Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/60

46, then with a cabinet-workman, and am now with an instrument maker in brass, where I steal their trades, which in time will be useful to me."

He did not have long to wait. While the plague lasted Upsala University had been closed and the science professors had used the time to form a "Collegium Curiosorum," the first Swedish learned society. Part of the time they spent in discussing young Swedberg's letters to Benzelius. They wrote to their former student as if to an equal to get information about how things were done in England. Would he go to Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, examine his instruments and find out how they worked at night. Would he find out about the latest celestial globes and try to get the printed paper for them so they could be made up in Sweden. And what did quadrants cost, and were they made "with a screw, after Hooke's method." And much else.

As for the globes, Emanuel answered that "to get the paper for the globes is almost impossible, for they are afraid that they will be copied. On the other hand, those that are made up come quite dear. For this reason I have thought to prick off a couple myself . . . and send the plates over to Sweden . . . I have already so far acquired the art of engraving that I think myself capable of this . . . In addition I have learned from my landlord to make brass instruments so that I have made a large number for my own needs. Were I in Sweden I would not apply to any one to make the meridians for the globes and aught else pertaining thereto."

The young man who, in spite of his stutter, had offered to preside over the debating club at Upsala, had not lost his confidence. He had not only, as he also wrote, daily visited the best mathematicians in the city, he had applied his knowledge in practical mechanics. But he had higher aims. His chief aim was very high; it involved the moon.

In the same letter, writing to Benzelius with the special candor about one's own merits employed only toward a sympathetic member of the family, he confessed: "As regards astronomy I have so far acquired it that I have discovered a great deal which I think will be of use to that studio, though in the beginning I had much brain-racking therewith. Yet, long speculations do not come hard to me now."