But the superstitious peasants, although they had hitherto reverenced the great man as their best friend and benefactor, had been recently incited by his enemies and rivals in the church to curse him as a heretic and a wizard. A few days back he had been the unwilling witness of one of those out-of-door spectacles, so common at that time, in which his scientific opinions had been travestied, his charities ridiculed, and his devoted life made the object of slander and reproach. This ingratitude of his flock had broken his heart, and he could not recover from the blow. The occasion of this outburst of fanaticism was the approaching publication of a work in which he had dared to question the received opinions of theologians and schoolmen, in regard to cosmogony. He had, forsooth, denied that the visible firmament was a solid azure-colored shell, to which the sun and planets were fastened, and through whose opened doors the rain descended. He had proved that the sun was the center of the system, around which the earth and planets revolved, and, with his clear scientific vision, he had been able to gain glimpses, at least, of the grand conceptions of modern astronomy: For this man was Nicolas Copernicus, and the expected book was his great work--"De Orbium Coelestium Revolutionibus"--destined to form the broad basis of astronomical science. The work was printing at Nuremberg, and the last proofs had been returned; but reports had come that a similar outburst of fanaticism was raging at that place, that a mob had burned the manuscript on the public square, and had threatened to break the press should the printing proceed. But, thanks to God! the old man was not to die before the hour of triumph came. While still conscious, a horse, covered with foam, gallops to the door of his humble dwelling, and an armed messenger enters the chamber, who, breathless with haste, places in the hands of the dying man a volume still wet from the press. He has only strength to return a smile of recognition, and murmur the last words: "Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine." Grand close of a noble life! The seed has been sown--what could we desire more? Again the centuries roll on--not one, but three--while the seed grows to a great tree, which overshadows the nations. Great minds have never been wanting to cherish and prime it, like Tycho Brahe and Kepler, Galileo and Newton, Laplace and Lagrange; and although at times some, while lingering in the deep shade of the foliage, may have lost sight of the summit, the noble tree has ever pointed upward to direct aspiration and encourage hope.