The naked eye still retains some importance in the estimation of astronomers.

July 9.

When I got out of the cars at Porter’s, Cambridge, this morning, I was pleased to see the handsome blue flowers of the succory or endive (Cichorium Intybus), which reminded me that within the hour I had been whirled into a new botanical region.

They must be extremely rare, if they occur at all, in Concord. This weed is handsomer than most garden flowers.

Saw there also the Cucubalus Behen, or bladder campion, also the autumnal dandelion (Apargia autumnalis).

Visited the Observatory.

Bond said they were cataloguing the stars at Washington (?), or trying to. They do not at Cambridge; of no use with their force. Have not force enough now to make mag[netic] obs[ervations].

When I asked if an observer with the small telescope could find employment, he said, Oh yes, there was employment enough for observation with the naked eye, observing the changes in the brilliancy of stars, etc., etc., if they could only get some good observers.

One is glad to hear that the naked eye still retains some importance in the estimation of astronomers.

Coming out of town, — willingly as usual, — when I saw that reach of Charles River just above the depot, the fair, still water this cloudy evening suggesting the way to eternal peace and beauty, whence it flows, the placid, lake-like fresh water, so unlike the salt brine, affected me not a little.

I was reminded of the way in which Wordsworth so coldly speaks of some natural visions or scenes "giving him pleasure."

This is perhaps the first vision of elysium on this route from Boston.

And just then I saw an encampment of Penobscots, their wigwams appearing above the railroad fence, they, too, looking up the river as they sat on the ground, and enjoying the scene.

What can be more impressive than to look up a noble river just at evening, – one, perchance, which you have never explored, — and behold its placid waters, reflecting the woods and sky, lapsing inaudibly toward the ocean; to behold as a lake, but know it as a river, tempting the beholder to explore it and his own destiny at once? Haunt of waterfowl.

This was above the factories, — all that I saw. That water could never have flowed under a factory. How then could it have reflected the sky?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 9, 1851

One is glad to hear that the naked eye still retains some importance in the estimation of astronomers. See July 7, 1851 ("I have been to-night with Anthony Wright to look through Perez Blood's telescope a second time. . . . I am still contented to see the stars with my naked eye ."); October 20, 1852 ("Many a man, when I tell him that I have been on to a mountain, asks if I took a glass with me. No doubt, I could have seen further with a glass, and particular objects more distinctly, - could have counted more meeting-houses; but this has nothing to do with the peculiar beauty and grandeur of the view which an elevated position affords. It was not to see a few particular objects, as if they were near at hand, as I had been accustomed to see them, that I ascended the mountain, but to see an infinite variety far and near in their relation to each other, thus reduced to a single picture."); September 29, 1854 (“ When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them . . . One might say that all views through a telescope or microscope were purely visionary, for it is only by his eye and not by any other sense —not by his whole man —that the beholder is there where he is presumed to be. It is a disruptive mode of viewing as far as the beholder is concerned.”); March 28, 1858 (" . . . the “naked eye,” as if the eye which is not covered with a spy glass should properly be called naked.") See also note to March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars.")

.

What can be more impressive than to look up a noble river just at evening, – one, perchance, which you have never explored, — and behold its placid waters, reflecting the woods and sky, lapsing inaudibly toward the ocean; to behold as a lake, but know it as a river, tempting the beholder to explore it and his own destiny at once? See March 31, 1853 (" It is affecting to see a distant mountain-top, like the summits of Uncanoonuc, well seen from this hill, whereon you camped for a night in your youth, which you have never revisited, still as blue and ethereal to your eyes as is your memory of it")

July 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 9

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021