"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 coelo luce diffusa; cum autem terras nox
opacasset, tum coelum 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 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;