It was, doubtless, a greater weakness in his character that he indulged

his turn for satire, without being able to bear retaliation. His jocular

habits, too, sometimes led him into disagreeable positions. When the

Duke of Brunswick was dining with him at Uraniburg, the Duke said,

towards the end of the dinner, that, as it was late, he must be going.

Tycho jocularly remarked that this could not be done without his

permission; upon which the Duke rose and left the party, without taking

leave of his host. Tycho became indignant in his turn, and continued to

sit at table; but, as if repenting of what he had done, he followed the

Duke, who was on his way to the ship, and, calling upon him, displayed

the cup in his hand, as if he had washed out his offence by a draught of

wine.

Tycho was a man of true piety, and cherished the deepest veneration for

the Sacred Scriptures, and for the great truths which they reveal. Their

principles regulated his conduct, and their promises animated his hopes.

His familiarity with the wonders of the heavens increased, instead of

diminishing, his admiration of Divine wisdom, and his daily conversation

was elevated by a constant reference to a superintending Providence.

As a practical astronomer, Tycho has not been surpassed by any observer

of ancient or of modern times. The splendour and number of his

instruments, the ingenuity which he exhibited in inventing new ones and

in improving and adding to those which were formerly known, and his

skill and assiduity as an observer, have given a character to his

labours, and a value to his observations, which will be appreciated to

the latest posterity. The appearance of the new star in 1572 led him to

form a catalogue of 777 stars, vastly superior in accuracy to those of

Hipparchus and Ulugh Beig. His improvements on the lunar theory were

still more valuable. He discovered the important inequality called the

_variation_, and also the annual inequality which depends on the

position of the earth in its orbit. He discovered, also, the inequality

in the inclination of the moon's orbit, and in the motion of her nodes.

He determined with new accuracy the astronomical refractions from an

altitude of 45 deg. down to the horizon, where he found it to be 34'; and he

made a vast collection of observations on the planets, which formed the

groundwork of Kepler's discoveries and the basis of the Rudolphine

Tables. Tycho's powers of observation were not equalled by his capacity

for general views. It was, perhaps, owing more to his veneration for the

Scriptures than to the vanity of giving his name to a new system that he

rejected the Copernican hypothesis. Hence he was led to propose a new

system, called the Tychonic, in which the earth is stationary in the

centre of the universe, while the sun, with all the other planets and

comets revolving round him, performs his daily revolution about the

earth. This arrangement of the planets afforded a sufficient explanation

of the various phenomena of the heavens; and as it was consistent with

the language of Scripture, and conformable to the indications of the

senses, it found many supporters, notwithstanding the physical absurdity

of making the whole system revolve round one of the smallest of the

planets.

It is a painful transition to pass from the astronomical labours of

Tycho to his astrological and chemical pursuits. That Tycho studied and

practised astrology has been universally admitted. He calculated the

nativity of the Emperor Rudolph, and foretold that his relations would

make some attempts upon his life. The credulous Emperor confided in the

prediction, and when the conduct of his brother seemed to justify his

belief, he confined himself to his palace, and fell a prey to the fear

which it inspired. Tycho, however, seems to have entirely renounced his

astrological faith in his latter days; and Kepler states,[43] in the

most pointed manner, that Tycho carried on his astronomical labours with

his mind entirely free from the superstitions of astrology; that he

derided and detested the vanity and knavery of astrologers, and was

convinced that the stars exercised no influence on the destinies of men.

[43] In his Preface to the Rudolphine Tables.

Although Tycho informed Rothman that he devoted as much labour and

expense to the study of terrestrial (chemistry) as he did to that of

celestial astronomy, yet it is a singular fact that he never published

any account of his experiments, nor has he left among his writings any

trace of his chemical inquiries. He pretended, however, to have made

discoveries in the science, and we should have been disposed to

reprobate the apology which he makes for not publishing them, did we not

know that it had been frequently given by the other alchemists of the

age--"On consideration," says he, "and by the advice of the most learned

men, I thought it improper to unfold the secrets of the art (of alchemy)

to the vulgar, as few persons were capable of using its mysteries to

advantage and without detriment."

Admitting then, as we must do, that Tycho was not only a professed

alchemist, but that he was practically occupied with its pursuits, and

continually misled by its delusions, it may not be uninteresting to the

reader to consider how far a belief in alchemy, and a practice of its

arts, have a foundation in the weakness of human nature; and to what

extent they are compatible with the piety and elevated moral feeling by

which our author was distinguished.

In the history of human errors two classes of impostors, of very

different characters, present themselves to our notice--those who

wilfully deluded their species, and those who permitted their species to

delude themselves. The first of those classes consisted of the selfish

tyrants who upheld an unjust supremacy by systematic delusions, and of

grovelling mountebanks who quenched their avaricious thirst at the

fountains of credulity and ignorance. The second class comprehended

spirits of a nobler mould: It embraced the speculative enthusiasts, whom

the love of fame and of truth urged onward, in a fruitless research,

and those great lights of knowledge and of virtue, who, while they stood

forward as the landmarks of the age which they adorned, had neither the

intellectual nor the moral courage to divest themselves of the

supernatural radiance with which the ignorance of the vulgar had

encircled them.

The thrones and shrines, which delusion once sustained even in the

civilized quarter of the globe, are for ever fallen, and that civil and

religious liberty, which in past ages was kept down by the marvellous

exhibitions of science to the senses, is now maintained by its

application to the reason of man. The charlatans, whether they deal in

moral or in physical wonders, form a race which is never extinct. They

migrate to the different zones of the social system, and though they

change their place, and their purposes, and their victims, yet their

character and motives remain the same. The philosophical mind,

therefore, is not disposed to study either of these varieties of

impostors; but the other two families which compose the second class are

objects of paramount interest. The eccentricities and even the

obliquities of great minds merit the scrutiny of the metaphysician and

the moralist, and they derive a peculiar interest from the state of

society in which they are exhibited. Had Cardan and Cornelius Agrippa

lived in modern times, their vanity and self-importance would have been

checked by the forms of society, and even if their harmless pretensions

had been displayed, they would have disappeared in the blaze of their

genius and knowledge. But nursed in superstition, and educated in dark

and turbulent times, when every thing intellectual was in a state of

restless transition, the genius and character of great men necessarily

reflected the peculiarities of the age in which they lived.

Had history transmitted to us correct details of the leading alchemists

and scientific magicians of the dark ages, we should have been able to

analyse their actions and their opinions, and trace them, probably, to

the ordinary principles by which the human mind is in every age

influenced and directed. But when a great man has once become an object

either of interest or of wonder, and still more when he is considered as

the possessor of knowledge and skill which transcend the capacity of the

age, he is soon transformed into the hero of romance. His powers are

overrated, his deeds exaggerated, and he becomes the subject of idle

legends, which acquire a firmer hold on credulity from the slight

sprinkling of truth with which they are seasoned. To disclaim the

possession of lofty attributes thus ascribed to great men is a degree of

humility which is not often exercised. But even when this species of

modesty is displayed, it never fails to defeat its object. It but calls

forth a deeper homage, and fixes the demigod more firmly in his shrine.

The history of learning furnishes us with many examples of that species

of delusion in which a great mind submits itself to vulgar adulation,

and renounces unwillingly, if it renounces at all, the unenviable

reputation of supernatural agency. In cases where self-interest and

ambition are the basis of this peculiarity of temperament, and in an age

when the conjuror and the alchemist were the companions and even the

idols of princes, it is easy to trace the steps by which a gifted sage

retains his ascendancy among the ignorant. The hecatomb which is

sacrificed to the magician, he receives as an oblation to his science,

and conscious of possessing real endowments, the idol devours the meats

that are offered to him without analysing the motives and expectations

under which he is fed. But even when the idolater and his god are not

placed in this transverse relation, the love of power or of notoriety is

sufficient to induce good men to lend a too willing ear to vulgar

testimony in favour of themselves; and in our own times it is not common

to repudiate the unmerited cheers of a popular assembly, or to offer a

contradiction to fictitious tales which record our talents or our

courage, our charity or our piety.

The conduct of the scientific alchemists of the thirteenth, fourteenth,

and fifteenth centuries presents a problem of very difficult solution.

When we consider that a gas, a fluid, and a solid may consist of the

very same ingredients in different proportions; that a virulent poison

may differ from the most wholesome food only in the difference of

quantity of the very same elements; that gold and silver, and lead and

mercury, and indeed all the metals, may be extracted from transparent

crystals, which scarcely differ in their appearance from a piece of

common salt or a bit of sugarcandy; and that diamond is nothing more

than charcoal,--we need not greatly wonder at the extravagant

expectation that the precious metals and the noblest gems might be

procured from the basest materials. These expectations, too, must have

been often excited by the startling results of their daily experiments.

The most ignorant compounder of simples could not fail to witness the

magical transformations of chemical action; and every new product must

have added to the probability that the tempting doublets of gold and

silver might be thrown from the dice-box with which he was gambling.

But when the precious metals were found in lead and copper by the action

of powerful re-agents, it was natural to suppose that they had been

actually formed during the process; and men of well-regulated minds even

might have thus been led to embark in new adventures to procure a more

copious supply, without any insult being offered to sober reason, or any

injury inflicted on sound morality.

When an ardent and ambitious mind is once dazzled with the fascination

of some lofty pursuit, where gold is the object, or fame the impulse, it

is difficult to pause in a doubtful career, and to make a voluntary

shipwreck of the reputation which has been staked. Hope still cheers

the aspirant from failure to failure, till the loss of fortune and the

decay of credit disturb the serenity of his mind, and hurry him on to

the last resource of baffled ingenuity and disappointed ambition. The

philosopher thus becomes an impostor; and by the pretended transmutation

of the baser metals into gold, or the discovery of the philosopher's

stone, he attempts to sustain his sinking reputation, and recover the

fortune he has lost. The communication of the great secret is now the

staple commodity with which he is to barter, and the grand talisman with

which he is to conjure. It can be imparted only to a chosen few--to

those among the opulent who merit it by their virtues, and can acquire

it by their diligence, and the divine vengeance is threatened against

its disclosure. A process commencing in fraud and terminating in

mysticism is conveyed to the wealthy aspirant, or instilled into the

young enthusiast, and the grand mystery passes current for a season,

till some cautious professor of the art, like Tycho, denounces its

publication as detrimental to society.

Among the extravagant pretensions of the alchemists, that of forming a

universal medicine was perhaps not the most irrational. It was only when

they pretended to cure every disease, and to confer longevity, that they

did violence to reason. The success of the Arabian physicians in the use

of mercurial preparations naturally led to the belief that other

medicines, still more general in their application, and efficacious in

their healing powers, might yet be brought to light; and we have no

doubt that many substantial discoveries were the result of such

overstrained expectations. Tycho was not merely a believer in the

medical dogmas of the alchemists, he was actually the discoverer of a

new _elixir_, which went by his name, and which was sold in every

apothecary's shop as a specific against the epidemic diseases which were

then ravaging Germany. The Emperor Rudolph having heard of this

celebrated medicine, obtained a small portion of it from Tycho by the

hands of the Governor of Brandisium; but, not satisfied with the gift,

he seems to have applied to Tycho for an account of the method of

preparing it. Tycho accordingly addressed to the Emperor a long letter,

dated September 7, 1599, containing a minute account of the process.

The base of this remarkable medicine is Venetian treacle, which

undergoes an infinity of chemical operations and admixtures before it is

ready for the patient. When properly prepared he assures the Emperor

that it is better than gold, and that it may be made still more valuable

by mixing with it a single scruple either of the tincture of corals, or

sapphire, or hyacinth, or a solution of pearls, or of potable gold, if

it can be obtained free of all corrosive matter! In order to render the

medicine _universal_ for all diseases which can be cured by

perspiration, and which, he says, form a third of those which attack the

human frame, he combines it with antimony, a well known sudorific in the

present practice of physic. Tycho concludes his letter by humbly

beseeching the Emperor to keep the process secret, and reserve the

medicine for himself alone!

The same disposition of mind which made Tycho an astrologer and an

alchemist, inspired him with a singular love of the marvellous.

He had various automata with which he delighted to astonish the

peasants; and by means of invisible bells, which communicated with every

part of his establishment, and which rung with the gentlest touch, he

had great pleasure in bringing any of his pupils suddenly before

strangers, muttering at a particular time the words "Come hither,

Peter," as if he had commanded their presence by some supernatural

agency. If, on leaving home, he met with an old woman or a hare, he

returned immediately to his house: But the most extraordinary of all his

peculiarities remains to be noticed. When he lived at Uraniburg he

maintained an idiot of the name of Lep, who lay at his feet whenever he

sat down to dinner, and whom he fed with his own hand. Persuaded that

his mind, when moved, was capable of foretelling future events, Tycho

carefully marked every thing he said. Lest it should be supposed that

this was done to no purpose, Longomontanus relates that when any person

in the island was sick, Lep never, when interrogated, failed to predict

whether the patient would live or die. It is stated also in the letters

of Wormius, both to Gassendi and Peyter, that when Tycho was absent, and

his pupils became very noisy and merry in consequence of not expecting

him soon home, the idiot, who was present, exclaimed, _Juncher xaa

laudit_, "Your master has arrived." On another occasion, when Tycho had

sent two of his pupils to Copenhagen on business, and had fixed the day

of their return, Lep surprised him on that day while he was at dinner,

by exclaiming, "Behold your pupils are bathing in the sea." Tycho,

suspecting that they were shipwrecked, sent some person to the

observatory to look for their boat. The messenger brought back word that

he saw some persons wet on the shore, and in distress, with a boat upset

at a great distance. These stories have been given by Gassendi, and may

be viewed as specimens of the superstition of the age.

Tycho left behind him a wife and six children, but even in the time of

Gassendi nothing was known of their history, excepting that Tengnagel,

who married one of the daughters, gave up his scientific pursuits, and,

having been admitted among the Emperor's counsellors, was employed in

several of his embassies.

The instruments of Tycho were purchased from his heirs, by the Emperor,

for 22,000 crowns. They were shut up in the house of Curtius, and were

treated with such veneration, that no astronomer, not even Kepler

himself, was permitted to see or to use them.

Here they remained till the death of the Emperor Matthias, in 1619, when

the troubles in Bohemia took place. When Prague was taken by the forces

of the Elector Palatine, the instruments were carried off, and some were

destroyed, and others converted to different purposes. The great brass

globe, however, was saved. It was first carried to Niessa, the episcopal

city of Silesia; and having been presented to the College of Jesuits, it

was preserved in their museum, till Udalric, the son of Christian, King

of Denmark, took Niessa in 1632. The globe was recognized as having

belonged to Tycho, and it was carried in triumph to Denmark. An

inscription was written upon it by Longomontanus, and it was deposited

with some pomp in the Library of the Academy of Sciences.

After Tycho left Huen, the island was transferred to some of the Danish

nobility, and the following brief but melancholy description of it was

given by Wormius. "There is, in the island, a field where Uraniburg

was." The scientific antiquities of Huen, have been more recently

described by Mr Cox, in his travels through Denmark.

"We landed," says he, "on the south west part in a small bay, just

below the place where a stream, supplied by numerous pools and fish

ponds, falls into the sea. We ascended the shore, which is clothed with

short herbage, crossed the stream, and passed over a gently waving

surface, gradually sloping towards the sea, and walked a mile to a farm

house, standing in the middle of the island, inhabited by Mr Schaw, a

Swedish gentleman, to whom the greater part of the island belongs. He

lives here in summer, but in winter resides at Landscrona. This dwelling

is the same as existed in Tycho Brahe's time, and was the farm house

belonging to his estate. A guide, whom we obtained from Mr Schaw,

conducted us to the remains of Tycho's mansion, which are near the

house, and consist of little more than a mound of earth which enclosed

the garden, and two pits, the sites of his mansion and observatory."[44]

[44] Cox's Travels in Poland, &c., vol. v., p. 189, 190.

LIFE OF JOHN KEPLER.

CHAPTER I.

_Kepler's Birth in 1571--His Family--And early Education--The

Distresses and Poverty of his Family--He enters the Monastic School

of Maulbronn--And is admitted into the University of Tubingen,

where he distinguishes himself, and takes his Degrees--He is

appointed Professor of Astronomy and Greek in 1594--His first

speculations on the Orbits of the Planets--Account of their

Progress and Failure--His "Cosmographical Mystery" published--He

Marries a Widow in 1597--Religious troubles at Gratz--He retires

from thence to Hungary--Visits Tycho at Prague in 1600--Returns to

Gratz, which he again quits for Prague--He is taken Ill on the

road--Is appointed Tycho's Assistant in 1601--Succeeds Tycho as

Imperial Mathematician--His Work on the New Star of 1604--Singular

specimen of it._

It is a remarkable circumstance in the history of science, that

astronomy should have been cultivated at the same time by three such

distinguished men as Tycho, Kepler, and Galileo. While Tycho, in the

54th year of his age, was observing the heavens at Prague, Kepler, only

30 years old, was applying his wild genius to the determination of the

orbit of Mars, and Galileo, at the age of 36, was about to direct the

telescope to the unexplored regions of space. The diversity of gifts

which Providence assigned to these three philosophers was no less

remarkable. Tycho was destined to lay the foundation of modern

astronomy, by a vast series of accurate observations made with the

largest and the finest instruments; it was the proud lot of Kepler to

deduce the laws of the planetary orbits from the observations of his

predecessors; while Galileo enjoyed the more dazzling honour of

discovering by the telescope new celestial bodies, and new systems of

worlds.

John Kepler, the youngest of this illustrious band, was born at the

imperial city of Weil, in the duchy of Wirtemberg, on the 21st December

1571. His parents, Henry Kepler and Catherine Guldenmann, were both of

noble family, but had been reduced to indigence by their own bad

conduct. Henry Kepler had been long in the service of the Duke of

Wirtemberg as a petty officer, and in that capacity had wasted his

fortune. Upon setting out for the army, he left his wife in a state of

pregnancy; and, at the end of seven months, she gave premature birth to

John Kepler, who was, from this cause, a sickly child during the first

years of his life. Being obliged to join the army in the Netherlands,

his wife followed him into the field, and left her son, then five years

old, under the charge of his grandfather at Limberg. Sometime afterwards

he was attacked with the smallpox, and having with difficulty recovered

from this severe malady, he was sent to school in 1577.

Having become security for one of his friends, who absconded from his

creditors, Henry Kepler was obliged to sell his house and all his

property, and was driven to the necessity of keeping a tavern at

Elmendingen. Owing to these misfortunes, young Kepler was taken from

school about two years afterwards, and was obliged to perform the

functions of a servant in his father's house. In 1585, he was again

placed in the school of Elmendingen; but his father and mother having

been both attacked with the smallpox, and he himself having been seized

with a violent illness in 1585, his education had been much neglected,

and he was prohibited from all mental application.

In the year 1586, on the 26th of November, Kepler was admitted into the

school at the Monastery of Maulbronn, which had been established at the

Reformation, and which was maintained at the expense of the Duke of

Wirtemberg, as a preparatory seminary for the University of Tubingen.

After remaining a year at the upper classes, the scholars presented

themselves for examination at the College for the degree of Bachelor;

and having received this, they returned to the school with the title of

Veterans. Here they completed the usual course of study; and being

admitted as resident students at Tubingen, they took their degree of

Master. In prosecuting this course of study, Kepler was sadly

interrupted, not only by periodical returns of his former complaints,

but by family quarrels of the most serious import. These dissensions,

arising greatly from the perverseness of his mother, drove his father to

a foreign land, where he soon died; and his mother having quarrelled

with all her relations, the affairs of the family were involved in

inextricable disorder. Notwithstanding these calamities, Kepler took his

degree of Bachelor on the 15th September 1588, and his degree of Master

in August 1591, on which occasion he held the second place at the annual

examination.

In his early studies, Kepler devoted himself with intense pleasure to

philosophy in general, but he entertained no peculiar affection for

astronomy. Being well grounded in arithmetic and geometry, he had no

difficulty in making himself master of the geometrical and astronomical

theorems which occurred in the course of his studies. While attending

the lectures of Moestlin, professor of mathematics, who had

distinguished himself by an oration in favour of the Copernican system,

Kepler not only became a convert to the opinions of his master, but

defended them in the physical disputations of the students, and even

wrote an essay on the primary motion, in order to prove that it was

produced by the daily rotation of the earth.

In 1594, the astronomical chair at Gratz, in Styria, fell vacant by the

death of George Stadt, and, according to Kepler's own statement, he was

forced to accept this situation by the authority of his professional

tutors, who recommended him to the nobles of Styria. Though Kepler had

little knowledge of the science, and no passion for it whatever, yet the

nature of his office forced him to attend to astronomy; and, in the year

1595, when he enjoyed some leisure from his lectures, he directed the

whole energy of his mind to the three important topics of the number,

the size, and the motion of the orbits of the planets. He first tried if

the size of the planets' orbits, or the difference of their sizes, had

any regular proportion to each other. Finding no proof of this, he

inserted a new planet between Mars and Jupiter, and another between

Venus and Mercury, which he supposed might be invisible from their

smallness; but even with these assumptions the distances of the planets

exhibited no regular progression. Kepler next tried if these distances

varied as the cosines of the quadrant, and if their motion varied as

the sun's, the sine of 90 representing the motion at the sun, and the

sine of 0 deg. that at the fixed stars; but in this trial he was also

disappointed.

Having spent the whole summer in these fruitless speculations, and

praying constantly to his Maker for success, he was accidentally drawing

a diagram in his lecture-room, in July 1595, when he observed the

relation between the circle inscribed in a triangle, and that described

round it; and the ratio of these circles, which was that of 1 to 2,

appeared to his eye to be identical with that of Jupiter's and Saturn's

orbits. Hence he was led to compare the orbits of the other planets'

circles described in pentagons and hexagons. As this hypothesis was as

inapplicable to the heavens as its predecessors, Kepler asked himself in

despair, "What have _plane_ figures to do with _solid_ orbits? Solid

bodies ought to be used for solid orbits." On the strength of this

conceit, he supposed that the distances of the planets were regulated by

the sizes of the five regular solids described within one another. "The

Earth is the circle, the measurer of all. Round it describe a

dodecahedron; the circle including this will be Mars. Round Mars

describe a tetrahedron; the circle including this will be Jupiter.

Describe a cube round Jupiter; the circle including this will be Saturn.

Then inscribe in the Earth an icosahedron; the circle described in it

will be Venus. Inscribe an octohedron in Venus; the circle inscribed in

it will be Mercury."

This discovery, as he considered it, harmonized in a very rude way with

the measures of the planetary orbits given by Copernicus; but Kepler was

so enamoured with it, that he ascribed the differences to errors of

observation, and declared that he would not renounce the glory of having

made it for the whole Electorate of Saxony.

In his attempt to discover the relation between the periodic times of

the planets and their distances from the sun, he was not more

successful; but as this relation had a real existence, he made some

slight approach to its determination. These extraordinary researches,

which indicate the wildness and irregularity of Kepler's genius, were

published in 1596, in a work entitled, "Prodromus of Cosmographical

Dissertations; containing the cosmographical mystery respecting the

admirable proportion of the celestial orbits, and the genuine and real

causes of the number, magnitude, and periods of the planets demonstrated

by the five regular geometrical solids."

Notwithstanding the speculative character of this volume, it obtained

for its author a high name among astronomers. Galileo and Tycho, whose

opinions of it he requested, spoke of it with some commendation. The

former praised the ingenuity and good faith which it displayed; and

Tycho, though he requested him to try to adapt something of the same

nature to the Tychonic system, saw the speculative character of his

mind, and advised him "to lay a solid foundation for his views by actual

observation, and then, by ascending from these, to strive to reach the

causes of things."

In 1592, before Kepler had quitted Tubingen, he was on the eve of

entering into the married state. Though the foolish scheme was

fortunately broken off, yet he resumed it again in 1596, when he paid

his addresses to Barbara Millar of Muleckh, who was a widow for the

second time, though only twenty-three years of age. Her parents,

however, would not consent to the match till Kepler proved his

nobility; and, owing to the delay which arose from this circumstance,

the marriage did not take place till 1597. The income which Kepler

derived from his professorship was very small, and as his wife's fortune

turned out much less than he had been led to expect, he not only was

annoyed with pecuniary difficulties, but was involved in disputes with

his wife's relations. These evils were greatly increased by the

religious troubles which took place in Styria. The Catholics at Gratz

rose against the Protestants, and threatened to expell them from the

city. Kepler, who openly professed the Protestant religion, saw the

risks to which he was exposed, and retired with his wife into Hungary.

Here he continued nearly a year, during which he composed and

transmitted to his friend Zehentmaier, at Tubingen, several small

treatises, "On the Magnet," "On the cause of the Obliquity of the

Ecliptic," and "On the Divine Wisdom, as shewn in the Creation"--all of

which seem to have been lost. In 1599, Kepler was recalled to Gratz by

the States of Styria, and resumed his professorship; but the city was

still divided into two factions, and Kepler, who was a lover of peace,

found his situation very uncomfortable. Having learned from Tycho that

he had been able to determine more accurately than had been done the

eccentricities of the orbits of the planets, Kepler was anxious to avail

himself of these observations, and set out on a visit to Tycho at

Prague, where he arrived in January 1600. Tycho received him with great

kindness, notwithstanding the part which he had taken against him along

with Raimar, and he spent three or four months with him at Benach. It

was then arranged that Kepler should be appointed Tycho's assistant in

the observatory, with a salary of 100 florins, provided the States of

Styria should, on the Emperor's application, allow him to be absent for

two years and retain his salary. Kepler had returned to Gratz before

this arrangement was completed, and new troubles having broke out in

that city, he resigned his professorship. Dreading lest this step would

frustrate his scheme of joining Tycho, he resolved to ask the patronage

of the Duke of Wirtemberg for the professorship of medicine at Tubingen;

and with this view he corresponded with Moestlin and his other friends

in that University. When Tycho heard of this plan, he pressed him to

abandon it, and promised his best exertions to procure a permanent

situation for him from the Emperor.

Encouraged by these promises, Kepler and his wife set off for Prague,

but he was unfortunately attacked on the road with a quartan ague, which

lasted seven months; and having exhausted the little money which he had

along with him, he was obliged to apply to Tycho for a supply. After his

arrival at Prague he was supported entirely by the bounty of his friend,

and he endeavoured to make some return for this kindness by attacking in

a controversial pamphlet two of the scientific opponents of Tycho.

Kepler's total dependence on the generosity of his friend had made him

suspicious of his sincerity. He imagined that Tycho had not freely

communicated to him all his observations, and that he had not been

sufficiently liberal in supplying his wife with money in his absence.

While absent a second time from Prague, and influenced by these

feelings, he addressed a violent letter to Tycho, filled with

reproaches. On the plea of being occupied with his daughter's marriage,

Tycho requested Ericksen, one of his assistants, to reply to Kepler's

letter; and he did this with so much effect, that Kepler saw his

mistake, and in the noblest and most generous manner supplicated the

forgiveness of his friend. Tycho exhibited the same good feeling; and

the kindness of Hoffman, President of the States of Styria, completed

the reconciliation of the two astronomers.

On his return to Prague in 1601, he was presented by Tycho to the

Emperor, who conferred upon him the title of Imperial Mathematician, on

the condition that he would assist Tycho in his calculations. This

connexion was peculiarly valuable to Kepler, as the observations of his

colleague were the only ones made in the world which could enable him to

carry on his own theoretical inquiries. These two astronomers now

undertook to compute, from Tycho's observations, a new set of

astronomical tables, to be called the Rudolphine Tables, in honour of

the Emperor. This scheme flattered the vanity of their master, and he

pledged himself to pay all the expenses of the work. Longomontanus,

Tycho's principal assistant, took upon himself the labour of arranging

and discussing the observations on the stars, while Kepler devoted

himself to the more congenial task of examining those on the planet

Mars, with which Tycho was at that time particularly occupied. The

appointment of Longomontanus to a professorship in Denmark, and the

death of Tycho in October 1601, put a stop to these important schemes.

Kepler succeeded Tycho as principal mathematician to the Emperor, and

was provided with a handsome salary, which was partly charged on the

imperial treasury, and partly on the States of Silesia, and the first

instalment of which was to be paid in March 1602. The generosity of the

Emperor did not fail to excite the jealousy of ignorant individuals, who

were not aware of the value of science to the state; but the increasing

fame of Kepler, and the valuable works which he published, soon silenced

their opposition.

In September 1604, astronomers were surprised with the appearance of a

new star in the foot of Serpentarius. It was not seen before the 29th of

September, and Moestlin informs us that, on account of clouds, he did

not obtain a good view of it till the 6th of October. Like that of

1572,[45] it at first surpassed Jupiter in brightness, and rivalled even

Venus, but it afterwards became as small as Regulus, and as dull as

Saturn, and disappeared at the end of a few months. It constantly

changed its colour, and was at first tawny, then yellow, then purple and

red, and often white at great altitudes. It had no parallax, and

therefore was a fixed star. Kepler wrote a short account of this

remarkable body, and maintained its superiority to that of 1572, as this

last came in an ordinary year, while the other appeared in the year of

the _fiery trigon_, or that in which Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, are in

the three fiery signs, Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius, an event which

occurs only every 800 years. After discussing a great variety of topics,

but little connected with his subject, and in a style of absurd

jocularity, he attacks the opinions of the Epicureans, that the star was

a fortuitous concourse of atoms, in the following remarkable paragraph,

which is a good specimen of the work:--"When I was a youth with plenty

of idle time on my hands, I was much taken with the vanity, of which

some grown men are not ashamed, of making anagrams by transposing the

letters of my name, written in Latin. Out of _Joannes Keplerus_ came

_Serpens in Akuleo_ (a serpent in his sting); but not being satisfied

with the meaning of these words, and being unable to make another, I

trusted the thing to chance, and taking out of a pack of playing cards

as many as there were letters in the name, I wrote one upon each, and

then began to shuffle them, and at each shuffle to read them in the

order they came, to see if any meaning came of it. Now, may all the

Epicurean gods and goddesses confound this same chance, which, although

I have spent a good deal of time over it, never shewed me anything like

sense even from a distance. So I gave up my cards to the Epicurean

eternity, to be carried away into infinity; and, it is said, they are

still flying about there in the utmost confusion among the atoms, and

have never yet come to any meaning. I will tell those disputants, my

opponents, not my own opinion, but my wife's. Yesterday, when weary with

writing, and my mind quite dusty with considering these atoms, I was

called to supper, and a salad I had asked for was set before me. 'It

seems then,' said I, aloud, 'that if pewter dishes, leaves of lettuce,

grains of salt, drops of water, vinegar, and oil, and slices of egg, had

been flying about in the air from all eternity, it might at last happen

by chance that there would come a salad.' 'Yes,' says my wife, 'but not

so nice and well dressed as this of mine is.'"

[45] See the Life of Tycho, page 137.

CHAPTER II.

_Kepler's Pecuniary Embarrassments--His Inquiries respecting the

Law of Refraction--His Supplement to Vitellio--His Researches on

Vision--His Treatise on Dioptrics--His Commentaries on Mars--He

discovers that the orbit of Mars is an Ellipse, with the Sun in one

focus--And extends this discovery to all the other Planets--He

establishes the two first laws of Physical Astronomy--His Family

Distresses--Death of his Wife--He is appointed Professor of

Mathematics at Linz--His Method of Choosing a Second Wife--Her

Character, as given by Himself--Origin of his Treatise on

Gauging--He goes to Ratisbon to give his Opinion to the Diet on the

change of Style--He refuses the Mathematical Chair at Bologna._

Although Kepler now filled one of the most honourable situations to

which a philosopher could aspire, and possessed a large salary fitted to

supply his most reasonable wants, yet, as the imperial treasury was

drained by the demands of an expensive war, his salary was always in

arrear. Owing to this cause he was constantly involved in pecuniary

difficulties, and, as he himself described his situation, he was

perpetually begging his bread from the Emperor at Prague. His increasing

family rendered the want of money still more distressing, and he was

driven to the painful alternative of drawing his income from casting

nativities. From the same cause he was obliged to abandon his plan of

publishing the Rudolphine Tables, and to devote himself to works of a

less expensive kind, and which were more likely to yield some pecuniary

advantages.

In spite of these embarrassments, and the occupation of his time in the

practice of astrology, Kepler found leisure for his favourite pursuits.

No adverse circumstances were capable of extinguishing his scientific

ardour, and whenever he directed his vigorous mind to the investigation

of phenomena, he never failed to obtain interesting and original

results. Since the death of Tycho, his attention had been much occupied

with the subject of refraction and vision; and, in 1606, he published

the result of his researches in a work, entitled "A Supplement to

Vitellio, in which the optical part of astronomy is treated, but

chiefly on the artificial observation and estimation of diameters, and

of the eclipses of the Sun and Moon." Astronomers had long been

perplexed with the refraction of the atmosphere, and so little was known

of the general subject, as well as of this branch of it, that Tycho

believed the refraction of the atmosphere to cease at 45 deg. of altitude.

Even at the beginning of the second century, Claudius Ptolemy of

Alexandria had unravelled its principal mysteries, and had given in his

Optics a theory of astronomical refraction more complete than that of

any astronomer before the time of Cassini;[46] but the MSS. had

unfortunately been mislaid, and Alhazen and Vitellio and Kepler were

obliged to take up the subject from its commencement. Ptolemy had not

only determined that the refraction of the atmosphere had gradually

increased from the zenith to the horizon, but he had measured with

singular accuracy the angles of refraction for water and glass, from a

perpendicular incidence to a horizontal one.

[46] Cassini was born in 1625, and died in 1712.

Kepler treated this branch of science in his own peculiar way,

"hunting down," as he expressed it, every hypothesis which his fertile

imagination had successively presented to him. In his various attempts

to discover the law of refraction, or a measure of it, as varying with

the density of the body and the angle of incidence of the light, he was

nearer the goal, in his first speculation, than in any of the rest; and

he seems to have failed in consequence of his not separating the

question as it related to density from the question as it related to

incidence. "I did not leave untried," says he, "whether, by assuming a

horizontal refraction according to the density of the medium, the rest

would correspond to the sines of the distances from a vertical

direction, but calculation proved that it was not so: and, indeed, there

was no occasion to have tried it, for thus the _refraction would

increase according to the same law in all mediums, which is contradicted

by experiment_."

Although completely foiled in his search after the law of refraction,

which was subsequently discovered by Willebrord Snell, and sometime

afterwards by James Gregory, he was, singularly successful in his

inquiries respecting vision. Regarding the eye as analogous in its

structure with the camera obscura of Baptista Porta, he discovered that

the images of external objects were painted in an inverted position on

the retina, by the union of the pencils of rays which issued from every

point of the object. He ascribed an erect vision to an operation of the

mind, by which it traces the rays back to the pupil, where they cross

one another, and thus refers the lower parts of the image to the higher

parts of the object. He also explained the cause of long-sighted and

short-sighted vision, and shewed how convex and concave lenses enabled

those who possessed these peculiarities of vision to see distinctly, by

accurately converging the pencils of rays to a focus on the retina.

Kepler likewise observed the power of accommodating the eye to different

distances, and he ascribed it to the contraction of the ciliary

processes, which drew the sides of the eyeball towards the crystalline

lens, and thus elongated the eye so as to produce an adjustment of it

for near objects. Kepler wisely declined to inquire into the way in

which the mind perceives the images painted on the retina, and he

blames Vitellio for attempting to determine a question which he

considered as not belonging to optics.

The work of Kepler, now under consideration, contains the method of

calculating eclipses which is now in use at the present day.

The only other optical treatise written by Kepler, was his _Dioptrics_,

with an appendix on the use of optics in philosophy. This admirable

work, which laid the foundation of the science, was published at

Augsburg in 1611, and reprinted at London in 1653. Although Maurolycus

had made some slight progress in studying the passage of light through

different media, yet it is to Kepler that we owe the methods of tracing

the progress of rays through transparent bodies with convex and concave

surfaces, and of determining the foci of lenses, and of the relative

positions of the images which they form, and the objects from which the

rays proceed. He was thus led to explain the _rationale_ of the

telescope, and to invent the astronomical telescope, which consists of

two convex lenses, by which objects are seen inverted. Kepler also

discovered the important fact, that spherical surfaces were not capable

of converging rays to a single focus, and he conjectured, what

Descartes afterwards proved, that this property might be possessed by

lenses having the figure of some of the sections of the cone. The total

reflection of light at the second surface of bodies was likewise studied

by Kepler, and he determined that the total reflection commenced when

the angle of incidence was equal to the angle of refraction, which

corresponded to an incidence of 90.

Two years before the publication of his Dioptrics, viz. in 1609, Kepler

had given to the world his great work, entitled "The New Astronomy, or

Commentaries on the Motions of Mars." The discoveries which this volume

records form the basis of physical astronomy. The inquiries by which he

was led to them began in that memorable year 1601, when he became the

colleague or assistant of Tycho. The powers of original genius were then

for the first time associated with inventive skill and patient

observation; and though the astronomical data provided by Tycho were

sure of finding their application in some future age, yet without them

Kepler's speculations would have been vain, and the laws which they

enabled him to determine would have adorned the history of another

century. Having tried in vain to represent the motion of Mars by an

uniform motion in a circular orbit, and by the cycles and epicycles with

which Copernicus had endeavoured to explain the planetary inequalities,

Kepler was led, after many fruitless speculations,[47] to suppose the

orbit of the planet to be oval; and, from his knowledge of the conic

sections, he afterwards determined it to be an ellipse, with the sun

placed in one of its foci. He then ascertained the dimensions of the

orbit; and, by a comparison of the times employed by the planet to

complete a whole revolution or any part of one, he discovered that the

time in which Mars describes any arches of his elliptic orbit, were

always to one another as the areas contained by lines drawn from the

focus or the centre of the sun to the extremities of the respective

arches; or, in other words, that the radius vector, or the line joining

the Sun and Mars described equal areas in equal times. By examining the

inequalities of the other planets he found that they all moved in

elliptic orbits, and that the radius vector of each described areas

proportional to the times. These two great results are known by the name

of the first and second laws of Kepler. The third law, or that which

relates to the connexion between the periodic times and the distances of

the planets, was not discovered till a later period of his life.

[47] An interesting account of the steps by which Kepler proceeded

will be found in Mr Drinkwater Bethune's admirable Life of Kepler,

in the Library of Useful Knowledge.

When Kepler presented to Rudolph the volume which contained these fine

discoveries, he reminded him jocularly of his requiring the sinews of

war to make similar attacks upon the other planets. The Emperor,

however, had more formidable enemies than Jupiter and Saturn, and from

the treasury, which war had exhausted, he found it difficult to supply

the wants of science. While Kepler was thus involved in the miseries of

poverty, misfortunes of every kind filled up the cup of his adversity.

His wife, who had long been the victim of low spirits, was seized,

towards the end of 1610, with fever, epilepsy, and phrenitis, and before

she had completely recovered, all his three children were simultaneously

attacked with the smallpox. His favourite son fell a victim to this

malady, and at the same time Prague was partially occupied by the troops

of Leopold. The part of the city where Kepler resided was harassed by

the Bohemian levies, and, to crown this list of evils, the Austrian

troops introduced the plague into the city.

Sometime afterwards Kepler set out for Austria with the view of

obtaining the professorship of mathematics at Linz, which was now

vacant; but, upon his return in June, he found his wife in a decline,

brought on by grief for the loss of her son, and she was sometime

afterwards seized with an infectious fever, of which she died.

The Emperor Rudolph was unwilling to allow Kepler to quit Prague. He

encouraged him with hopes that the arrears of his salary would be paid

from Saxony; but these hopes were fallacious, and it was not till the

death of Rudolph, in 1612, that Kepler was freed from these distressing

embarrassments.

On the accession of Mathias, Rudolph's brother, Kepler was re-appointed

imperial mathematician, and was allowed to accept the professorship at

Linz. His family now consisted of two children--a daughter, Susannah,

born in 1602, and a son, Louis, born in 1607. His own time was so

completely occupied by his new professorial duties, as well as by his

private studies, that he found it necessary to seek another parent for

his children. For this purpose, he gave a commission to his friends to

look out for him a suitable wife, and, in a long and jocular letter to

Baron Strahlendorf, he has given an amusing account of the different

negotiations which preceded his marriage. The substance of this letter

is so well given by Mr Drinkwater Bethune, that we shall follow his

account of it.

The first of the eleven ladies among whom his inclinations wavered, "was

a widow, an intimate friend of his first wife; and who, on many

accounts, appeared a most eligible match. At first," says Kepler, "she

seemed favourably inclined to the proposal; it is certain that she took

time to consider it, but at last she very quietly excused herself." It

must have been from a recollection of this lady's good qualities, that

Kepler was induced to make his offer; for we learn rather unexpectedly,

after being informed of her decision, that when he soon afterwards paid

his respects to her, it was the first time that he had seen her during

the last six years; and he found, to his great relief, that "there was

no single pleasing part about her." The truth seems to be, that he was

nettled by her answer, and he is at greater pains than appears

necessary, considering this last discovery, to determine why she would

not accept his offered hand. Among other reasons, he suggested her

children, among whom were two marriageable daughters; and it is

diverting afterwards to find them also in the catalogue, which Kepler

appeared to be making, of all his female acquaintance.... Of the other

ladies, one was too old, another in bad health, another too proud of her

birth and quarterings, a fourth had learned nothing but shewy

accomplishments, "not at all suitable to the sort of life she would have

to lead with me," another grew impatient, and married a more decided

admirer, whilst he was hesitating. "The mischief," says he, "in all

these attachments was, that whilst I was delaying, comparing and

balancing conflicting reasons, every day saw me inflamed with a new

passion." By the time he reached the 8th, he found his match in this

respect. "Fortune at length has avenged herself on my doubtful

inclinations. At first she was quite complying, and her friends also;

presently, whether she did or did not consent, not only I, but she

herself did not know. After the lapse of a few days came a renewed

promise, which, however, had to be confirmed a third time; and four days

after that, she again repeated her confirmation, and begged to be

excused from it. Upon this I gave her up, and this time all my

counsellors were of one opinion." This was the longest courtship in the

list, having lasted three whole months; and, quite disheartened by its

bad success, Kepler's next attempt was of a more timid complexion. His

advances to No. 9 were made by confiding to her the whole story of his

recent disappointment, prudently determining to be guided in his

behaviour, by observing whether the treatment he had experienced met

with a proper degree of sympathy. Apparently the experiment did not

succeed; and, almost reduced to despair, Kepler betook himself to the

advice of a friend, who had for some time past complained that she was

not consulted in this difficult negotiation. When she produced No. 10,

and the first visit was paid, the report upon her was as follows:--"She

has, undoubtedly, a good fortune, is of good family, and of economical

habits: but her physiognomy is most horribly ugly; she would be stared

at in the streets, not to mention the striking disproportion in our

figures. I am lank, lean, and spare; she short and thick: in a family

notorious for fulness, she is considered superfluously fat." The only

objection to No. 11 seems to have been her excessive youth; and when

this treaty was broken off on that account, Kepler turned his back upon

all his advisers, and chose for himself one who had figured as No. 5 in

the list, to whom he professes to have felt attached throughout, but

from whom the representations of his friends had hitherto detained him,

probably on account of her humble station.

The following is Kepler's summary of her character:--"Her name is

Susannah, the daughter of John Reuthinger and Barbara, citizens of the

town of Eferdingen. The father was by trade a cabinetmaker, but both her

parents are dead. She has received an education well worth the largest

dowry, by favour of the Lady of Stahrenberg, the strictness of whose

household is famous throughout the province. Her person and manners are

suitable to mine--no pride, no extravagance. She can bear to work; she

has a tolerable knowledge how to manage a family; middle-aged, and of a

disposition and capability to acquire what she still wants. Her I shall

marry, by favour of the noble Baron of Stahrenberg, at 12 o'clock on the

30th of next October, with all Eferdingen assembled to meet us, and we

shall eat the marriage dinner at Maurice's at the Golden Lion."[48]

[48] Life of Kepler, chap. vi.

Kepler's marriage seems to have taken place at the time here mentioned;

for, in his book on gauging, published at Linz in 1615, he informs us

that he took home his new wife in November, on which occasion he found

it necessary to stock his cellar with a few casks of wine. When the

wine-merchant came to measure the casks, Kepler objected to his method,

as he made no allowance for the different sizes of the bulging parts of

the cask. From this accident, Kepler was led to study the subject of

gauging, and to write the book which we have mentioned, and which

contains the earliest specimens of the modern analysis.

About this period, Kepler was summoned to the Diet at Ratisbon, to give

his opinion on the reformation of the kalendar, and he published a short

essay on the subject; but though the Government did not scruple to avail

themselves of his services, yet his pension was allowed to fall in

arrear, and, in order to support his family, he was obliged to publish

an Almanac, suited to the taste of the age. "In order," says he, "to

defray the expense of the Ephemeris for two years,[49] I have been

obliged to compose _a vile prophesying Almanac, which is scarcely more

respectable than begging_, unless from its saving the Emperor's credit,

who abandons me entirely, and would suffer me to perish with hunger."

[49] These Ephemerides, from 1617 to 1620, were published at Linz

in 1616. The one for 1620 was dedicated to Baron Napier of

Merchiston.

Although Kepler's residence at Linz was rendered uncomfortable by the

Roman Catholics, who had excommunicated him on account of his refusing

to subscribe to some opinions respecting the ubiquity of our Saviour,

or, as others maintain, on account of some opinions which he had

expressed respecting transubstantiation, yet he refused, in 1617, to

accept of an invitation to fill the mathematical chair at Bologna. The

prospect of his fortune being bettered by such a change could not

reconcile him to live in a country where his freedom of speech and

manners might expose him to suspicion; and he accordingly declined, in

the most respectful manner, the offer which was made him.

CHAPTER III.

_Kepler's continued Embarrassments--Death of Mathias--Liberality of

Ferdinand--Kepler's "Harmonies of the World"--The Epitome of the

Copernican Astronomy--It is prohibited by the Inquisition--Sir

Henry Wotton, the British Ambassador, invites Kepler to England--He

declines the Invitation--Neglect of Genius by the English

Government--Trial of Kepler's Mother--Her final Acquittal--And

Death at the age of Seventy-five--The States of Styria burn

publicly Kepler's Calendar--He receives his Arrears of Salary from

Ferdinand--The Rudolphine Tables published in 1628--He receives a

Gold Chain from the Grand Dulce of Tuscany--He is Patronised by the

Duke of Friedland--He removes to Sagan, in Silesia--Is appointed

Professor of Mathematics at Rostoch--Goes to Ratisbon to receive

his Arrears--His Death, Funeral, and Epitaph--Monument Erected to

his Memory in 1803--His Family--His Posthumous Volume, entitled

"The Dream, or Lunar Astronomy."_

Kepler was kept in a state of constant anxiety from the delay in the

Government to pay up the arrears of his pension, while their repeated

promises prevented him from accepting of other employments. He had hoped

that the affair of the Bolognese chair would rouse the imperial treasury

to a sense of its duty, and enable him to publish the Rudolphine

Tables,--that great work which he owed to the memory both of Tycho and

of Rudolph. But though he was disappointed in this expectation, an event

now occurred which at least held out the prospect of a favourable change

in his circumstances. The Emperor Mathias died in 1619, and was

succeeded by Ferdinand III., who not only continued him in the situation

of his principal mathematician, with his former pension, but promised to

pay up the arrears of it, and to furnish the means for publishing the

Rudolphine Tables.

The year 1619, so favourable to Kepler's prospects in life, was

distinguished also by the publication, at Linz, of one of his most

remarkable productions, entitled "The Harmonies of the World." It is

dedicated to James I. of England, and will be for ever memorable in the

history of science, as containing the celebrated law that the squares of

the periodic times of the planets are to one another as the cubes of

their distances. This singular volume, which is marked with all the

peculiarities which distinguish his Cosmographical Mystery, is divided

into five books. The two first books are principally geometrical, and

relate to regular polygons inscribed in a circle; the third book is a

treatise on music, in which musical proportions are derived from

figures; the fourth book is astrological, and treats of the harmony of

rays emanating on the earth from the heavenly bodies, and on their

influence over the sublunary or human soul; the fifth book is

astronomical and metaphysical, and treats of the exquisite harmonies of

the celestial motions, and of the celebrated third law of the universe,

which we have already referred to.

This law, as he himself informs us, first entered his mind on the 8th

March 1618; but, having made an erroneous calculation, he was obliged to

reject it. He resumed the subject on the 15th May; and having discovered

his former error, he recognised with transport the absolute truth of a

principle which for seventeen years had been the object of his incessant

labours. The delight which this grand discovery gave him had no bounds.

"Nothing holds me," says he; "I will indulge in my sacred fury; I will

triumph over mankind by the honest confession, that I have stolen the

golden vases of the Egyptians, to build up a tabernacle for my God, far

away from the confines of Egypt. If you forgive me, I rejoice; if you

are angry, I can bear it. The die is cast; the book is written, to be

read either now or by posterity, I care not which. It may well wait a

century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an

observer."

About the same time, in 1618, Kepler published, at Linz, the _three_

first books of his "Epitome of the Copernican Astronomy," of which the

_fourth_ was published at the same place in 1622, and the _fifth_,

_sixth_, and _seventh_ at Frankfort in the same year. This interesting

work is a kind of summary of all his astronomical views, drawn up in the

form of a dialogue for the perusal of general readers. Immediately after

its publication, it was placed by the Inquisition in the list of

prohibited books; and the moment Kepler learned this from his

correspondent Remus, he was thrown into great alarm, and requested from

him some information respecting the terms and consequences of the

censure which was then pronounced against him. He was afraid that it

might compromise his personal safety if he went to Italy; that he would

be compelled to retract his opinions; that the censure might extend to

Austria; that the sale of his work would be ruined; and that he must

either abandon his country or his opinions.

The reply of his friend Remus calmed his agitated mind, by explaining to

him the true nature of the prohibition; and he concluded his letter with

a piece of seasonable exhortation, "There is no ground for your alarm

either in Italy or in Austria, only keep yourself within bounds, and put

a guard upon your own passions."

In the year 1620, Sir Henry Wotton, the English ambassador at Venice,

paid a visit to Kepler on his way through Germany. It does not appear

whether or not this visit was paid at the desire of James I., to whom

Kepler had dedicated one of his works, but from the nature of the

communication which was made to him by the ambassador, there are strong

reasons to think that this was the case. Sir Henry Wotton urged Kepler

to take up his residence in England, where he could assure him of a

welcome and an honourable reception; but, notwithstanding the pecuniary

difficulties in which he was then involved, he did not accept of the

invitation. In referring to this offer in one of his letters, written a

year after it was made, he thus balances the difficulties of the

question--"The fires of civil war," says he, "are raging in Germany.

Shall I then cross the sea whither Wotton invites me? I, a German, a

lover of firm land, who dread the confinement of an island, who presage

its dangers, and must drag along with me my little wife and flock of

children?" As Kepler seems to have entertained no doubt of his being

well provided for in England, it is the more probable that the British

Sovereign had made him a distinct offer through his ambassador. A

welcome and an honourable reception, in the ordinary sense of these

terms, could not have supplied the wants of a starving astronomer, who

was called upon to renounce a large though an ill-paid salary in his

native land; and Kepler had experienced too deeply the faithlessness of

royal pledges to trust his fortune to so vague an assurance as that

which is implied in the language of the English ambassador. During the

two centuries which have elapsed since this invitation was given to

Kepler, there has been no reign during which the most illustrious

foreigner could hope for pecuniary support, either from the Sovereign or

the Government of England. What English science has never been able to

command for her indigenous talent, was not likely to be proffered to

foreign merit. The generous hearts of individual Englishmen, indeed, are

always open to the claims of intellectual pre-eminence, and ever ready

to welcome the stranger whom it adorns; but through the frozen

life-blood of a British minister such sympathies have seldom vibrated;

and, amid the struggles of faction and the anxieties of personal and

family ambition, he has turned a deaf ear to the demands of genius,

whether she appeared in the humble posture of a suppliant, or in the

prouder attitude of a national benefactor.

If the imperial mathematician, therefore, had no other assurance of a

comfortable home in England than that of Sir Henry Wotton, he acted a

wise part in distrusting it; and we rejoice that the sacred name of

Kepler was thus withheld from the long list of distinguished characters

whom England has starved and dishonoured.

In the year 1620, Kepler was exposed to a severe calamity, which

continued to harass him for some time. His mother, Catherine Kepler, to

whose peculiarities of temper we have already referred, was arrested on

the 5th April, upon a charge of a very serious nature. One of her

friends having some years before suffered a miscarriage, was

subsequently attacked with violent headaches, and Catherine was charged

with having administered poison to her friend. This accusation was

indignantly repelled, and a young doctor of the law, whom she consulted,

advised her to raise an action against her calumniator. From

professional reasons, or probably pecuniary ones, this zealous

practitioner continued to delay the lawsuit for five years. The judge

who tried it happened to be displaced, and was succeeded by another, who

had a personal quarrel with the prosecutor. The defender, who was aware

of this favourable change in her case, became the accuser, and, in July

1620, Catherine Kepler was sent to prison, and condemned to the torture.

The moment this event reached the ears of her son, he quitted Linz, and

arrived in time to save her from punishment. He found that the evidence

upon which she was condemned had no other foundation but her own

intemperate conduct; and, though his interference was successful, yet

she was not finally released from prison till the 4th November 1621.

Convinced of her innocence, this bold woman, now in the 79th year of her

age, raised a new action for damages against her opponent; but her

death, in April 1622, put an end to her own miseries, as well as to the

anxiety of her son. Among the virtues of this singular woman, we must

number that of generosity. Moestlin, the old preceptor of Kepler, had

generously declined any compensation for his instructions. Kepler never

forgot this act of kindness, and, in the midst of his poverty, he found

means to send to Moestlin a handsome silver cup in token of his

gratitude. In acknowledging this gift, Moestlin remarks, "Your mother

had taken it into her head that you owed me 200 florins, and had brought

15 florins and a chandelier towards reducing the debt, which I advised

her to send to you. I asked her to stay to dinner, which she refused.

However, we hanselled your cup, as you know she is of a thirsty

temperament."

In the same year in which his mother was arrested, the States of Styria

ordered all the copies of the Kalendar for 1624 to be publicly burnt.

There does not seem to be any reason for supposing that this insult

proceeded from his old enemies the Catholics. They would, no doubt, take

an active share in carrying it into effect; but it would appear that his

former patrons were affronted at Kepler's giving the precedence in his

title page to the States of Upper Ens, where he then resided, above the

States of Styria.

In 1622, the Emperor Ferdinand, notwithstanding his own pecuniary

difficulties, ordered the whole of Kepler's arrears to be paid, even

those which had been due by Rudolph and Mathias; and so great was his

anxiety to have the Rudolphine Tables published, that he supplied the

means for their immediate completion. New difficulties, however, sprung

up to retard still longer the appearance of this most important work.

The wars of the reformation, which were then agitating the whole of

Germany, interfered with every peaceful pursuit. The library of Kepler

was sealed up by order of the Jesuits, and it was only his position as

imperial mathematician that saved him from personal inconvenience. A

popular insurrection followed in the train of these disasters. The

peasantry blockaded Linz, the place of Kepler's residence, and it was

not till the year 1627, as the title page bears, or 1628, as Kepler

elsewhere states, that these celebrated Tables were given to the world.

The Rudolphine Tables were published at Ulm in one volume folio. These

Tables were calculated by Kepler from the Observations of Tycho, and are

founded on his own great discovery of the ellipticity of the planetary

orbits. The _first_ and _third_ parts of the work contain logarithmic

and other auxiliary tables, for the purpose of facilitating astronomical

calculations. The _second_ part contains tables of the sun, moon, and

planets; and the _fourth_ a catalogue of 1000 stars, as determined by

Tycho. A nautical map is prefixed to some copies of the tables, and the

description of it contains the first notice of the method of determining

the longitude by means of occultations.

A short time after the publication of these tables, the Grand Duke of

Tuscany, instigated no doubt by Galileo, sent Kepler a gold chain in

testimony of his approbation of the great service which he had rendered

to astronomy.

About this time Albert Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, a great patron of

astrology, and one of the most distinguished men of the age, made the

most munificent offers to Kepler, and invited him to take up his

residence at Sagan in Silesia. The religious dissensions which agitated

Linz, the love of tranquillity which Kepler had so little enjoyed, and

the publication of his great work, induced him to accept of this offer.

He accordingly removed his family from Linz to Ratisbon in 1629, and he

himself set out for Prague, with the double object of presenting the

Rudolphine Tables to the Emperor, and of soliciting his permission to go

into the service of the Duke of Friedland. The Emperor did not hesitate

to grant this request; and would have gladly transferred Kepler's

arrears as well as himself to the charge of a foreign prince. Kepler

accordingly set out with his wife and family for Sagan, where he arrived

in 1629. The Duke Albert treated him with liberality and distinction. He

supplied him with an assistant for his calculations, and also with a

printing press; and, by his influence with the Duke of Mecklenburg, he

obtained for him a professorship in the University of Rostoch.

In this remote situation, Kepler found it extremely difficult to obtain

payment of the imperial pension which he still retained. The arrears had

accumulated to 8000 crowns, and he resolved to go to the Imperial

Assembly at Ratisbon to make a final effort to obtain them. His

attempts, however, were fruitless. The vexation which this occasioned,

and the great fatigue which he had undergone, threw him into a violent

fever, which is said to have been one of cold, and to have been

accompanied with an imposthume in his brain, occasioned by too much

study. This disease baffled the skill of his physicians, and carried him

off on the 5th November, O.S. 1630, in the sixtieth year of his age.

The remains of this great man were interred in St Peter's Churchyard at

Ratisbon, and the following inscription, embodying an epitaph which he

had written for himself, was engraven on his tombstone.

IN HOC QUIESCIT VIR NOBILISSIMUS, DOCTISSIMUS ET CELEBERRIMUS DOM.

JOHANNES KEPLERUS, TRIUM IMPERATORUM RUDOLPHI II., MATHIAE, ET

FERDINANDI II., PER ANNOS XXX, ANTEA VERO PROCERUM STYRIAE AB ANNO

1594 USQUE 1600, POSTEA QUOQUE ASTRIACORUM ORDINUM AB ANNO 1612

USQUE AD ANNUM 1628, MATHEMATICUS TOTI ORBI CHRISTIANI, PER

MONUMENTA PUBLICA COGNITUS, AB OMNIBUS DOCTIS, INTER PRINCIPES

ASTRONOMIAE NUMERATUS, QUI PROPRIA MANU ASSIGNATUM POST SE RELIQUIT

TALE EPITAPHIUM.

Mensus eram coelos, nunc terrae metior umbras:

Mens coelestis erat, corporis umbra jacet.

IN CHRISTO PIE OBIIT ANNO SALUTIS 1630, DIE 5 NOVEMBRIS, AETATIS SUAE

SEXAGESIMO.

This monument was not long preserved. It was destroyed during the wars

which desolated Germany; and no attempt was made till 1786 to mark with

honour the spot which contained such venerable remains. This attempt,

however, failed, and it was not till 1803 that this great duty was paid

to the memory of Kepler, by the Prince Bishop of Constance, who erected

a handsome monumental temple near the place of his interment, and in the

Botanical Garden of the city. The temple is surmounted by a sphere, and

in the centre is a bust of Kepler in Carrara marble.

Kepler left behind him a wife and seven children--two by his first wife,

Susanna and Louis; and three sons and two daughters by his second wife,

viz.--Sebald, Cordelia, Friedman, Hildebert, and Anna Maria. The eldest

of these, Susanna, was married a few months before her father's death to

Jacob Bartschius, his pupil, who was educated as a physician; and his

son Louis died in 1663, while practising medicine at Konigsberg. The

children by his second wife are said to have died young. They were left

in very narrow circumstances; and though 24,000 florins were due to

Kepler by the Emperor, yet only a part of this sum was received by

Susanna, in consequence of her refusing to give up Tycho's Observations

till the debt was paid. Kepler composed a little work entitled "The

Dream of John Kepler, or Lunar Astronomy," the object of which was to

describe the phenomena seen from the moon; but he died while he and

Bartschius were engaged in its publication, and Bartschius having

resumed the task, died also before its completion. Louis Kepler dreaded

to meddle with a work which had proved so fatal to his father and his

brother-in-law, but this superstitious feeling was overcome, and the

work was published at Frankfort in 1636.

CHAPTER IV.

_Number of Kepler's published Works--His numerous Manuscripts in 22

folio volumes--Purchased by Hevelius, and afterwards by Hansch--Who

publishes Kepler's Life and Correspondence at the expense of

Charles VI.--The History of the rest of his Manuscripts, which are

deposited in the Library of the Academy of Sciences at St

Petersburg--General Character of Kepler--His Candour in

acknowledging his Errors--His Moral and Religious Character--His

Astrological Writings and Opinions considered--His Character as an

Astronomer and a Philosopher--The Splendour of his

Discoveries--Account of his Methods of Investigating Truth._

Although the labours of Kepler were frequently interrupted by severe and

long-continued indisposition, as well as by the pecuniary embarrassments

in which he was constantly involved, yet the ardour and power of his

mind enabled him to surmount all the difficulties of his position. Not

only did he bring to a successful completion the leading inquiries

which he had begun, but he found leisure for composing an immense number

of works more or less connected with the subject of his studies. Between

1594, when he published his Kalendar at Gratz, and 1630, the year of his

death, he published no fewer than _thirty-three_ separate works; and he

left behind him _twenty-two_ volumes of manuscripts, _seven_ of which

contain his epistolary correspondence.

The celebrated astronomer Hevelius, who was a cotemporary of Louis

Kepler, purchased all these manuscripts from Kepler's representatives.

At the death of Hevelius they were bought by M. Gottlieb Hansch, a

zealous mathematician, who was desirous of giving them to the world. For

this purpose he issued a prospectus in 1714 for publishing them by

subscription, in 22 volumes folio; but this plan having failed, he was

introduced to Charles VI., who liberally obtained for him 1000 ducats to

defray the expense of the publication, and an annual pension of 300

florins. With such encouragement, Hansch published in 1718, in one

volume folio, the correspondence of Kepler, entitled "_Epistolae ad

Joannem Keplerum, insertis ad easdem responsionibus Keplerianis,

quidquid hactenus reperiri potuerunt, opus novum, et cum Jo. Kepleri

vita._"

The expenses of this volume unfortunately exhausted the 1000 ducats

which had been granted by the Emperor, and, instead of being able to

publish the rest of the MSS., Hansch was under the necessity of pledging

them for 828 florins. Under these difficulties he addressed himself in

vain to the celebrated Wolfius, to the Royal Society of London, and to

other bodies that were likely to interest themselves in such a subject.

In 1761, when M. De Murr of Nuremberg was in London, he made great

exertions to obtain the MSS., and Dr Bradley is said to have been on the

eve of purchasing them. The competition probably raised the demands of

the proprietor, in whose hands they continued for many years. In 1773

they were offered for 4000 francs, and sometime afterwards M. De Murr

purchased them for the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg, in

whose library they still remain. Euler, Lexell, and Kraft undertook the

task of examining them, and selecting those that were best fitted for

publication, but we believe that no steps have yet been taken for

executing this task, nor are we aware that science would derive any

advantage from its completion.

Although, in drawing his own character, Kepler describes himself as

"troublesome and choleric in politics and domestic matters," yet the

general events of his life indicate a more peaceful disposition than

might have been expected from the peculiarities of his mind and the

ardour of his temperament. On one occasion, indeed, he wrote a violent

and reproachful letter to Tycho, who had given him no just ground of

offence; but the state of Kepler's health at that moment, and the

necessitous circumstances in which he had been placed, present some

palliation of his conduct. But, independent of this apology, his

subsequent conduct was so truly noble as to reconcile even Tycho to his

penitent friend. Kepler quickly saw the error which he committed; he

lamented it with genuine contrition, and was anxious to remove any

unfavourable impression which he might have given of his friend, by the

most public confession of his error, and by the warmest acknowledgments

of the kindness of Tycho.

In his relations with the scientific men of his own times, Kepler

conducted himself with that candour and love of truth which should

always distinguish the philosopher. He was never actuated by any mean

jealousy of his rivals. He never scrupled to acknowledge their high

merits; and when the discoveries made by the telescope established

beyond a doubt the errors of some of Kepler's views, he willingly avowed

his mistake, and never joined in the opposition which was made by many

of his friends to the discoveries of Galileo. A striking example of this

was exhibited in reference to his supposed discovery of Mercury on the

sun's disc. In the year 1607,[50] Kepler observed upon the face of the

sun a dark spot, which he mistook for Mercury; but the day proving

cloudy, he had not the means of determining by subsequent observations

whether or not this opinion was well founded. As spots on the sun were

at that time unknown, Kepler did not hesitate to publish the fact in

1607, in his _Mercurius in Sole visus_; but when Galileo, a few years

afterwards, discovered a great number of similar spots with the

telescope, Kepler retracted his opinions, and acknowledged that

Galileo's discovery afforded an explanation, also, of many similar

observations in old writers, which he had found it difficult to

reconcile with the actual motions of Mercury.

[50] It is said that Kepler saw this dark spot _while looking at

the sun in a camera obscura_. As a camera obscura is actually a

telescope, magnifying objects in proportion to the focal length of

the lens employed, he may be said to have first seen these spots

with the aid of an optical instrument.

Kepler was not one of those cold-hearted men who, though continually

occupied in the study of the material world, and ambitious of the

distinction which a successful examination of it confers, are yet

insensible to the goodness and greatness of the Being who made and

sustains it. His mind was cast in a better mould. The magnificence and

harmony of the divine works excited in him not only admiration but love.

He felt his own humility the farther he was allowed to penetrate into

the mysteries of the universe; and sensible of the incompetency of his

unaided powers for such transcendent researches, and recognising himself

as but the instrument which the Almighty employed to make known his

wonders, he never entered upon his inquiries without praying for

assistance from above. This frame of mind was by no means inconsistent

with that high spirit of delight and triumph with which Kepler surveyed

his discoveries. His was the unpretending ovation of success, not the

ostentatious triumph of ambition; and if a noble pride did occasionally

mingle itself with his feelings, it was the pride of being the chosen

messenger of physical truth, not that of being the favoured possessor of

superior genius. With such a frame of mind, Kepler was necessarily a

Christian. The afflictions with which he was beset confirmed his faith

and brightened his hopes: he bore them in all their variety and severity

with Christian patience; and though he knew that this world was to be

the theatre of his intellectual glory, yet he felt that his rest and his

reward could be found only in another.

It is difficult to form any very intelligible idea of the nature and

extent of Kepler's astrological opinions, and of the degree of credit

which he himself placed in the opinions that he did avow. In his

Principles of Astrology, published in 1602, and in other works, he rails

against the vanity and worthlessness of the ordinary astrology. He

regards those who professed it as knaves and charlatans; and maintains

that the planets and stars exercise no influence whatever over human

affairs. He conceives, however, that certain harmonious configurations

of suitable planets, like the spur to a horse, or a speech to an

audience, have the power of exciting the minds of men to certain general

actions or impulses; so that the only effect of these configurations is

to operate along with the vital soul in producing results which would

not otherwise have taken place. As an example of this, he states that

those who are born when many aspects of the planets occur, _generally_

turn out busy and industrious, whether they be occupied in amassing

wealth, managing public affairs, or prosecuting scientific studies.

Kepler himself was born under a triple configuration, and hence, in his

opinion, his ardour and activity in study; and he informs us that he

knew a lady born under nearly the same configurations, "who not only

makes no progress in literature, but troubles her whole family and

occasions deplorable misery to herself." This excitement of the

faculties of sublunary natures, as he expresses it, by the colours and

aspects and conjunctions of the planets, is regarded by Kepler as a

fact, which he had deduced from observation, and which has "compelled

his unwilling belief." "I have been driven to this," says he, "not by

studying or admiring Plato, but singly and solely by observing seasons,

and noting the aspects by which they are produced. I have seen the state

of the atmosphere almost uniformly disturbed as often as the planets are

in conjunction, or in the other configurations so celebrated among

astrologers. I have noticed its tranquil state either when there are

none or few such aspects, or when they are transitory and of short

duration." Had Kepler been able to examine these hasty and erroneous

deductions by long continued observation, he would soon have found that

the coincidence which he did observe was merely accidental, and he would

have cheerfully acknowledged it. Speculations of this kind, however,

are, from their very nature, less subject to a rigorous scrutiny; and a

long series of observations is necessary either to establish or to

overturn them. The industry of modern observers has now supplied this

defect, and there is no point in science more certain than that the sun,

moon, and planets do not exercise any influence on the general state of

our atmosphere.

The philosophers in Kepler's day, who had studied the phenomena of the

tides, without having any idea of their cause, and who observed that

they were clearly related to the daily motions of the two great

luminaries, may be excused for the extravagance of their belief in

supposing that the planets exercised other influences over "sublunary

nature." Although Kepler, in his Commentaries on Mars, had considered it

probable that the waters of our ocean are attracted by the moon, as iron

is by a loadstone, yet this opinion seems to have been a very transient

one, as he long afterwards, in his System of Harmonies, stated his firm

belief that the earth is an enormous living animal, and enumerates even

the analogies between its habits and those of known animated beings. He

considered the tides as waves produced by the spouting out of water

through its gills, and he explains their relation to the solar and lunar

motions by supposing that the terrene monster has, like other animals,

its daily and nightly alternations of sleeping and waking.

From the consideration of Kepler's astrological opinions, it is an

agreeable transition to proceed to the examination of his high merits as

an astronomer and a philosopher. As an experimental philosopher, or as

an astronomical observer, Kepler does not lay claim to our admiration.

He himself acknowledges, "that for observations his sight was dull, and

for mechanical operations his hand was awkward." He suffered much from

weak eyes, and the delicacy of his constitution did not permit him to

expose himself to the night air. Notwithstanding these hindrances,

however, he added several observations to those of Tycho, which he made

with two instruments that were presented to him by his friend Hoffman,

the President of the States of Styria. These instruments were an iron

sextant, 2-1/2 feet in diameter, and a brass azimuthal quadrant 3-1/2 feet in

diameter, both of which were divided into single minutes of a degree.

They were very seldom used, and we must regard the circumstances which

disqualified Kepler for an observer, as highly favourable to the

developement of those great powers which he directed with undivided

energy to physical astronomy.

Even if Kepler had never turned his attention to the heavens, his

optical labours would have given him a high rank among the original

inquirers of his age; but when we consider him also as the discoverer

of the three great laws which bear his name, we must assign him a rank

next to that of Newton. The history of science does not present us with

any discoveries more truly original, or which required for their

establishment a more powerful and vigorous mind. The speculations of his

predecessors afforded him no assistance. From the cumbrous machinery

adopted by Copernicus, Kepler passed, at one step, to an elliptical

orbit, with the sun in one of its foci, and from that moment astronomy

became a demonstrative science. The splendid discoveries of Newton

sprung immediately from those of Kepler, and completed the great chain

of truths which constitute the laws of the planetary system. The

eccentricity and boldness of Kepler's powers form a striking contrast

with the calm intellect and the enduring patience of Newton. The bright

spark which the genius of the one elicited, was fostered by the sagacity

of the other into a steady and a permanent flame.

Kepler has fortunately left behind him a full account of the methods by

which he arrived at his great discoveries. What other philosophers have

studiously concealed, Kepler has openly avowed, and minutely detailed;

and we have no hesitation in considering these details as the most

valuable present that has ever been given to science, and as deserving

the careful study of all who seek to emulate his immortal achievements.

It has been asserted that Newton made his discoveries by following a

different method; but this is a mere assumption, as Newton has never

favoured the world with any account of the erroneous speculations and

the frequent failures which must have preceded his ultimate success. Had

Kepler done the same, by recording only the final steps of his

inquiries, his method of investigation would have obtained the highest

celebrity, and would have been held up to future ages as a pattern for

their imitation. But such was the candour of his mind, and such his

inordinate love of truth, that he not only recorded his wildest fancies,

but emblazoned even his greatest errors. If Newton had indulged us with

the same insight into his physical inquiries, we should have witnessed

the same processes which were employed by Kepler, modified only by the

different characters and intensities of their imaginative powers.

When Kepler directed his mind to the discovery of a general principle,

he set distinctly before him, and never once lost sight of, the explicit

object of his search. His imagination, now unreined, indulged itself in

the creation and invention of various hypotheses. The most plausible, or

perhaps the most fascinating, of these was then submitted to a rigorous

scrutiny; and the moment it was found to be incompatible with the

results of observation and experiment, it was willingly abandoned, and

another hypothesis submitted to the same severe ordeal. By thus

gradually excluding erroneous views and assumptions, Kepler not only

made a decided approximation to the object of his pursuit, but in the

trials to which his opinions were submitted, and in the observations or

experiments which they called forth, he discovered new facts and arrived

at new views which directed his subsequent inquiries. By pursuing this

method, he succeeded in his most difficult researches, and discovered

those beautiful and profound laws which have been the admiration of

succeeding ages. In tracing the route which he followed, it is easy for

those who live under the light of modern science to say that his

fancies were often wild, and his labour often wasted; but, in judging of

Kepler's methods, we ought to place ourselves in his times, and invest

ourselves with the opinions and the knowledge of his contemporaries.

In the infancy of a science there is no speculation so absurd as not to

merit examination. The most remote and fanciful explanations of facts

have often been found the true ones; and opinions which have in one

century been objects of ridicule, have in the next been admitted among

the elements of our knowledge. The physical world teems with wonders,

and the various forms of matter exhibit to us properties and relations

far more extraordinary than the wildest fancy could have conceived.

Human reason stands appalled before this magnificent display of creative

power, and they who have drunk deepest of its wisdom will be the least

disposed to limit the excursions of physical speculation.

The influence of the imagination as an instrument of research, has, we

think, been much overlooked by those who have ventured to give laws to

philosophy. This faculty is of the greatest value in physical inquiries.

If we use it as a guide, and confide in its indications, it will

infallibly deceive us; but if we employ it as an auxiliary, it will

afford us the most invaluable aid. Its operation is like that of the

light troops which are sent out to ascertain the strength and position

of an enemy. When the struggle commences, their services terminate; and

it is by the solid phalanx of the judgment that the battle must be

fought and won.

G. S. TULLIS, PRINTER, CUPAN.

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| Transcriber's Notes and Errata |

| |

| The following typographical errors have been corrected: |

| |

| |Error |Correction | |

| | | | |

| |betwen |between | |

| |his his |his | |

| |secretry |secretary | |

| |there sidence |the residence | |

| |guaging |gauging | |

| |

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