are strong
reasons to think that this was the case. Sir Henry Wotton urged Kepler
to take up his residence in England, where he could assure him of a
welcome and an honourable reception; but, notwithstanding the pecuniary
difficulties in which he was then involved, he did not accept of the
invitation. In referring to this offer in one of his letters, written a
year after it was made, he thus balances the difficulties of the
question--"The fires of civil war," says he, "are raging in Germany.
Shall I then cross the sea whither Wotton invites me? I, a German, a
lover of firm land, who dread the confinement of an island, who presage
its dangers, and must drag along with me my little wife and flock of
children?" As Kepler seems to have entertained no doubt of his being
well provided for in England, it is the more probable that the British
Sovereign had made him a distinct offer through his ambassador. A
welcome and an honourable reception, in the ordinary sense of these
terms, could not have supplied the wants of a starving astronomer, who
was called upon to renounce a large though an ill-paid salary in his
native land; and Kepler had experienced too deeply the faithlessness of
royal pledges to trust his fortune to so vague an assurance as that
which is implied in the language of the English ambassador. During the
two centuries which have elapsed since this invitation was given to
Kepler, there has been no reign during which the most illustrious
foreigner could hope for pecuniary support, either from the Sovereign or
the Government of England. What English science has never been able to
command for her indigenous talent, was not likely to be proffered to
foreign merit. The generous hearts of individual Englishmen, indeed, are
always open to the claims of intellectual pre-eminence, and ever ready
to welcome the stranger whom it adorns; but through the frozen
life-blood of a British minister such sympathies have seldom vibrated;
and, amid the struggles of faction and the anxieties of personal and
family ambition, he has turned a deaf ear to the demands of genius,
whether she appeared in the humble posture of a suppliant, or in the
prouder attitude of a national benefactor.

If the imperial mathematician, therefore, had no other assurance of a
comfortable home in England than that of Sir Henry Wotton, he acted a
wise part in distrusting it; and we rejoice that the sacred name of
Kepler was thus withheld from the long list of