, only
30 years old, was applying his wild genius to the determination of the
orbit of Mars, and Galileo, at the age of 36, was about to direct the
telescope to the unexplored regions of space. The diversity of gifts
which Providence assigned to these three philosophers was no less
remarkable. Tycho was destined to lay the foundation of modern
astronomy, by a vast series of accurate observations made with the
largest and the finest instruments; it was the proud lot of Kepler to
deduce the laws of the planetary orbits from the observations of his
predecessors; while Galileo enjoyed the more dazzling honour of
discovering by the telescope new celestial bodies, and new systems of
worlds.

John Kepler, the youngest of this illustrious band, was born at the
imperial city of Weil, in the duchy of Wirtemberg, on the 21st December
1571. His parents, Henry Kepler and Catherine Guldenmann, were both of
noble family, but had been reduced to indigence by their own bad
conduct. Henry Kepler had been long in the service of the Duke of
Wirtemberg as a petty officer, and in that capacity had wasted his
fortune. Upon setting out for the army, he left his wife in a state of
pregnancy; and, at the end of seven months, she gave premature birth to
John Kepler, who was, from this cause, a sickly child during the first
years of his life. Being obliged to join the army in the Netherlands,
his wife followed him into the field, and left her son, then five years
old, under the charge of his grandfather at Limberg. Sometime afterwards
he was attacked with the smallpox, and having with difficulty recovered
from this severe malady, he was sent to school in 1577.

Having become security for one of his friends, who absconded from his
creditors, Henry Kepler was obliged to sell his house and all his
property, and was driven to the necessity of keeping a tavern at
Elmendingen. Owing to these misfortunes, young Kepler was taken from
school about two years afterwards, and was obliged to perform the
functions of a servant in his father's house. In 1585, he was again
placed in the school of Elmendingen; but his father and mother having
been both attacked with the smallpox, and he himself having been seized
with a violent illness in 1585, his education had been much neglected,
and he was prohibited from all mental application.

In the year 1586, on the 26th of November, Kepler was admitted into the
school at the Monastery of Maulbronn, which had been esta