e hit upon pretty accurately
some time ahead, much as we now manage to hit upon the return of a
comet--barring accidents; and the hour could be predicted as the event
approached.

Well, the boy Tycho, among others, watched for this eclipse on August
21st, 1560; and when it appeared at its appointed time, every instinct
for the marvellous, dormant in his strong nature, awoke to strenuous
life, and he determined to understand for himself a science permitting
such wonderful possibilities of prediction. He was sent to Leipzig with
a tutor to go on with his study of law, but he seems to have done as
little law as possible: he spent all his money on books and instruments,
and sat up half the night studying and watching the stars.

In 1563 he observed a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the precursor,
and _cause_ as he thought it, of the great plague. He found that the old
planetary tables were as much as a month in error in fixing this event,
and even the Copernican tables were several days out; so he formed the
resolve to devote his life to improving astronomical tables. This
resolve he executed with a vengeance. His first instrument was a jointed
ruler with sights for fixing the position of planets with respect to the
stars, and observing their stations and retrogressions. By thus
measuring the angles between a planet and two fixed stars, its position
can be plotted down on a celestial map or globe.

[Illustration: FIG. 17.--Portrait of Tycho.]

In 1565 his uncle George died, and made Tycho his heir. He returned to
Denmark, but met with nothing but ridicule and contempt for his absurd
drivelling away of time over useless pursuits. So he went back to
Germany--first to Wittenberg, thence, driven by the plague, to Rostock.

Here his fiery nature led him into an absurd though somewhat dangerous
adventure. A quarrel at some feast, on a mathematical point, with a
countryman, Manderupius, led to the fixing of a duel, and it was fought
with swords at 7 p.m. at the end of December, when, if there was any
light at all, it must have been of a flickering and unsatisfactory
nature. The result of this insane performance was that Tycho got his
nose cut clean off.

He managed however to construct an artificial one, some say of gold and
silver, some say of putty and brass; but whatever it was made of there
is no doubt that he wore it for the rest of his life, and it is a most
famous feature. It excited generally far more interest tha