situation of this town on the frontier between Prussia and Poland,
with the commodious waterway offered by the river, made it a place of
considerable trade. A view of the town, as it was at the time of the
birth of Copernicus, is here given. The walls, with their
watch-towers, will be noted, and the strategic importance which the
situation of Thorn gave to it in the fifteenth century still belongs
thereto, so much so that the German Government recently constituted
the town a fortress of the first class.

Copernicus, the astronomer, whose discoveries make him the great
predecessor of Kepler and Newton, did not come from a noble family,
as certain other early astronomers have done, for his father was a
tradesman. Chroniclers are, however, careful to tell us that one of
his uncles was a bishop. We are not acquainted with any of those
details of his childhood or youth which are often of such interest in
other cases where men have risen to exalted fame. It would appear
that the young Nicolaus, for such was his Christian name, received
his education at home until such time as he was deemed sufficiently
advanced to be sent to the University at Cracow. The education that
he there obtained must have been in those days of a very primitive
description, but Copernicus seems to have availed himself of it to
the utmost. He devoted himself more particularly to the study of
medicine, with the view of adopting its practice as the profession of
his life. The tendencies of the future astronomer were, however,
revealed in the fact that he worked hard at mathematics, and, like
one of his illustrious successors, Galileo, the practice of the art
of painting had for him a very great interest, and in it he obtained
some measure of success.

By the time he was twenty-seven years old, it would seem that