These
persons constitute, indeed, the Magi of our western forests.
* * * * *
=_Edward Everett, 1794-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 531.)
From "Orations and Speeches."
=_190._= ASTRONOMY, FOR ALL TIME.
There is much by day to engage the attention of the observatory; the
sun, his apparent motions, his dimensions, the spots on his disk (to
us the faint indications of movements of unimagined grandeur in his
luminous atmosphere), a solar eclipse, a transit of the interior
planets, the mysteries of the spectrum--all phenomena of vast importance
and interest. But night is the astronomer's accepted time: he goes to
his delightful labors when the busy world goes to its rest. A dark pall
spreads over the resorts of active life; terrestrial objects, hill and
valley, and rock and stream, and the abodes of men, disappear; but the
curtain is drawn up which concealed the heavenly hosts. There they shine
and there they move, as they moved and shone to the eyes of Newton and
Galileo, of Kepler and Copernicus, of Ptolemy and Hipparchus; yea, as
they moved and shone when the morning stars sang together, and all the
sons of God shouted for joy. All has changed on earth; but the glorious
heavens remain unchanged.
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