ments 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 No. 8, of his list, he found his match in this respect. 'Fortune has avenged herself at length 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 repented her conformation, 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 behavior, by observing whether the treatment he experienced met with a proper degree of sympathy. Apparently, the experiment did not succeed; and, when 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 is short and thick. In a family notorious for fatness, 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 his 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." Having thus settled his domestic affairs, Kepler now betook himself, with his usual industry, to his astronomical studies, and brought before the world the most celebrated of his publications, entitled 'Harmonics.' In the fifth book of this work he announced his Third Law, that the squares of the periodical times of the planets are as the cubes of the distances. Kepler's rapture on detecting it was unbounded. "What," says he, "I prophesied two-and-twenty years ago, as soon as I discovered the five solids among the heavenly orbits; what I firmly believed long before I had seen Ptolemy's Harmonics; what I had promised my friends in the title of this book, which I named before I was sure of my discovery; what, sixteen years ago, I urged as a thing to be sought; that for which I joined Tycho Brahe, for which I settled in Prague, for which I have devoted the best part of my life to astronomical contemplations;—at length I have brought to light, and have recognised its truth beyond my most sanguine expectations. It is now eighteen months since I got the first glimpse of light, three months since the dawn, very few days since the unveiled sun, most admirable to gaze on, burst out upon me. Nothing holds me: 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 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. I may well wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer." In accordance with the notion he entertained respecting the "music of the spheres," he made Saturn and Jupiter take the bass, Mars the tenor, the Earth and Venus the counter, and Mercury the treble. "The misery in which Kepler lived," says Sir David Brewster, in his 'Life of Newton,' "forms a painful contrast with the services which he performed for science. The pension on which he subsisted was always in arrears; and though the three emperors, whose reigns he adorned, directed their ministers to be more punctual in its payment, the disobedience of their commands was a source of continual vexation to Kepler. When he retired to Silesia, to spend the remainder of his days, his pecuniary difficulties became still more harassing. Necessity at length compelled him to apply personally for the arrears which were due; and he accordingly set out, in 1630, when nearly sixty years of age, for Ratisbon; but, in consequence of the great fatigue which so long a journey on horseback produced, he was seized with a fever, which put an end to his life.” Professor Whewell (in his interesting work on Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology) expresses the opinion that Kepler, notwithstanding his constitutional oddities, was a man of strong and lively piety. His 'Commentaries on the Motions of Mars' he opens with the following passage: "I beseech my reader, that, not unmindful of the Divine goodness bestowed on man, he do with me praise and celebrate the wisdom and greatness of the Creator, which I open to him from a more inward explication of the form of the world, from a searching of causes, from a detection of the errors of vision; and that thus, not only in the firmness and stability of the earth, he perceive with gratitude the preservation of all living things in Nature as the gift of God, but also that in its motion, so recondite, so admirable, he acknowledge the wisdom of the Creator. But him who is too dull to receive this science, or too weak to believe the Copernican system without harm to his piety,— him, I say, I advise that, leaving the school of astronomy, and condemning, if he please, any doctrines of the philosophers, he follow his own path, and desist from this wandering through the universe; and, lifting up his natural eyes, with which he alone can see, pour himself out in his own heart, in praise of God the Creator; being certain that he gives no less worship to God than the astronomer, to whom God has given to see more clearly with his inward eye, and who, for what he has himself discovered, both can and will glorify God." In a Life of Kepler, very recently published in his native country, founded on manuscripts of his which have lately been brought to light, there are given numerous other examples of a similar devotional spirit. Kepler thus concludes his Harmonics: "I give Thee thanks, Lord and Creator, that Thou has given me joy through Thy creation; for I have been ravished with the work of Thy hands. I have revealed unto mankind the glory of Thy works, as far as my limited spirit could conceive their infinitude. Should I have brought forward any thing that is unworthy of Thee, or should I have sought my own fame, be graciously pleased to forgive me. As Galileo experienced the most bitter persecutions from the Church of Rome, so Kepler met with much violent opposition and calumny from the Protestant clergy of his own country, particularly for adopting, in an almanac which, as astronomer royal, he annually published, the reformed calendar, as given by the Pope of Rome. His opinions respecting religious liberty, also, appear to have been greatly in advance of the times in which he lived. In answer to certain calumnies with which he was assailed, for his boldness in reasoning from the light of Nature, he uttered these memorable words: "The day will soon break, when pious simplicity will be ashamed of its blind superstition; when men will recognise truth in the book of Nature as well as in the Holy Scriptures, and rejoice in the two revelations." LETTER XXV. COMETS. "Fancy now no more Wantons on fickle pinions through the skies, Creation's blended stores arranging as she flies."-Beattie. NOTHING in astronomy is more truly admirable, than the knowledge which astronomers have acquired of the motions of comets, and the power they have gained of predicting their return. Indeed, every thing appertaining to this class of bodies is so wonderful, as to seem rather a tale of romance than a simple recital of facts. Comets are truly the knights-errant of astronomy. Appearing suddenly in the nocturnal sky, and often dragging after them a train of terrific aspect, they were, in the earlier ages of the world, and indeed until a recent period, considered as peculiarly ominous of the wrath of Heaven, and as harbingers of wars and famines, of the dethronement of monarchs, and the dissolution of empires. Science has, it is true, disarmed them of their terrors, and demonstrated that they are under the guidance of the same Hand, that directs in their courses the other members of the solar system; but she has, at the same time, arrayed them in a garb of majesty peculiarly her own. Although the ancients paid little attention to the ordinary phenomena of Nature, hardly deeming them worthy of a reason, yet, when a comet blazed forth, fear and astonishment conspired to make it an object of the most attentive observation. Hence the aspects of remarkable comets, that have appeared at various times, have been handed down to us, often with circumstantial minuteness, by the historians of different ages. The comet which appeared in the year 130, before the Christian era, at the birth of Mithridates, is |