One more incident is wanting to complete the list of the memorable
occurrences which signalize the year 1609, and one most worthy to be
remembered by us on this occasion. Cotemporaneously with the events
which I have enumerated--eras of history, dates of empire, the
starting-point in some of the greatest political, social, and moral
revolutions in our annals, an Italian astronomer, who had heard of the
magnifying glasses which had been made in Holland, by which distant
objects could be brought seemingly near, caught at the idea, constructed
a telescope, and pointed it to the heavens. Yes, my friends, in the same
year in which Hudson discovered your river and the site of your ancient
town, in which Robinson made his melancholy hegira from Amsterdam to
Leyden, Galileo Galilei, with a telescope, the work of his own hands,
discovered the phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter; and now,
after the lapse of less than two centuries and a half, on a spot then
embosomed in the wilderness--the covert of the least civilized of all
the races of men--we are assembled--descendants of the Hollanders,
descendants of the Pilgrims, in this ancient and prosperous city, to
inaugurate the establishment of a first-class Astronomical Observatory.