fetch home his bride, spent eight days under the roof of "that princely promoter of astronomy," Tycho Brahe. He found the astronomer living in comfort, encouraged by the splendid allowances of the King of Denmark, and able to build an observatory, which is said to have cost £20,000. Though always in straits for money, he not only honoured Tycho at his departure with "a magnificent present, but also addressed to him a copy of verses" One of James's grandsons, Charles ii., appointed Flamsteed to be Astronomer-Royal at a salary of £100 a year. So inadequately was he paid that he had to eke out his income by taking orders in the Church of England. But James's great-grandson, William, was a more generous patron of science than his uncle. In his reign Newton received the post of Master of the Mint with a salary of £1200 or £1500 a year, at a time when the commercial interests of England required a man of great intelligence, honesty, and resource to rescue society from the embarrassments into which incompetence and gambling had plunged the Mint and the country. A man of ability was required to cope with the evils of the time, and Newton, in spite of the sneers with which his appointment was hailed even by Pope, proved himself to be the right man in the right place.[1] But the sneer cast at our Government was true then, and may still be true, as it was seventy years ago when first uttered, "Able men are sure of office when its emoluments are abolished." Men of science, men devoted to the best interests of their country, Dalton, Priestley, Ivory, Young, Wollaston, and Murdoch, to name no others, were treated with neglect, or considered well
- ↑ Macaulays Works iv. 248.
