"In speaking of Stratford-upon-Avon, the admiral told me that the Lucy
family, one of whose ancestors drove Shakspere from his grounds, and who
is caricatured in Justice Shallow, still resides on the same spot as in
Shakspere's time. He says no family ever retained their characteristics
more decidedly.
"Some years ago one of this family was invited to a Shakspere dinner. He
resented the well-meant invitation, saying they must surely have
forgotten how that _person_ treated his ancestor!
"The amateur astronomers of England are numerous, but they are not like
those of America.
"In America a poor schoolmaster, who has some bright boys who ask
questions, buys a glass and becomes a star-gazer, without time and
almost without instruments; or a watchmaker must know the time, and
therefore watches the stars as time-keepers. In almost all cases they
are hard-working men.
"In England it is quite otherwise. A wealthy gentleman buys a telescope
as he would buy a library, as an ornament to his house.
"Admiral Smyth says that no family is quite civilized unless it
possesses a copy of some encyclopaedia and a telescope. The English
gentleman uses both for amusement. If he is a man of philosophical mind
he soon becomes an astronomer, or if a benevolent man he perceives that
some friend in more limited circumstances might use it well, and he
offers the telescope to him, or if an ostentatious man he hires some
young astronomer of talent, who comes to his observatory and makes a
name for him.
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