For
belles-lettres he had no fancy, and fine passages, except in so far as
they were controversial, left him cold. His mind was primarily
scientific, secondarily philosophic, and occasionally historic. Travels
and books of physical science were the finds for which, mainly, he
rummaged the stalls. At the moment his pet study was astronomy; and a
curious apparatus in one of the corners, which Henry had noticed as he
entered, was his sad attempt to rig up a telescope for himself.
"It's not so bad as it looks," he said, pointing it out; "but then," he
added, with a smile half sad and half humorous, "there are not many
stars to be seen from Tichborne Street."
It was a touching characteristic of the type of bookman to which Mr.
Tipping belonged, that the astronomy from which he was reading by no
means embodied the latest discoveries. In fact, it narrowly escaped
being eighteenth-century science, for it was dated very early in the
eighteen hundreds. But an astronomy was an astronomy to Mr. Tipping; and
had Copernicus been born late enough, he would most certainly have
imbibed Ptolemaic doctrines with grateful unsuspicion.
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