the Abbot, and to keep up divine service according to the Lutheran ritual, while he was to drive out "all superfluous learned and useless people." The Abbey does not appear to have been granted to him formally in fee till 1576.[1] We have already mentioned Steen Bille as the only one of Tycho's relations who appreciated his scientific tastes, and he seems indeed to have been a man of considerable culture, who took an interest in more than one branch of learning or industry. Tycho says that he was the first to start a paper-mill and glass-works in Denmark. Whether it was from living with this uncle, or from some other cause, that Tycho for a while devoted himself more to chemistry than, to astronomy, is uncertain, but from the 3Oth December 1570 till November 1572 we do not possess a single astronomical observation made by him, while during this time he worked with great energy at chemical experiments, to which he had already paid some attention at Augsburg. His uncle gave him leave to arrange a laboratory in an outhouse of the Abbey, and was evidently himself much interested in the work carried on there.[2] Whether the object of this work was to make gold, as was most frequently the case with chemical experiments made in those days, there is no evidence to show; but even if this was not the case, there is nothing surprising in seeing an astronomer in the sixteenth century turn aside from the contemplation of the stars to investigate the properties of the metals and their combinations. We have already alluded to the idea of the universe as a whole, of which the single parts were in mystical mutual dependence on each other—an idea which had arisen among Oriental nations in the infancy of time, had thriven well owing to the mystical tendency of the Middle Ages, and had been gradually developed and formed into a complicated system by the speculations of philosophers
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TYCHO BRAHE.
