Kepler was born of parents who were then in humble circumstances, although of noble descent. Their misfortunes, which had reduced them to poverty, seem to have been aggravated by their own unhappy dispositions; for his biographer informs us, that "his mother was treated with a degree of barbarity by her husband and brother-in-law, that was hardly exceeded by her own perverseness." It is fortunate, therefore, that Kepler, in his childhood, was removed from the immediate society and example of his parents, and educated at a public school at the expense of the Duke of Wurtemberg. He early imbibed a taste for natural philosophy, but had conceived a strong prejudice against astronomy, and even a contempt for it, inspired, probably, by the arrogant and ridiculous pretensions of the astrologers, who constituted the principal astronomers of his country. A vacant post, however, of teacher of astronomy, occurred when he was of a suitable age to fill it, and he was compelled to take it by the authority of his tutors, though with many protestations, on his part, wishing to be provided for in some other more brilliant profession. Happy is genius, when it lights on a profession entirely consonant to its powers, where the objects successively presented to it are so exactly suited to its nature, that it clings to them as the loadstone to its kindred metal among piles of foreign ores. Nothing could have been more congenial to the very mental constitution of Kepler, than the study of astronomy,--a science where the most capacious understanding may find scope in unison with the most fervid imagination.