toiled, or a Maskelyne or a Piazzi has worn out his venerable age in
watching, the answer is--not to settle mere speculative points in the
doctrine of the universe; not to cater for the pride of man by
refined inquiries into the remoter mysteries of nature; not to trace
the path of our system through space, or its history through past and
future eternities. These, indeed, are noble ends and which I am far
from any thought of depreciating; the mind swells in their
contemplation, and attains in their pursuit an expansion and a
hardihood which fit it for the boldest enterprise. But the direct
practical utility of such labours is fully worthy of their
speculative grandeur. The stars are the landmarks of the universe;
and, amidst the endless and complicated fluctuations of our system,
seem placed by its Creator as guides and records, not merely to
elevate our minds by the contemplation of what is vast, but to teach
us to direct our actions by reference to what is immutable in His
works. It is, indeed, hardly possible to over-appreciate their value
in this point of view. Every well-determined star, from the moment
its place is registered, becomes to the astronomer, the geographer,
the navigator, the surveyor, a point of departure which can never
deceive or fail him, the same for ever and in all places, of a
delicacy so extreme as to be a test for every instrument yet invented
by man, yet equally adapted for the most ordinary purposes; as
available for regulating a town clock as for conducting a navy to the
Indies; as effective for mapping down the intricacies of a petty
barony as for adjusting the boundaries of Transatlantic empires. When
once its place has been thoroughly ascertained and carefully
recorded, the brazen circle with which that useful work was done may
moulder, the marble pillar may totter on its base, and the astronomer
himself survive only in the gratitude of posterity; but the record
remains, and transfuses all its own exactness into every