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: