—-—-—“Amid the radiant orbs That mere than deck, that animate the sky, The life-infusing suns of other worlds, Lo! from the dread immensity of space Returning with accelerated course, The rushing Comet to the sun descends; And, as he sinks below the shading earth, With awful train projected o’er the heavens, The guilty nations tremble. But, above Those superstitious horrors that enslave The fond sequacious herd, to mystic faith And blind amazement prone, th’ enlighten’d few, Whose godlike minds Philosophy exalts, The glorious stranger hail. They feel a joy Divinely great; they in their powers exult; That wond’rous force of thought, which mounting spurns This dusky spot, and measures all the sky; While, from his far excursions through the wilds Of barren ether, faithful to his time, They see the blazing wonder rise anew, In seeming terror clad, but kindly bent To work the will of all-sustaining love: From his huge vapoury train perhaps to shake Renewing moisture on the numerous orbs, Through which his long elipsis winds; perhaps To lend new fuel to declining suns, To light up worlds, and feed th’ eternal fire.” _Thomson’s Summer_, l. 1702 and seq. ----- Elizabeth d’Oginsky Puzynina, Countess Puzynina and Castellane of Mscislau, in Poland, erected and richly endowed a magnificent Observatory at Wilna, in the year 1753; and in 1767, she added to this establishment a fund equivalent to twelve thousand (American) dollars, for the purpose of maintaining an observer and purchasing instruments. The king of Poland afterwards gave to this institution the title of a “Royal Observatory.” The wife of the celebrated Hevelius was, likewise, an astronomer. Madame Hevelius made Observations along with her husband; and she is represented, in the _Machina Cœlestis_, as having been engaged in measuring distances. In the century just passed, the Marchioness du Chatelet translated _Newton_: Besides whom,— Madame Lepaute and Madame du Piery were both known in the Astronomical World. In our own time, Miss Caroline Herschel, sister of the great practical astronomer of the same name, in England, has not only distinguished herself, by having discovered the Comet of 1786; another, on the 17th of April, 1790; and a third, on the 8th of October, 1793;[43] but likewise by attending to Astronomical Observations, along with her brother, for several years. ----- Footnote 43: Mr. Messier observed this Comet in France, eleven days before it was discovered in England by Miss Herschel. -----