of the highly-excited party which attempted to
cast on him reproach and ridicule for that proposition, and
especially for assimilating those establishments to light-houses of
the skies, have recently admitted the wisdom of his advice by making
ample appropriations to accomplish the very object he then proposed."

The oration Mr. Adams delivered on that occasion is, perhaps, the most
extraordinary of his literary efforts, evidencing his comprehensive
grasp of the subject, and the intensity of his interest in it. It
embraces an outline of the history of astronomy, illustrated by an
elevated and excited spirit of philosophy. Those who cultivated, those
who patronized, and those who advanced it, are celebrated, and the
events of their lives and the nature of their services are briefly
related. The operations of the mind which are essential to its progress
are touched upon. The intense labor and peculiar intellectual
qualifications incident to and required for its successful pursuit are
intimated. Nor are the inventors of those optical instruments, who had
contributed to the advancement of this science beyond all previous
anticipation, omitted in this extensive survey of its nature, progress,
and history.

After celebrating "the gigantic energies and more than heroic labors of
Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo," he pronounced Newton "the
consummation of them all."

"It was his good fortune," observed Mr. Adams, "to be born and to live
in a country where there was no college of cardinals to cast him into
prison, and doom him to spend his days in repeating the seven
penitential psalms, for shedding light upon the world, and publishing
mathematical truths. Newton was not persecuted by the dull and ignorant
instruments of political or ecclesiastical power. He lived in honor
among his countrymen; was a member of one Parliament, received the
dignity of knighthood, held for many years a lucrative office, and at
his decease was interred in solemn state in Westminster Abbey, where a
monument records his services to mankind, among the sepulchres of the
British kings.

"From the days of Newton down to the present hour, the science of
astronomy has been cultivated, with daily deepening interest, by all the
civilized nations of Europe--by England, France, Prussia, Sweden,
several of the German and Italian states, and, above all, by Russia,
whose present sovereign has made the pursuit of knowledge a truly
i