Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1856-10-23
Everett's Last Grafton.

The oration on the "Uses of Astronomy }"
recently delivered BY Edward Everett, in
Albany, at the Inauguration of the Dudley
Observatory, " as one of the eloquent ora
tors most finished and brilliant productions.
We have only space for the subjoined brief
extracts:
There is much, in every way, in the city
of Florence to excite the curiosity, to kindle
the Imagination. and to crafty the TASTE
Sheltered on the north by the vine-clad hills
of Fiesole. whose Cyclopean walls carry
hack the antiquary to ages before The Ro.
man, before the Etruscan power, the flowery
city (Florenca) covers the sunny banks Of
the Arno with its stately palaces. Dark
and frow ming piles of dedeval structure, a
majestic dome, the prototype of St. Peters
basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some
of the mghtiest of the dead, the stone
where Dante stood to gaze on the comp anile
the house of Michael Angelo, still occupied
by descendant of his lineage and name,
his hammer, his chisel, his dividers, his man.
uscript poems, all as it he had left them but
yesterday--airy bridges which seem not SO
much to rest on the earth as to hover over rthe
waters they span; the loveliest creations Of
ancient art, rescued from the grave of ages
again to "enchant the world; breath
ing marble Of Michael Angelo, the glowing
canvas of Raphael and Titan, museums
filled with medals aud coins of every age
ho
amvlets and vases from the sepulchres OF
Egyptian Pharaohs coeval with Joseph, and
Etruscan Lucumons that swayed Italy be-
fore the Romans libraries stored with the
choicest texts of ancient Literature,-gar-
dens of rose and orange and pomegranate
and yrtle,-the very air you breathe Ianguid
with music and perlume,-such is Florence
But among all its facinstions addressed to
he sense, the memory and the heart, there
was noLe to which | more frequently gave
nediiative hour during a years residence,
than to the spot where Galleo sleeps BE-
meath the marble floor of Santa Croce: no
building on which guzed with greater re-
verence, than did upon the modest man.
sion of Areetri, villa at once and prison, in
which that venerable sage, by command of
the lnquisition, passed the sad closing years
of his life;-the beloved daughter on whom
he had depended to smooth his passage to
the grave, laid there before him; the ewes
with which he had discovered worlds before
unknown, quenched in blindness.
That was the house, "where," says Mil.
ton, (an other of those of whom the world
was not worthy)"I round and visited the
famous GaIileo, grown old,--a prisoner to
Inquisiton. for thinking on astronomy, other
wise than as the Dominican and Franciscan
iicensers thought" Prose works, vol. l,
o. sI3( Great heavens! what a tribunal,
what cGlprit, what crime, Let us thank
God, my friends, that we live lin The nine
teen:h century. Of all the wonders of
ancieD: or modern art,-statues and paint |
ings, and jewels and manuscripts,-the ad-
miration and delight of ages,-there was
nothing that beheld with more Affection
ate awe, than that poor rough tube, a few
feet in length,--the work of his own hands,
that very septic gluss, Through which
the "Tus:an Artist" viewed the moon,
AT evening from the top OF Fiesole
Or IN Valarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers or mountnins, in her spotty globe"
that poor little spy-glsss (for it is scarcely
more) though which the human eye first dis
tinctly beheld the surface Of the moon,-frst
discovered the phases of Venus, tFe satellites
Of Jupiter, and the seeming handles of Sa-
turn,-frst penetrated the dusky depth of
the heavens,--frst pierced the clouds of
visual error, which from the creation of the
world involved the system Of the Universe.
There are occasions in life in which great
mind lives years of ra2t enjoyment in a
momeHt. | can fancy the emotions Of
Galileo, when, first raising the newly-con-
structed telescope to the heavens, he saw
fulfilled the grand prophecy Of Copernicus,
and beheld the planet Venus crescent like
the moon. IL was such another moment as
that immortal printer of Mentz and Straus.
burg. received the first copy of the Bible into
their hands, the work of their divine Arr
like that when Columbus, through the
gray dawn Of the 18th of October, l4ss,