Young AstronomerISAAC NEWTON was just fourteen years of age when the birth of Edmund Halley, who was destined in after years to become Newton's warmly attached friend, and one of his most illustrious scientific contemporaries, took place. There can be little doubt that the fame as an astronomer which Halley ultimately acquired, great as it certainly was, would have been even greater still had it not been somewhat impaired by the misfortune that he had to shine in the same sky as that which was illumined by the unparalleled genius of Newton.Edmund Halley was born at Haggerston, in the Parish of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, on October 29th, 1656. His father, who bore the same name as his famous son, was a soap-boiler in Winchester Street, London, and he had conducted his business with such success that he accumulated an ample fortune. I have been unable to obtain more than a very few particulars with respect to the early life of the future astronomer. It would, however, appear that from boyhood he showed considerable aptitude for the acquisition of various kinds of learning, and he also had some capacity for mechanical invention. Halley seems to have received a sound education at St. Paul's School, then under the care of Dr. Thomas Gale.Here the young philosopher rapidly distanced his competitors in the various branches of ordinary school instruction. His superiority was, however, most conspicuous in mathematical studies, and, as a natural development of such tastes, we learn that by the time he had left school he had already made good progress in astronomy. At the age of seventeen he was entered as a commoner at Queen's College, Oxford, and the reputation that he brought with him to the University may be inferred from the remark of the writer of "Athenae Oxonienses," that "Halley came to Oxford with skill in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and such a knowledge of geometry as to make a complete dial." Though his studies were thus of a somewhat multifarious nature, yet…