did not conform to the topography
of the region; so that it became impossible to execute the text of
the treaty. The famous Mesilla Valley was a part of the debatable ground;
and the sum of $10,000,000, paid to the Mexican Government for that and
for an additional strip of territory on the southwest, was the smart-money
which expiated the inaccuracy of the map—the necessary result, perhaps, of
the want of good materials for its construction.

It became my official duty in London, a few years ago, to apply to the
British Government for an authentic statement of their claim to jurisdiction
over New Zealand. The official Gazette for the 2d of October, 1840, was
sent me from the Foreign Office, as affording the desired information. This
number of the Gazette contained the proclamations issued by the Lieutenant
Governor of New Zealand, “in pursuance of the instructions he received
from the Marquis of Normanby, one of Her Majesty’s principal Secretaries of
[27]State,” asserting the jurisdiction of his government over the islands of New
Zealand, and declaring them to extend “from 34° 30′ North to 47° 10′ South
latitude.” It is scarcely necessary to say that south latitude was intended
in both instances. This error of 69° of latitude, which would have extended
the claim of British jurisdiction over the whole breadth of the Pacific, had,
apparently, escaped the notice of that government.

COMMERCE AND NAVIGATION.

It would be easy to multiply illustrations in proof of the great practical
importance of accurate scientific designations, drawn from astronomical
observations, in various relations connected with boundaries, surveys, and
other geographical purposes; but I must hasten to

3. A third important department, in which the services rendered by
astronomy are equally conspicuous. I refer to commerce and navigation.
It is mainly owing to the results of astronomical observation, that modern
commerce has attained such a vast expansion, compared with that of the
ancient world. I have already reminded you that accurate ideas in this
respect contributed materially to the conception in the mind of Columbus of
his immortal enterprise, and to the practical success with which it was conducted.
It was mainly his skill in the use of astronomical instruments—imperfect
as they were—which enabled him, in spite of the bewildering
variation of the compass, to find his way across the ocean.

With the progress of the true system of the universe toward general
adoption, the problem of finding the longitude at sea presented itself. This
was the avowed object of the foundation of the observatory at Greenwich;[A]
and no one subject has received more of the attention of astronomers, than
those investigations of the lunar theory on which the requisite tables of the
navigator are founded. The pathways of the ocean are marked out in the
sky above. The eternal lights of the heavens are the only Pharos whose
beams never fail, which no tempest can shake from its foundation. Within
my recollection, it was deemed a necessary qualification for the master and
the mate of a merchant-ship, and even for a prime hand, to be able to “work
a lunar,” as it was called. The improvements in the chronometer have in
practice, to a great extent, superseded this laborious operation; but observation
remains, and unquestionably will for ever remain, the only dependence
for ascertaining the ship’s time and deducting the longitude from the
comparison of that time with the chronometer.

It may, perhaps, be thought that astronomical science is brought already
to such a state of perfection that nothing more is to be desired, or at least
that nothing more is attainable, in reference to such practicable applications
as I have described. This, however, is an idea which generous minds will
reject, in this, as in every other department of human knowledge. In astronomy,
as in every thing else, the discoveries already made, theoretical or
[28]practical, instead of exhausting the science, or putting a limit to its advancement,
do but furnish the means and instruments of further progress. I have
no doubt we live on the verge of discoveries and inventions, in every department,
as brilliant as any that have ever been made; that there are new
truths, new facts, ready to start into recognition on every side; and it seems
to me there never was an age, since the dawn of time, when men ought to
be less disposed to rest satisfied with the progress already made, than the
age in which we live; for there never was an age more distinguished for
ingenious research, for novel result, and bold generalization.

That no further improvement is desirable in the means and methods of
ascertaining the ship’s place at sea, no one I think will from experience be
disposed to assert. The last time I crossed the Atlantic, I walked the
quarter-deck with the officer in charge of the noble vessel, on one occasion,
when we were driving along before a leading breeze and under a head of
steam, beneath a starless sky at midnight, at the rate certainly of ten or
eleven miles an hour. There is something sublime, but approaching the terrible,
in such a scene;—the rayless gloom, the midnight chill,—the awful
swell of the deep,—the dismal moan of the wind through the rigging, the all
but volcanic fires within the hold of the ship. I scarce know an occasion in
ordinary life in which a reflecting mind feels more keenly its hopeless dependence
on irrational forces beyond its own control. I asked my companion
how nearly he could determine his ship’s place at sea under favorable circumstances.
Theoretically, he answered, I think, within a mile;—practically
and usually within three or four. My next question was, how near do you
think we may be to Cape Race;—that dangerous headland which pushes its
iron-bound unlighted bastions from the shore of Newfoundland far into the
Atlantic,—first landfall to the homeward-bound American vessel. We must,
said he, by our last observations and reckoning, be within three or four miles
of Cape Race. A comparison of these two remarks, under the circumstances
in which we were placed at the moment, brought my mind to the conclusion,
that it is greatly to be wished that the means should be discovered of finding
the ship’s place more accurately, or that navigators would give Cape Race a
little wider berth. But I do not remember that one of the steam packets
between England and America was ever lost on that formidable point.

It appears to me by no means unlikely that, with the improvement of instrumental
power, and of the means of ascertaining the ship’s time with exactness,
as great an advance beyond the present state of art and science in
finding a ship’s place at sea may take place, as was effected by the invention
of the reflecting quadrant, the calculation of lunar tables, and the improved
construction of chronometers.

BABBAGE’S DIFFERENCE MACHINE.

In the wonderful versatility of the human mind, the improvement, when
made, will very probably be made by paths where it is least expected. The
[29]great inducement to Mr. Babbage to attempt the construction of an engine
by which astronomical tables could be calculated, and even printed, by
mechanical means and with entire accuracy, was the errors in the requisite
tables. Nineteen such errors, in point of fact, were discovered in an edition
of Taylor’s Logarithms printed in 1796; some of which might have led to the
most dangerous results in calculating a ship’s place. These nineteen errors,
(of which one only was an error of the press), were pointed out in the Nautical
Almanac for 1832. In one of these errata the seat of the error was
stated to be in cosine of 14° 18′ 3″. Subsequent examination showed that
there was an error of one second in this correction; and, accordingly, in the
Nautical Almanac of the next year a new correction was necessary. But in
making the new correction of one second, a new error was committed of ten
degrees. Instead of cosine 14° 18′ 2″ the correction was printed cosine 4°
18′ 2″ making it still necessary, in some future edition of the Nautical
Almanac, to insert an erratum in an erratum of the errata in Taylor’s
logarithms.[A]

In the hope of obviating the possibility of such errors, Mr. Babbage projected
his calculating, or, as he prefers to call it, his difference machine. Although
this extraordinary undertaking has been arrested, in consequence of
the enormous expense attending its execution, enough has been achieved to
show the mechanical possibility of constructing an engine of this kind, and
even one of far higher powers, of which Mr. Babbage has matured the conception,
devised the notation, and executed the drawings—themselves an
imperishable monument of the genius of the author.

I happened on one occasion to be in company with this highly distinguished
man of science, whose social qualities are as pleasing as his constructive
talent is marvelous, when another eminent savant, Count Strzelecki,
just returned from his Oriental and Australian tour, observed that he found
among the Chinese, a great desire to know something more of Mr. Babbage’s
calculating machine, and especially whether, like their own swampan,
it could be made to go into the pocket. Mr. Babbage good-humouredly
observed that, thus far, he had been very much out of pocket with it.

INCREASED COMMAND OF INSTRUMENTAL POWER.

Whatever advances may be made in astronomical science, theoretical or
applied, I am strongly inclined to think that they will be made in connection
with an increased command of instrumental power. The natural order
in which the human mind proceeds in the acquisition of astronomical knowledge
is minute and accurate observation of the phenomena of the heavens,
the skillful discussion and analysis of these observations, and sound philosophy
in generalizing the results.

In pursuing this course, however, a difficulty presented itself, which for
ages proved insuperable—and which to the same extent has existed in no
other science, viz.: that all the leading phenomena are in their appearance
delusive. It is indeed true that in all sciences superficial observation can
only lead, except by chance, to superficial knowledge; but I know of no branch
in which, to the same degree as in astronomy, the great leading phenomena
are the reverse of true; while they yet appeal so strongly to the senses, that
men who could foretell eclipses, and who discovered the precession of the
equinoxes, still believed that the earth was at rest in the center of the universe,
and that all the host of heaven performed a daily revolution about it
as a center.

It usually happens in scientific progress, that when a great fact is at length
discovered, it approves itself at once to all competent judges. It furnishes a
solution to so many problems, and harmonizes with so many other facts,—that
all the other data as it were crystallize at once about it. In modern times,
we have often witnessed such an impatience, so to say, of great truths, to be
discovered, that it has frequently happened that they have been found out
simultaneously by more than one individual; and a disputed question of priority
is an event of very common occurrence. Not so with the true theory of
the heavens. So complete is the deception practiced on the senses, that it failed
more than once to yield to the suggestion of the truth; and it was only when
the visual organs were armed with an almost preternatural instrumental
power, that the great fact found admission to the human mind.

THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM.

It is supposed that in the very dawn of science, Pythagoras or his disciples
explained the apparent motion of the heavenly bodies about the earth by
the diurnal revolution of the earth on its axis. But this theory, though bearing
so deeply impressed upon it the great seal of truth, simplicity, was in
such glaring contrast with the evidence of the senses, that it failed of acceptance
in antiquity or the middle ages. It found no favor with minds like those
of Aristotle, Archimedes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, or any of the acute and
learned Arabian or mediæval astronomers. All their ingenuity and all their
mathematical skill were exhausted in the development of a wonderfully complicated
and ingenious, but erroneous history. The great master truth,
rejected for its simplicity, lay disregarded at their feet.

At the second dawn of science, the great fact again beamed into the mind
of Copernicus. Now, at least, in that glorious age which witnessed the invention
of printing, the great mechanical engine of intellectual progress, and
the discovery of America, we may expect that this long-hidden revelation, a
second time proclaimed, will command the assent of mankind. But the sensible
phenomena were still too strong for the theory; the glorious delusion of
the rising and the setting sun could not be overcome. Tycho de Brahe furnished
his Observatory with instruments superior in number and quality to
[31]all that had been collected before; but the great instrument of discovery,
which, by augmenting the optic power of the eye, enables it to penetrate beyond
the apparent phenomena, and to discern the true constitution of the heavenly
bodies, was wanting at Uranienburg. The observations of Tycho as
discussed by Kepler, conducted that most fervid, powerful, and sagacious mind
to the discovery of some of the most important laws of the celestial motions;
but it was not till Galileo, at Florence, had pointed his telescope to the sky,
that the Copernican system could be said to be firmly established in the
scientific world.

THE HOME OF GALILEO.

On this great name, my Friends, assembled as we are to dedicate a temple
to instrumental Astronomy, we may well pause for a moment.

There is much, in every way, in the city of Florence to excite the curiosity,
to kindle the imagination, and to gratify the taste. Sheltered on the
north by the vine-clad hills of Fiesoli, whose cyclopean walls carry back the
antiquary to ages before the Roman, before the Etruscan power, the flowery
city (Fiorenza) covers the sunny banks of the Arno with its stately palaces.
Dark and frowning piles of mediæval structure; a majestic dome, the prototype
of St. Peter’s; basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some of the mightiest
of the dead; the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the Campanile; the
house of Michael Angelo, still occupied by a descendant of his lineage and
name, his hammer, his chisel, his dividers, his manuscript poems, all as if he
had left them but yesterday; airy bridges, which seem not so much to rest
on the earth as to hover over the waters they span; the loveliest creations of
ancient art, rescued from the grave of ages again to enchant the world; the
breathing marbles of Michael Angelo, the glowing canvas of Raphael and
Titian, museums filled with medals and coins of every age from Cyrus the
younger, and gems and amulets and vases from the sepulchers of Egyptian
Pharaohs coëval with Joseph, and Etruscan Lucumons that swayed Italy before
the Romans,—libraries stored with the choicest texts of ancient literature,—gardens
of rose and orange, and pomegranate, and myrtle,—the very
air you breathe languid with music and perfume;—such is Florence. But
among all its fascinations, addressed to the sense, the memory, and the heart,
there was none to which I more frequently gave a meditative hour during a
year’s residence, than to the spot where Galileo Galilei sleeps beneath the
marble door of Santa Croce; no building on which I gazed with greater
reverence, than I did upon the modest mansion at Arcetri, villa at once and
prison, in which that venerable sage, by command of the Inquisition, passed
the sad closing years of his life. The beloved daughter on whom he had depended
to smooth his passage to the grave, laid there before him; the eyes
with which he had discovered worlds before unknown, quenched in blindness:

That was the house, “where,” says Milton (another of those of whom the
world was not worthy), “I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old—a
prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking on astronomy otherwise than as
the Dominican and Franciscan licensers thought.”[A] Great Heavens! what
a tribunal, what a culprit, what a crime! Let us thank God, my Friends,
that we live in the nineteenth century. Of all the wonders of ancient and
modern art, statues and paintings, and jewels and manuscripts,—the admiration
and the delight of ages,—there was nothing which I beheld with more
affectionate awe than that poor, rough tube, a few feet in length,—the work
of his own hands,—that very “optic glass,” through which the “Tuscan
Artist” viewed the moon,

that poor little spy-glass (for it is scarcely more) through which the human
eye first distinctly beheld the surface of the moon—first discovered the
phases of Venus, the satellites of Jupiter, and the seeming handles of Saturn—first
penetrated the dusky depths of the heavens—first pierced the clouds
of visual error, which, from the creation of the world, involved the system of
the Universe.

There are occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of rapt
enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emotions of Galileo, when, first
raising the newly-constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the
grand prophecy of Copernicus, and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the
moon. It was such another moment as that when the immortal printers of
Mentz and Strasburg received the first copy of the Bible into their hands, the
work of their divine art; like that when Columbus, through the gray dawn
of the 12th of October, 1492 (Copernicus, at the age of eighteen, was then a
student at Cracow), beheld the shores of San Salvador; like that when the
law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of Newton; like that
when Franklin saw by the stiffening fibers of the hempen cord of his kite,
that he held the lightning in his grasp; like that when Leverrier received
back from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was found.

Yes, noble Galileo, thou art right, E pur si muove. “It does move.”
Bigots may make thee recant it; but it moves, nevertheless. Yes, the
earth moves, and the planets move, and the mighty waters move, and the
great sweeping tides of air move, and the empires of men move, and the
world of thought moves, ever onward and upward to higher facts and bolder
theories. The Inquisition may seal thy lips, but they can no more stop the
progress of the great truth propounded by Copernicus, and demonstrated by
thee, than they can stop the revolving earth.

Close now, venerable sage, that sightless, tearful eye; it has seen what
man never before saw—it has seen enough. Hang up that poor little spy-glass—it
has done its work. Not Herschell nor Rosse have, comparatively,
[33]done more. Franciscans and Dominicans deride thy discoveries now; but
the time will come when, from two hundred observatories in Europe and
America, the glorious artillery of science shall nightly assault the skies, but
they shall gain no conquests in those glittering fields before which thine
shall be forgotten. Rest in peace, great Columbus of the heavens—like him
scorned, persecuted, broken-hearted!—in other ages, in distant hemispheres,
when the votaries of science, with solemn acts of consecration, shall dedicate
their stately edifices to the cause of knowledge and truth, thy name shall be
mentioned with honor.

NEW PERIODS IN ASTRONOMICAL SCIENCE.

It is not my intention, in dwelling with such emphasis upon the invention
of the telescope, to ascribe undue importance, in promoting the advancement
of science, to the increase of instrumental power. Too much, indeed, cannot
be said of the service rendered by its first application in confirming and
bringing into general repute the Copernican system; but for a considerable
time, little more was effected by the wondrous instrument than the gratification
of curiosity and taste, by the inspection of the planetary phases, and the
addition of the rings and satellites of Saturn to the solar family. Newton,
prematurely despairing of any further improvement in the refracting telescope,
applied the principle of reflection; and the nicer observations now
made, no doubt, hastened the maturity of his great discovery of the law of
gravitation; but that discovery was the work of his transcendent genius and
consummate skill.

With Bradley, in 1741, a new period commenced in instrumental astronomy,
not so much of discovery as of measurement. The superior accuracy
and minuteness with which the motions and distances of the heavenly bodies
were now observed, resulted in the accumulation of a mass of new materials,
both for tabular comparison and theoretical speculation. These materials
formed the enlarged basis of astronomical science between Newton and Sir
William Herschell. His gigantic reflectors introduced the astronomer to
regions of space before unvisited—extended beyond all previous conception
the range of the observed phenomena, and with it proportionably enlarged
the range of constructive theory. The discovery of a new primary planet
and its attendant satellites was but the first step of his progress into the
labyrinth of the heavens. Cotemporaneously with his observations, the
French astronomers, and especially La Place, with a geometrical skill
scarcely, if at all, inferior to that of its great author, resumed the whole
system of Newton, and brought every phenomenon observed since his time
within his laws. Difficulties of fact, with which he struggled in vain, gave
way to more accurate observations; and problems that defied the power of
his analysis, yielded to the modern improvements of the calculus.

HERSCHELL’S NEBULAR THEORY.

But there is no Ultima Thule in the progress of science. With the recent
augmentations of telescopic power, the details of the nebular theory, proposed
by Sir W. Herschell with such courage and ingenuity, have been drawn in
question. Many—most—of those milky patches in which he beheld what he
regarded as cosmical matter, as yet in an unformed state,—the rudimental
material of worlds not yet condensed,—have been resolved into stars, as
bright and distinct as any in the firmament. I well recall the glow of satisfaction
with which, on the 22d of September, 1847, being then connected
with the University at Cambridge, I received a letter from the venerable
director of the Observatory there, beginning with these memorable words:—”You
will rejoice with me that the great nebula in Orion has yielded to the
powers of our incomparable telescope! * * * It should be borne in mind
that this nebula, and that of Andromeda [which has been also resolved at
Cambridge], are the last strongholds of the nebular theory.”[A]

But if some of the adventurous speculations built by Sir William Herschell
on the bewildering revelations of his telescope have been since questioned,
the vast progress which has been made in sidereal astronomy, to
which, as I understand, the Dudley Observatory will be particularly devoted,
the discovery of the parallax of the fixed stars, the investigation of the
interior relations of binary and triple systems of stars, the theories for the
explanation of the extraordinary, not to say fantastic, shapes discerned in
some of the nebulous systems—whirls and spirals radiating through spaces
as vast as the orbit of Neptune;[A] the glimpses at systems beyond that to
which our sun belongs;—these are all splendid results, which may fairly be
attributed to the school of Herschell, and will for ever insure no secondary
place to that name in the annals of science.

RELATIONSHIP OF THE LIBERAL ARTS.

In the remarks which I have hitherto made, I have had mainly in view
the direct connection of astronomical science with the uses of life and the
service of man. But a generous philosophy contemplates the subject in
higher relations. It is a remark as old, at least, as Plato, and is repeated
from him more than once by Cicero, that all the liberal arts have a common
bond and relationship.[A] The different sciences contemplate as their immediate
object the different departments of animate and inanimate nature; but
this great system itself is but one, and its parts are so interwoven with each
other, that the most extraordinary relations and unexpected analogies are
[35]constantly presenting themselves; and arts and sciences seemingly the least
connected, render to each other the most effective assistance.

The history of electricity, galvanism, and magnetism, furnishes the most
striking illustration of this remark. Commencing with the meteorological
phenomena of our own atmosphere, and terminating with the observation of
the remotest heavens, it may well be adduced, on an occasion like the
present. Franklin demonstrated the identity of lightning and the electric
fluid. This discovery gave a great impulse to electrical research, with little
else in view but the means of protection from the thunder-cloud. A purely
accidental circumstance led the physician Galvani, at Bologna, to trace the
mysterious element, under conditions entirely novel, both of development
and application. In this new form it became, in the hands of Davy, the
instrument of the most extraordinary chemical operations; and earths and
alkalis, touched by the creative wire, started up into metals that float on
water, and kindle in the air. At a later period, the closest affinities are observed
between electricity and magnetism, on the one hand; while, on the
other, the relations of polarity are detected between acids and alkalis.
Plating and gilding henceforth become electrical processes. In the last
applications of the same subtle medium, it has become the messenger of
intelligence across the land and beneath the sea; and is now employed by
the astronomer to ascertain the difference of longitudes, to transfer the beats
of the clock from one station to another, and to record the moment of his
observations with automatic accuracy. How large a share has been borne by
America in these magnificent discoveries and applications, among the most
brilliant achievements of modern science, will sufficiently appear from the
repetition of the names of Franklin, Henry, Morse, Walker, Mitchell, Lock,
and Bond.

VERSATILITY OF GENIUS.

It has sometimes happened, whether from the harmonious relations to each
other of every department of science, or from rare felicity of individual genius,
that the most extraordinary intellectual versatility has been manifested by
the same person. Although Newton’s transcendent talent did not blaze out
in childhood, yet as a boy he discovered great aptitude for mechanical contrivance.
His water-clock, self-moving vehicle, and mill, were the wonder of
the village; the latter propelled by a living mouse. Sir David Brewster
represents the accounts as differing, whether the mouse was made to advance
“by a string attached to its tail,” or by “its unavailing attempts to reach a
portion of corn placed above the wheel.” It seems more reasonable to conclude
that the youthful discoverer of the law of gravitation intended by the
combination of these opposite attractions to produce a balanced movement.
It is consoling to the average mediocrity of the race to perceive in these sportive
assays, that the mind of Newton passed through the stage of boyhood. But
emerging from boyhood, what a bound it made, as from earth to heaven!
[36]Hardly commencing bachelor of arts, at the age of twenty-four, he untwisted
the golden and silver threads of the solar spectrum, simultaneously or soon
after conceived the method of fluxions, and arrived at the elemental idea of
universal gravity before he had passed to his master’s degree. Master of
Arts indeed! That degree, if no other, was well bestowed. Universities are
unjustly accused of fixing science in stereotype. That diploma is enough of
itself to redeem the honors of academical parchment from centuries of learned
dullness and scholastic dogmatism.

But the great object of all knowledge is to enlarge and purify the soul, to
fill the mind with noble contemplations, to furnish a refined pleasure, and to
lead our feeble reason from the works of nature up to its great Author and
Sustainer. Considering this as the ultimate end of science, no branch of it
can surely claim precedence of Astronomy. No other science furnishes such
a palpable embodiment of the abstractions which lie at the foundation of our
intellectual system; the great ideas of time, and space, and extension, and
magnitude, and number, and motion, and power. How grand the conception
of the ages on ages required for several of the secular equations of the solar
system; of distances from which the light of a fixed star would not reach us
in twenty millions of years, of magnitudes compared with which the earth is
but a foot-ball; of starry hosts—suns like our own—numberless as the sands
on the shore; of worlds and systems shooting through the infinite spaces,
with a velocity compared with which the cannon-ball is a way-worn, heavy-paced
traveler![A]

THE SPECTACLE OF THE HEAVENS.

Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our
conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present, even to the unaided sight,
scenes of glory which words are too feeble to describe. I had occasion, a few
weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston; and for this
purpose rose at 2 o’clock in the morning. Every thing around was wrapped
in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour
the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene midsummer’s
night; the sky was without a cloud—the winds were whist. The moon, then
in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral luster
but little affected by her presence; Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of
the day; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in
the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly
discovered glories from the naked eye in the south; the steady Pointers, far
beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the north to their
sovereign.

Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded,
the timid approach of twilight became more perceptible; the intense blue of
the sky began to soften, the smaller stars, like little children, went first to
rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright
[37]constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the
wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels hidden from mortal eyes
shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the
glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great
watch-stars shut up their holy eyes; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks
of purple soon blushed along the sky; the whole celestial concave was filled
with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from
above in one great ocean of radiance; till at length, as we reached the Blue
Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the
dewy teardrops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds
the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of
day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his course.

I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, who in the
morning of the world went up to the hill-tops of Central Asia, and ignorant
of the true God, adored the most glorious work of his hand. But I am filled
with amazement, when I am told that in this enlightened age, and in the heart
of the Christian world, there are persons who can witness this daily manifestation
of the power and wisdom of the Creator, and yet say in their hearts,
“There is no God.”

UNDISCOVERED BODIES.

Numerous as are the heavenly bodies visible to the naked eye, and glorious
as are their manifestations, it is probable that in our own system there are
great numbers as yet undiscovered. Just two hundred years ago this year,
Huyghens announced the discovery of one satellite of Saturn, and expressed
the opinion that the six planets and six satellites then known, and making up
the perfect number of twelve, composed the whole of our planetary system. In
1729 an astronomical writer expressed the opinion that there might be other
bodies in our system, but that the limit of telescopic power had been reached,
and no further discoveries were likely to be made.[A] The orbit of one comet
only had been definitively calculated. Since that time the power of the telescope
has been indefinitely increased; two primary planets of the first class,
ten satellites, and forty-three small planets revolving between Mars and
Jupiter, have been discovered, the orbits of six or seven hundred comets,
some of brief period, have been ascertained;—and it has been computed,
that hundreds of thousands of these mysterious bodies wander through our
system. There is no reason to think that all the primary planets, which revolve
about the sun, have been discovered. An indefinite increase in the
number of asteroids may be anticipated; while outside of Neptune, between
our sun and the nearest fixed star, supposing the attraction of the sun to
prevail through half the distance, there is room for ten more primary
planets succeeding each other at distances increasing in a geometrical ratio.
The first of these will, unquestionably, be discovered as soon as the perturbations
of Neptune shall have been accurately observed; and with maps
[38]of the heavens, on which the smallest telescopic stars are laid down, it may
be discovered much sooner.

THE VASTNESS OF CREATION.

But it is when we turn our observation and our thoughts from our own
system, to the systems which lie beyond it in the heavenly spaces, that we
approach a more adequate conception of the vastness of creation. All analogy
teaches us that the sun which gives light to us is but one of those countless
stellar fires which deck the firmament, and that every glittering star in that
shining host is the center of a system as vast and as full of subordinate luminaries
as our own. Of these suns—centers of planetary systems—thousands
are visible to the naked eye, millions are discovered by the telescope. Sir
John Herschell, in the account of his operations at the Cape of Good Hope
(p. 381) calculates that about five and a half millions of stars are visible enough
to be distinctly counted in a twenty-foot reflector, in both hemispheres. He
adds, that “the actual number is much greater, there can be little doubt.”
His illustrious father, estimated on one occasion that 125,000 stars passed
through the field of his forty foot reflector in a quarter of an hour. This
would give 12,000,000 for the entire circuit of the heavens, in a single telescopic
zone; and this estimate was made under the assumption that the
nebulæ were masses of luminous matter not yet condensed into suns.

These stupendous calculations, however, form but the first column of the
inventory of the universe. Faint white specks are visible, even to the naked
eye of a practiced observer in different parts of the heavens. Under high
magnifying powers, several thousands of such spots are visible,—no longer
however, faint, white specks, but many of them resolved by powerful telescopes
into vast aggregations of stars, each of which may, with propriety, be compared
with the milky way. Many of these nebulæ, however, resisted the
power of Sir Wm. Herschell’s great reflector, and were, accordingly, still regarded
by him as masses of unformed matter, not yet condensed into suns.
This, till a few years since, was, perhaps, the prevailing opinion; and the
nebular theory filled a large space in modern astronomical science. But with
the increase of instrumental power, especially under the mighty grasp of Lord
Rosse’s gigantic reflector, and the great refractors at Pulkova and Cambridge,
the most irresolvable of these nebulæ have given way; and the better opinion
now is, that every one of them is a galaxy, like our own milky way, composed
of millions of suns. In other words, we are brought to the bewildering conclusion
that thousands of these misty specks, the greater part of them too faint
to be seen with the naked eye, are, not each a universe like our solar system,
but each a “swarm” of universes of unappreciable magnitude.[A] The mind
sinks, overpowered by the contemplation. We repeat the words, but they
no longer convey distinct ideas to the understanding.

CONCEPTIONS OF THE UNIVERSE.

But these conclusions, however vast their comprehension, carry us but
another step forward in the realms of sidereal astronomy. A proper motion
in space of our sun, and of the fixed stars as we call them, has long been believed
to exist. Their vast distances only prevent its being more apparent.
The great improvement of instruments of measurement within the last generation
has not only established the existence of this motion, but has pointed
to the region in the starry vault around which our whole solar and stellar system,
with its myriad of attendant planetary worlds, appears to be performing
a mighty revolution. If, then, we assume that outside of the system to which
we belong and in which our sun is but a star like Aldebaran or Sirius, the
different nebulæ of which we have spoken,—thousands of which spot the
heavens—constitute a distinct family of universes, we must, following the
guide of analogy, attribute to each of them also, beyond all the revolutions of
their individual attendant planetary systems, a great revolution, comprehending
the whole; while the same course of analogical reasoning would lead us
still further onward, and in the last analysis, require us to assume a transcendental
connection between all these mighty systems—a universe of universes,
circling round in the infinity of space, and preserving its equilibrium by the
same laws of mutual attraction which bind the lower worlds together.

It may be thought that conceptions like these are calculated rather to depress
than to elevate us in the scale of being; that, banished as he is by these
contemplations to a corner of creation, and there reduced to an atom, man sinks
to nothingness in this infinity of worlds. But a second thought corrects the
impression. These vast contemplations are well calculated to inspire awe,
but not abasement. Mind and matter are incommensurable. An immortal
soul, even while clothed in “this muddy vesture of decay,” is in the eye of
God and reason, a purer essence than the brightest sun that lights the depths
of heaven. The organized human eye, instinct with life and soul, which,
gazing through the telescope, travels up to the cloudy speck in the handle of
Orion’s sword, and bids it blaze forth into a galaxy as vast as ours, stands
higher in the order of being than all that host of luminaries. The intellect of
Newton which discovered the law that holds the revolving worlds together,
is a nobler work of God than a universe of universes of unthinking matter.

If, still treading the loftiest paths of analogy, we adopt the supposition,—to
me I own the grateful supposition,—that the countless planetary worlds
which attend these countless suns, are the abodes of rational beings like man,
instead of bringing back from this exalted conception a feeling of insignificance,
as if the individuals of our race were but poor atoms in the infinity of
being, I regard it, on the contrary, as a glory of our human nature, that it
belongs to a family which no man can number of rational natures like itself.
In the order of being they may stand beneath us, or they may stand above
us; he may well be content with his place, who is made “a little lower than
the angels.”

CONTEMPLATION OF THE HEAVENS.

Finally, my Friends, I believe there is no contemplation better adapted to
awaken devout ideas than that of the heavenly bodies,—no branch of natural
science which bears clearer testimony to the power and wisdom of God than
that to which you this day consecrate a temple. The heart of the ancient
world, with all the prevailing ignorance of the true nature and motions of the
heavenly orbs, was religiously impressed by their survey. There is a passage
in one of those admirable philosophical treatises of Cicero composed
in the decline of life, as a solace under domestic bereavement and patriotic
concern at the impending convulsions of the state, in which, quoting from
some lost work of Aristotle, he treats the topic in a manner which almost
puts to shame the teachings of Christian wisdom.

“Præclare ergo Aristoteles, ‘Si essent,’ inquit, ‘qui sub terra semper habitavissent,
bonis et illustribus domiciliis quæ essent ornata signis atque picturis,
instructaque rebus iis omnibus quibus abundant ii qui beati putantur, nec
tamen exissent unquam supra terram; accepissent autem fama et auditione, esse
quoddam numen et vim Deorum,—deinde aliquo tempore patefactis terræ
faucibus ex illis abditis sedibus evadere in hæc loca quæ nos incolimus, atque
exire potuissent; cum repente terram et maria coelumque, vidissent; nubium
magnitudinem ventorumque vim, cognovissent; aspexissentque solem, ejusque
tum magnitudinem, pulchritudinemque; tum etiam efficientiam cognovissent, quod
is diem efficeret, toto cœlo luce diffusa; cum autem terras nox opacasset, tum
cœlum totum cernerent astris distinctum et ornatum, lunæque luminum varietatem
tum crescentis tum senescentis, corumque omnium ortus et occasus atque
in æternitate ratos immutabilesque cursus;—hæc cum viderent, profecto et esse
Deos, et hæc tanta opera Deorum esse, arbitrarentur.”[A]

There is much by day to engage the attention of the Observatory; the
sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions, the spots on his disc (to us the
faint indications of movements of unimagined grandeur in his luminous atmosphere),
a solar eclipse, a transit of the inferior planets, the mysteries of
the spectrum;—all phenomena of vast importance and interest. But night is
the astronomer’s accepted time; he goes to his delightful labors when the
[41]busy world goes to its rest. A dark pall spreads over the resorts of active
life; terrestrial objects, hill and valley, and rock and stream, and the abodes
of men disappear; but the curtain is drawn up which concealed the heavenly
hosts. There they shine and there they move, as they moved and shone to
the eyes of Newton and Galileo, of Kepler and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and
Hipparchus; yes, as they moved and shone when the morning stars sang together,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy. All has changed on earth;
but the glorious heavens remain unchanged. The plow passes over the
site of mighty cities,—the homes of powerful nations are desolate, the languages
they spoke are forgotten; but the stars that shone for them are
shining for us; the same eclipses run their steady cycle; the same equinoxes
call out the flowers of spring, and send the husbandman to the harvest;
the sun pauses at either tropic as he did when his course began; and
sun and moon, and planet and satellite, and star and constellation and galaxy,
still bear witness to the power, the wisdom, and the love, which placed them
in the heavens and uphold them there.