"Aside from the study of astronomy, there is the same enjoyment in a
night upon the housetop, with the stars, as in the midst of other grand
scenery; there is the same subdued quiet and grateful seriousness; a
calm to the troubled spirit, and a hope to the desponding.

"Even astronomers who are as well cared for as are those of Cambridge
have their annoyances, and even men as skilled as they are make
blunders.

"I have known one of the Bonds,[Footnote: Of the Harvard College
Observatory.] with great effort, turn that huge telescope down to the
horizon to make an observation upon a blazing comet seen there, and when
he had found it in his glass, find also that it was not a comet, but the
nebula of Andromeda, a cluster of stars on which he had spent much time,
and which he had made a special object of study.

"Dec. 26, 1854. They were wonderful men, the early astronomers. That was
a great conception, which now seems to us so simple, that the earth
turns upon its axis, and a still greater one that it revolves about the
sun (to show this last was worth a man's lifetime, and it really almost
cost the life of Galileo). Somehow we are ready to think that they had a
wider field than we for speculation, that truth being all unknown it was
easier to take the first step in its paths. But is the region of truth
limited? Is it not infinite?... We know a few things which were once
hidden, and being known they seem easy; but there are the flashings of
the Northern Lights--'Across the lift they start and shift;' there is
the conical zodiacal beam seen so beautifully in the early evenings of
spring and the early mornings of autumn; there are the startling comets,
whose use is all unknown; there are the brightening and flickering
variable stars, whose cause is all unknown; and the meteoric