til such time as he was deemed sufficiently advanced to be sent
to the University at Cracow. The education that he there obtained must
have been in those days of very primitive description, but Copernicus
seems to have availed himself of it to the utmost. He devoted himself
more particularly to the study of medicine, with the view of adopting
its practice as the profession of his life. The tendencies of the future
astronomer were, however, revealed in the fact that he worked hard at
mathematics, and for him, as for one of his illustrious successors,
Galileo, the practice of the art of painting had a very great interest,
and in it he obtained some measure of success.

By the time he was twenty-seven years old, it would seem that Copernicus
had given up the notion of becoming a medical practitioner, and had
resolved to devote himself to science. He was engaged in teaching
mathematics, and appears to have acquired some reputation. His growing
fame attracted the notice of his uncle the Bishop, at whose suggestion
Copernicus took holy orders, and he was presently appointed to a canonry
in the Cathedral of Frauenburg, near the mouth of the Vistula.

To Frauenburg, accordingly, this man of varied gifts retired. Possessing
somewhat of the ascetic spirit, he resolved to devote his life to work
of the most serious description. He eschewed all ordinary society,
restricting his intimacies to very grave and learned companions, and
refusing to engage in conversation of any useless kind. It would seem as
if his gifts for painting were condemned as frivolous; at all events, we
do not learn that he continued to practise them. In addition to the
discharge of his theological duties, his life was occupied partly in
ministering medically to the wants of the poor, and partly with his
researches in astronomy and mathematics. His equipment in the matter of
instruments for the study of the heavens seems to have been of a very
meagre description. He arranged apertures in the walls of his house at
Allenstein, so that he could observe in some fashion the passage of the
stars across the meridian. That he possessed some talent for practical
mechanics is proved by his construction of a contrivance for raising
water from a stream, for the use of the inhabitants of Frauenburg.
Relics of this machine are still to be seen.

The intellectual slumber of the Middle Ages was destined to be awakened
by the revolutionary doctrines of Copernicus. It may be not