Fig. 5.
Tycho Brahe was of Swedish descent, and of noble family; but having received his education at the University of Copenhagen, and spent a large part of his life in Denmark, he is usually considered as a Dane, and quoted as a Danish astronomer. He was born in the year 1546. When he was about fourteen years old, there happened a great eclipse of the sun, which awakened in him a high interest, especially when he saw how accurately all the circumstances of it answered to the prediction with which he had been before made acquainted. He was immediately seized with an irresistible passion to acquire a knowledge of the science which could so successfully lift the veil of futurity. His friends had destined him for the profession of law, and, from the superior talents of which he gave early promise, and with the advantage of powerful family connexions, they had marked out for him a distinguished career in public life. They therefore endeavored to discourage him from pursuing a path which they deemed so much less glorious than that, and vainly sought, by various means, to extinguish the zeal for astronomy which was kindled in his youthful bosom. Despising all the attractions of a court, he contracted an alliance with a peasant girl, and, in the peaceful retirement of domestic life, desired no happier lot than to peruse the grand volume which the nocturnal heavens displayed to his enthusiastic imagination. He soon established his fame as one of the greatest astronomers of the age, and monarchs did homage to his genius. The King of Denmark became his munificent patron, and James the First, King of England, when he went to Denmark to complete his marriage with a Danish Princess, passed eight days with Tycho in his observatory, and, at his departure, addressed to the astronomer a Latin ode, accompanied with a magnificent present. He gave him also his royal license to print his works in England, and added to it the following complimentary letter: "Nor am I acquainted with these things on the relation of others, or from a mere perusal of your works, but I have seen them with my own eyes, and heard them with my own ears, in your residence at Uraniburg, during the various learned and agreeable conversations which I there held with you, which even now affect my mind to such a degree, that it is difficult to decide, whether I recollect them with greater pleasure or admiration." Admiring disciples also crowded to this sanctuary of the sciences, to acquire a knowledge of the heavens.
The observatory consisted of a main building, which was square, each side being sixty feet, and of large wings in the form of round towers. The whole was executed in a style of great magnificence, and Tycho, who was a nobleman by descent, gratified his taste for splendor and ornament, by giving to every part of the structure an air of the most finished elegance. Nor were the instruments with which it was furnished less magnificent than the buildings. They were vastly larger than had before been employed in the survey of the heavens, and many of them were adorned with costly ornaments. The cut on page 46, Fig. 6, represents one of Tycho's large and splendid instruments, (an astronomical quadrant,) on one side of which was figured a representation of the astronomer and his assistants, in the midst of their instruments, and intently engaged in making and recording observations. It conveys to us a striking idea of the magnificence of his arrangements, and of the extent of his operations.
Here Tycho sat in state, clad in the robes of nobility, and supported throughout his establishment the etiquette due to his rank. His observations were more numerous than all that had ever been made before, and they were carried to a degree of accuracy that is astonishing, when we consider that they were made without the use of the telescope, which was not yet invented.
Tycho carried on his observations at Uraniburg for about twenty years, during which time he accumulated an immense store of accurate and valuable facts, which afforded the groundwork of the discovery of the great laws of the solar system established by Kepler, of whom I shall tell you more hereafter.
Fig. 6.
But the high marks of distinction which Tycho enjoyed, not only from his own Sovereign, but also from foreign potentates, provoked the envy of the courtiers of his royal patron. They did not indeed venture to make their attacks upon him while his generous patron was living; but the King was no sooner dead, and succeeded by a young monarch, who did not feel the same interest in protecting and encouraging this great ornament of the kingdom, than his envious foes carried into execution their long-meditated plot for his ruin. They represented to the young King, that the treasury was exhausted, and that it was necessary to retrench a number of pensions, which had been granted for useless purposes, and in particular that of Tycho, which, they maintained, ought to be conferred upon some person capable of rendering greater services to the state. By these means, they succeeded in depriving him of his support, and he was compelled to retreat under the hospitable mansion of a friend in Germany. Here he became known to the Emperor, who invited him to Prague, where, with an ample stipend, he resumed his labors. But, though surrounded with affectionate friends and admiring disciples, he was still an exile in a foreign land. Although his country had been base in its ingratitude, it was yet the land which he loved; the scene of his earliest affection; the theatre of his scientific glory. These feelings continually preyed upon his mind, and his unsettled spirit was ever hovering among his native mountains. In this condition he was attacked by a disease of the most painful kind, and, though its agonizing paroxysms had lengthened intermissions, yet he saw that death was approaching. He implored his pupils to persevere in their scientific labors; he conversed with Kepler on some of the profoundest points of astronomy; and with these secular occupations he mingled frequent acts of piety and devotion. In this happy condition he expired, without pain, at the age of fifty-five.[3]