alers, a canonry in the cathedral of Roskilde, and the income of an
estate in Norway. The first stone of the magnificent observatory of
Uraniborg was laid on the 8th of August 1576; it received the finest
procurable instrumental outfit; and was the scene, during twenty-one
years, of Tycho's labours in systematically collecting materials--the
first made available since the Alexandrian epoch--for the correction of
astronomical theories. James VI. of Scotland, afterwards James I. of
England, visited him at Uraniborg on the 20th of March 1590. But by that
time his fortunes were on the wane; for Frederick II. died in 1588, and
his successor, Christian IV., was less tolerant of Tycho's arrogant and
insubordinate behaviour. His pension and fief having been withdrawn, he
sailed for Rostock in June 1597, and re-commenced observing before the
close of the year, in the castle of Wandsbeck near Hamburg. He spent
the following winter at Wittenberg, and reached Prague in June 1599,
well assured of favour and protection from the emperor Rudolph II. That
monarch, accordingly, assigned him the castle of Benatky for his
residence, with a pension of 3000 florins; his great instruments were
moved thither from Hveen, and Johannes Kepler joined him there in
January 1600. But this phase of renewed prosperity was brief. After
eleven days' illness, Tycho Brahe died on the 24th of October 1601, at
Benatky, and was buried in the Teynkirche, Prague.

Tycho's principal work, entitled _Astronomiae Instauratae Progymnasmata_
(2 vols., Prague, 1602-1603) was edited by Kepler. The first volume
treated of the motions of the sun and moon, and gave the places of 777
fixed stars (this number was increased to 1005 by Kepler in 1627 in the
"Rudolphine Tables"). The second, which had been privately printed at
Uraniborg in 1588 with the heading _De Mundi Aetherei recentioribus
Phaenomenis_, was mainly concerned with the comet of 1577, demonstrated
by Tycho from its insensible parallax to be no terrestrial exhalation,
as commonly supposed, but a body traversing planetary space. It
included, besides, an account of the Tychonic plan of the cosmos, in
which a _via media_ was sought between the Ptolemaic and Copernican
systems. The earth retained its immobility; but the five planets were
made to revolve round the sun, which, with its entire cortege, annually
circuited the earth, the sphere of the fixed stars performing meanwhile,
as of old, its all-inclusive diurnal