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During the eight days which he spent at Uraniburg, James carried on long discussions with Tycho on various subjects, but chiefly on the motion which Copernicus had ascribed to the earth. He examined narrowly all the astronomical instruments, and made himself acquainted with the principles of their construction and the method of using them.
Frederick II. patronises Tycho And resolves to establish him in Denmark Grants him the Island of Huen for Life And Builds the splendid Observatory of Uraniburg Description of the Island, and of the Observatory Account of its Astronomical Instruments Tycho begins his Observations His Pupils Tycho is made Canon of Rothschild, and receives a large Pension His Hospitality to his Visitors Ingratitude of Witichius Tycho sends an Assistant to take the Latitude of Frauenburg and Konigsberg Is visited by Ulric, Duke of Mecklenburg Change in Tycho's fortunes.
If, on leaving home, he met with an old woman or a hare, he returned immediately to his house: But the most extraordinary of all his peculiarities remains to be noticed. When he lived at Uraniburg he maintained an idiot of the name of Lep, who lay at his feet whenever he sat down to dinner, and whom he fed with his own hand.
Tycho was justly irritated at this unprincely conduct, and ordered this anecdote to be inserted in the description of Uraniburg which he was now preparing for publication. In the year 1592, Tycho lost his distinguished friend and correspondent the Prince of Hesse, and astronomy one of its most active and intelligent cultivators.
An inscription was written upon it by Longomontanus, and it was deposited with some pomp in the Library of the Academy of Sciences. After Tycho left Huen, the island was transferred to some of the Danish nobility, and the following brief but melancholy description of it was given by Wormius. "There is, in the island, a field where Uraniburg was."
After quitting Uraniburg, this ungrateful mathematician neither returned to see Tycho, nor kept up any correspondence with him; and it was not till five years after his departure that Tycho learned, from the letters of the Prince of Hesse to Ranzau, that Witichius had passed through Hesse, and had described, as his own, the various inventions and methods which had been shewn to him in Huen.
Rothman was astonished at the wonderful apparatus which he saw at Uraniburg, and returned to his native country charmed with the hospitality of the Danish astronomer. Hitherto we have followed Tycho through a career of almost unexampled prosperity.
As the two towers could not accommodate the instruments which Tycho required for his observations, he found it necessary to erect, on the hill about sixty paces to the south of Uraniburg, a subterranean observatory, in which he might place his larger instruments, which required to be firmly fixed, and to be protected from the wind and the weather.
Although his daughter, Sophia, Queen of Denmark, had already paid two visits to Uraniburg in the same year, yet such was her love of astronomy, that she accompanied her father and his wife Elizabeth on this occasion.
Among the princes who visited Uraniburg, there were none who conducted themselves with more condescension and generosity than our own sovereign, James VI. In the year 1590, when the Scottish King repaired to Denmark to celebrate his marriage with the Princess Anne, the King's sister, he paid a visit to Tycho, attended by his councillors and a large suite of nobility.
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