and the result was a quarrel, which Walckendorf, at least, never forgot. From that day, Brahe's ruin was resolved upon by his powerful enemy. A commission was soon after appointed to report upon the public utility of his establishment; and upon this compliant body declaring that they saw nothing in his splendid observatory but a source of useless expense to the state, a decree was passed, recalling all the grants he had received from the former king, and dispossessing him of his island. On this, Brahe determined to bid adieu for ever to his ungrateful country; and, taking with him all his instruments, he retired to Germany. About two years afterwards, however, he was invited to take up his residence at Prague, by the Emperor, Rodolph II.; and by this prince, who was warmly attached to science, he was provided with a second asylum, almost as splendid as that which he had enjoyed in his native country. But he lived only a very short time after this, having died in 1601, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, Tycho Brahe, as most of our readers are probably aware, was the inventor, or reviver, of a peculiar scheme of the universe, according to which the earth is conceived to be immoveable in the centre of the system, the sun to revolve round it, and the other planets round the sun. It is unnecessary to say that this hypothesis has been long exploded. Indeed, even at the time when it was proposed by its author, it was, although supported by him with much ingenuity, a most unphilosophical retrogression from the true system previously established by Copernicus. But although Brahe, it thus appears, has no very high claims upon our admiration as a theorist, he undoubtedly did much in another way to promote the improvement of astronomy. His extraordinary devotion to the science, of itself, operated as inspiration upon many of the other ardent minds of the time. But it was

by the great number and comparative exactness of his observations, far surpassing anything that had been attained by his predecessors, that he chiefly contributed to the progress of astronomy. No other

but one in his circumstances could have commanded either the leisure or the pecuniary means necessary for the making of these observations, which, besides having occupied many years, owed much of their superior accuracy to the excellence and consequent costliness of the instruments which Brahe employed. Here, therefore, was a case in which science was indebted to the wealth of one of its cultivators for services which no zeal or talents could have otherwise enabled him to render.

He

Another man of fortune, to whom both science and the arts are under considerable obligations, is the German mathematician, TSCHIRNHAUSEN, celebrated for the discovery of the peculiar curve called, after him, Tschirnhausen's Caustics. He was born in 1651, at the seat of his ancestors, in Upper Lusatia; and although, after receiving an excellent education, he entered the army at an early age, he very soon quitted the profession of a soldier, and set out on his travels through England, Italy, and France. spent several years in traversing these countries, embracing every opportunity of obtaining a knowledge of their arts, manufactures, and productions, and seeking the acquaintance of the learned men of the time, wherever he went. On returning home, he took up his residence on his estate, the revenues of which were ample; and the remainder of his life was given to scientific speculations and experiments. The science of optics was that to which he was chiefly attached; and it was while making some experiments with reflecting mirrors, that he discovered his Caustics, which are curves formed by light reflected in certain circumstances, and are so called from the

Greek word for a burning-glass. They possess some remarkable geometrical properties*. When Tschirnhausen announced this discovery to the French Academy of Sciences, he was only in his thirty-first year; but he was immediately admitted a member of the Academy by order of the King, Louis XIV. In order to have the aid of proper instruments in the prosecution of his researches, he afterwards established three glass-houses in his native district; at which he employed all the resources of his ingenuity in endeavouring to fabricate burning-glasses of greater size and power than any which had ever been elsewhere produced. In 1687 he had made a concave reflecting mirror of copper, of the diameter of four feet and a half, which consumed wood and fused metals at twelve feet distance, in a few seconds; but although these effects greatly surpassed anything of the same kind that had been accomplished in modern times, he found the inconvenience of operating by reflection so great, that he determined to persevere in his attempts to obtain, if possible, a lens of equal magnitude. He did not exactly attain this object; for the largest lens he succeeded in producing had only a diameter of three feet. But when it is added that nobody but himself had ever before made one of more than four or five inches diameter, his success will probably be deemed sufficiently extraordinary. The method he employed in fabricating this immense glass is not known. It was convex on both sides, and weighed a hundred and sixty pounds. Although somewhat less in size, its effects greatly exceeded those of the

*In an article of some length upon Tschirnhausen, in the Biographie Universelle, the writer, M. Gley, by a strange blunder, mistakes these curves for actual burning-glasses; and describes, with great minuteness, their wonderful powers in kindling and consuming, or melting, wood, iron, tiles, slates, and earthen-ware! -Vid. Biog. Univ. xlvii. 3.

reflector he had formerly used. This lens was purchased from Tschirnhausen by the Duke of Orleans, who afterwards made a present of it to the Academy of Sciences. Tschirnhausen deserves, also, to be remembered as the founder of the celebrated porcelain manufactory of Dresden. Before his time, it was supposed that the Chinese employed for their porcelain a peculiar earth, only found in their own country; but he discovered that the same species of ware could be manufactured from a compound of different sorts of earth, which might be obtained in Europe as well as in China. This eminent benefactor to the arts, who, besides his contributions to the Transactions of the French Academy, was also the author of two separate works,-the first, entitled The Medicine of the Body, the latter, The Medicine of the Mind, being, in fact, a system of the art of reasoning,-died in 1708.

But, perhaps, the best example we can adduce of the manner in which wealth may be made subservient by its possessor, not only to the acquisition of knowledge, but also to its diffusion and improvement, is that of our celebrated countryman the Honourable ROBERT BOYLE. Boyle was born at Lismore, in Ireland, in 1627, and was the seventh and youngest son of Richard, the first Earl of Cork, commonly called the Great Earl. The first advantage which he derived from the wealth and station of his father, was an excellent education. After having enjoyed the instructions of a domestic tutor, he was sent, at an early age, to Eton. But his inclination, from the first, seems to have led him to the study of things, rather than of words. He remained at Eton only four years, "in the last of which," according to his own statement, in an account which he has given us of his early life, "he forgot much of that Latin he had got, for he was so addicted to more solid parts

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of knowledge, that he hated the study of bare words naturally, as something that relished too much of pedantry, to consort with his disposition and designs." In reference to what is here insinuated, in disparagement of the study of languages merely as such, we may just remark that the observation is, perhaps, not quite so profound as it is plausible. So long as one mind differs from another, there will always be much difference of sentiment as to the comparative claims upon our regard of that, on the one hand, which addresses itself principally to the taste or the imagination, and that, on the other, which makes its appeal to the understanding only. But it is, at any rate, to be remembered that, in confining the epithet useful, as is commonly done, to the latter, it is intended to describe it as the useful only pre-eminently, and not exclusively. The agreeable or the graceful is plainly also useful. The study of language and style, therefore, cannot, with any propriety, be denounced as a mere waste of time; but, on the contrary, is well fitted to become to the mind a source both of enjoyment and of power. So great, indeed, is the influence of diction upon the common feelings of mankind, that no literary work, it may be safely asserted, has ever acquired a permanent reputation and popularity, or, in other words, produced any wide and enduring effect, which was not distinguished by the graces of its style. Their deficiency, in this respect, has been at least one of the causes of the comparative oblivion into which Mr. Boyle's own writings have fallen, and, doubtless, weakened the efficacy of such of them as aimed at anything beyond a bare statement of facts, even in his own day. It was this especially which exposed some of his moral lucubrations to Swift's annihilating ridicule.

On being brought home from Eton, Boyle, who was his father's favourite son, was placed under