Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/693

Rh found time, however, for astronomical observations, and in 1636 his zeal for his favorite pursuit was still further quickened by meeting with a congenial spirit in William Crabtree, a clothier of Broughton, near Manchester, one of a remarkable group of north-country mathematicians, to whom Fate was as unkind in the untimeliness of their deaths as in the obscurity of their lives. Encouraged by his new friend, Horrocks quickly exchanged the guidance of Lansberg for that of Kepler, henceforward the object of his enthusiastic but by no means undiscriminating devotion. Even in the Rudolphine Tables he discovered inaccuracies, trifling, it is true, in comparison with the boastful blundering of the reactionary Belgian astronomer, but requiring, nevertheless, careful correction; and in the accomplishment of this task he convinced himself that a transit of Venus, which Kepler had failed to predict, would actually occur on November 24 (O. S.), 1639. He had by this time taken orders in the Church of England, and been appointed to the curacy of Hoole, then a desolate hamlet situated on a strip of land half reclaimed from the overflow of the Ribble, about five miles south of Preston. It was here that, first among astronomers of all ages, he observed the passage of Venus across the sun.

The 24th of November fell on a Sunday, and, as the critical moment approached, the eager star-gazer was summoned from his telescope to his pulpit, returning, however, just in time to witness, as the clouds parted at a quarter-past three, the punctual verification of his forecast in the projection of the dark body of the planet on the solar disk. An interval of half an hour before sunset gave him time to make a series of observations surprisingly accurate considering the primitive character of the apparatus available for their execution. A telescope bought for half a crown, and a circle of six inches in diameter, traced with a pair of compasses on a sheet of paper, stood to the young curate of Hoole in the stead of all the complicated and exquisitely delicate instruments which form the intermediaries between the senses of a modern astronomer and the phenomena he observes. Horrocks did not long survive this solitary triumph of his life. After many postponements, he at length saw a prospect of one day's extrication from his conflicting employments, and fixed January 4, 1641, for a visit of science and sympathy to his friend Crabtree. On the morning of the 3d, however, he suddenly expired, thus exchanging, in a moment, his promised post among the radiant ranks of those who constitute the pride of humanity for a place in the pathetic company of "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown."

The career of Horrocks affords, throughout its course, a singular example of precocity. He matriculated at thirteen, was ordained at twenty, and died before he had completed his twenty-second year. On him, if on any man, might safely be passed the usually somewhat problematical eulogium, "He had done great things had he lived." His mind was as quick to catch the differences of things like as it was