stituted renders to science.
The demand of the public for memoirs in mathematics and natural philosophy, many of them perhaps profound and difficult, is not sufficiently great to defray the expence of pub.
lication, if they come forward separately and unconnected with one another. In a collec tive state they are much more likely to draw the attention of the public ; the form in which they appear is the most convenient both for the reader and the author ; and if af ter all, the sale of the work is unequal to the expence, the deficiency is made 'up from the funds of the society. An institution of this kind, therefore, is a patriotic and disinterest ed association of the lovers of science, who engage not only to employ themselves in dis covery, but, by private contribution, to defray the expence of scientific publications.
The Academy of Sciences in Paris was not exactly an institution of the same kind. It consisted of three classes of members, one of which, the Pensionnaires, twenty in number, had salaries paid by Government, and were bound in their turns to furnish the meetings with scientific memoirs, and each of them also, at the beginning of every year, was ex pected to give an account of the work in which he was to be employed. This institution has been of incredible advantage to science. To detach a number of ingenious men from every thing but scientific pursuits ; to deliver them alike from the embarrassments of po verty or the temptations of wealth ; to give them a place and station in society the most respectable and independent, is -to remove every impediment, and to add every stimulus to exertion. To this institution, accordingly, operating upon a people of great genius, and indefatigable activity of mind, we are to ascribe that superiority in the mathematical sciences, which, for the last seventy years, has been so conspicuous.
The establishment of astronomical observatories, as national or royal works, is connect ed in Europe with .the institution of scientific or philosophical societies. The necessity of the former was, indeed, even more apparent than that of the latter. A science, which has the heavenly bodies for its objects, ought, as far as possible, to be exempted from the vicissitudes of the earth. As it gains strength but slowly, and requires ages to complete its discoveries, the plan of observation must not be limited by the life of the individual who pursues it, but must be followed out in the same place, year after year, to an unlimited extent. A perception of this truth, however indistinct, seems, from the earliest times, to have sug gested the utility of observatories, to those sovereigns who patronised astronomy, whether they looked to that science for real or imaginary instruction. The circle of Osymandias is the sub
ject of one of the most ancient traditions in science, and has preserved the name of a prince which otherwise would have been entirely unknown. A building, dedicated to astronomy, made a conspicuous part of the magnificent establishment of the school of Alexandria. Dur ing the middle ages, in the course of the migrations of science toward the east, sumptuous buildings, furnished with astronomical instruments, rose successively in the plains of Me sopotamia, and among the mountains of Tartary. An observatory in the gardens of the Caliph of Bagdat contained a quadrant of fifteen cubits' in radius, and a sextant of forty. * Instruments of a still larger size distinguished the observatory of Samarcande, and the ac counts would seem incredible, if the ruins of Benares did not, at this moment, attest the reality of similar constructions.
On the revival of letters in Europe, establishments of the same kind were the first de cisive indications of a taste for science. We have seen the magnificent observatory on which Tycho expended his private fortune, and employed the munificence of his patron, become a sad memorial (after the signal services which it had rendered to astronomy) of the instability of whatever depends on individual greatness. The observatories at Paris and London were secured from a similar fate, by being made national establishments, where a succession of astronomers were to devote themselves to the study of the heavens. The observatory at Paris was begun in 1667, and that at Greenwich in 1675. In the first of these, Ls Hire and Cassini, in the second, Flamstead and Halley, are at the head of a series of successors, who have done honour to their respective nations. If there be in Britain any establishment, in the success and conduct of which the nation has reason to boast, it is that of the Royal Observatory, which, in spite of a climate which so continually tries the patience, and so often disappoints the hopes of the astronomer, has furnished a greater number of observations to be completely relied on, than all the rest of Europe put together, and afforded the data for those tables, in which the French mathematicians have expressed, with such accuracy, the past, the present, and the • future condition of the heavens.