HYMN TO THE SUN.

in some high, lonely tower,â€”â€”may oft outwatch the Bear,With thrice great Hermesâ€â€”

in some high, lonely tower,

â€”â€”may oft outwatch the Bear,

With thrice great Hermesâ€â€”

was revived a few years ago, and acquired notoriety at the expense of Newton and Halleyâ€™s fame. It fell to the lot of Mr. Baily to discover a large number of his letters in private hands, with others, and a manuscript autobiography, upon the shelves of the library in the observatory; and, upon their publication in 1835, by order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, some painful and unexpected disclosures were made. It may be admitted that Flamstead exaggerates his own case, that his temper was irascible, that he did not appreciate the value of Newtonâ€™s theory, and over-estimated the importance of his own labors; yet, after having allowed these elements of correction full force, the conclusion is sufficiently plain, that he was most injuriously treated, and that much of the moral distinction with which posterity has crowned the head of Newton, is altogether misplaced. His deep obligations to Flamsteadâ€™s lunar observations are acknowledged in the first edition of the Principia, but carefully suppressed in the second, apparently when vindictive feeling had begun to operate; and, in fact, nothing is more remarkable than the opinion universally entertained of the meek and placable disposition of the great philosopher, and the want of temper and honor displayed in his dealings with Flamstead. The truth appears to be, that as when we view a country beneath a brilliant sky and a balmy atmosphere, we are apt to frame our impressions of the people in harmony with the beauty of the scene; so, to the early admirers of Newton, his intellectual greatness invested with fictitious lustre his private character, and the infirmities of the man were lost sight of in the glory of the sage.

But however much we may take from the moral greatness usually attributed to Newtonâ€”and a considerable abatement is unquestionably necessaryâ€”his reputation for wonderful sagacity and grasp of mind is incapable of impeachment. The course of events has only served to render more conspicuous that sublime intelligence by which he unraveled the mechanism of the heavens, and establish more indisputably his claim to be regarded as the architect of physical astronomy. To determine the motions of the heavenly bodies was the work of Keppler: to explain and demonstrate the causes of those motions was the achievement of Newton. So far, however, from gaining universal assent when first proposed, his theory was ill understood, slightly appreciated, or altogether rejected by numbers of scientific men; andâ€”especially on the continentâ€”it very slowly won its way to notice and confidence. Newton survived the publication of the Principia forty years, and at the time of his deathâ€”according to Voltaireâ€”it had not twenty readers out of the country of its production. It was not until the mutual perturbations of the planets began to occupy the attention of the continental philosophers, that his theory was fully admitted abroad, and the work in which it was developed took the rank it has since occupied, preÃ«minentâ€”in the words of Laplaceâ€”above all the productions of the human mind. It is a common, but vulgar error, to suppose the merit of our countryman to lie in conceiving the idea of the attraction of gravitation. That idea had been suggested to many minds long before his time, and the impression had been created that such a power in nature was the cause of the planetary motions. Thus Keppler surmised an attractive force to reside in the sun, producing these movements; and he even threw out the conjecture that this force diminishes in proportion to the square of the distance of the body on which it was exerted. Borelli and Hooke, also, distinctly developed the influence of gravity; and both referred the orbits of the planets to the doctrine of attraction combining with their own proper motions to produce curvilinear movements. What really distinguished Newton, was not the idea of gravity as the principle of attachment between the different members of the solar system, but proving it to be so. He succeeded vague surmise upon the point with mathematical demonstration: explained and applied the laws of the forceâ€”an accomplishment which crowns him with honor above all his rivals; inasmuch as he who works a mine, and distributes its wealth through society, is incomparably in advance of him who has merely apprehended its existence, but failed in gaining access to its treasures.

The manor-house of Woolsthorpe, a few miles from Grantham, seated in a little valley near the source of the Witham, was the scene of Newtonâ€™s birth. Popular tradition reports, that the fall of an apple from a tree, in the orchard belonging to this house, was the mustard-seed out of which ultimately grew the grand theory of universal gravitation, and the story is not without a leaven of truth. It is certain that, to avoid the plague which ravaged England in 1666, Newton retired from Cambridge; and, when sitting alone, in his garden at Woolsthorpe, his thoughts were directed to that remarkable power which causes all bodies to descend toward the centre of the earth. The supposition presented itself, that as this power extends to the highest altitudes of the earthâ€™s surface, it probably extends much fartherinto space; so that even the moon may gravitate toward the earth, and be balanced in her orbit by the combined force of attraction and the centrifugal force implied in her motion. If this were true, the planets might be supposed to gravitate toward the sun, and to be restrained thereby from flying off under the action of the centrifugal force. Sixteen years rolled away before this beautiful hypothesis was verified, and difficulties arose in testing it, which seemed to disprove it altogether. It was necessary to calculate the force of gravity at the surface of the earth; to estimate its diminished energy at an increased distance; and, after having found the law of the diminution, to ascertain whether the phenomena of the lunar motions corresponded proportionably with those of falling bodies at the terrestrial surface. Assuming the force of gravity to vary inversely as the square of the distance, it followed that, at the distance of the moon, it would be about 3600 times less than at the surface of the earth. The problem, therefore, to be solved was, whether the versed sine of an arc described by the moonâ€”which measures the space through which in the same time she would fall to the earth, if abandoned to the action of gravityâ€”would be 3600 times less than the space through which in the same time a heavy body falls, at the earthâ€™s surface,

A B being the arc of the moonâ€™s orbit,c dthe sine of the arc, ande fthe versed sine. After a careful study of the lunar observations supplied byFlamstead, and a series of calculationsâ€”displaying unexampled originality and industryâ€”Newton fully demonstrated that the versed sine of an arc described by the moon in one minute, was equal to the space traversed in descent by a heavy body at the surface of the earth in one secondâ€”the exact proportion that ought to exist, according to the modification to which the intensity of gravity is subject by variation of distance.

The first certain gleam of this grand conclusion obtained by Newton, is said so to have overpowered him, that he was obliged to suspend his calculations, and call in the aid of a friend, to finish the last few arithmetical computations. He saw the important relations of the demonstrationâ€”the planets wheeling round the sunâ€”thesatellites round the planetsâ€”the far wandering comets returning to the source of light in obedience to the law of gravitation: a result sufficient to throw the successful discoverer into nervous excitement. It is clear that, if a body be projected into space, it will proceed in the direction of the original impulse, and with a uniform velocity, foreverâ€”supposing no obstacle to impede its course. But the combination of two antagonistic forces will produce a resulting motion in a diagonal direction.

Suppose the straight lines A B, to represent the direction in which the earth would travel under the influence of the projectile force, which launched it into universal space: the straight lines A S, are those it would describe at any point of its orbit, if surrendered to the influence of the sunâ€™s attraction. The primitive impulse is, however, checked by the solar attraction, and the latter by the former; so, that while the earthâ€”if abandoned to eitherâ€”would describe A B, or A S, the effect of their joint influence incessantly acting is to deflect it from both, and produce a curved path. The cause perpetually operating, the effect is constantâ€”and hence the formation of the terrestrial orbit; and the cause extending to the other bodies in the system, the planetary orbs are deflected from their natural rectilinear paths, and pursue a circuit round the common centre. The force of attraction is, however, proportional to the quantity of matter, and the proximity of the attracting body. Like light, the power of gravitation is weakened by diffusion, and diminishes as the square of the distance increases. This square is the product of a number multiplied by itself. A planet, therefore, twice our distance from the sun, will gravitate four times less than we doâ€”the product of two multiplied by itself being four. Such is the greatLaw of Gravity, subject to the two conditions, that its force is directly as the mass of the bodies, and inversely as the square of the distance. It extends to the confines of the system, and acts as a mighty invisible chain to keep the primary bodies in brotherly relationship to each other, and in mutual subjection to the central luminary. And who can trace its operation without recognizing a Supreme Potentate, who appointed to the sun his place, launched the planets in the depths, obedient to a law which has preserved the family compactâ€”originally establishedâ€”unbroken through the long series of ages.

It must, however, be borne in mind that the attraction between bodies is mutual, proportioned to their masses and distances. While the sun attracts the planets toward himself, they also attract the sun, though their effect is comparatively small, owing to the vastness of the solar mass. The planets likewise act upon each other; and as their relative distances are perpetually varying, certain perturbations are caused in the system, which, though minute in each particular case, become considerable by accumulation, and yet are ultimately corrected and repaired by the same cause that produces them. Newton left to posterity the task of thoroughly investigating these inequalities, of showing them to be a result of the law of gravitation, and establishing the permanence of the system, notwithstanding the accumulating influence of its internal disturbances. He himself had no gleam of the latter truth, but seems to have entertained an opinion that the irregularities occasioned by the mutual action of the planets and comets would probably go on increasing till the system either wrought out its own destruction or received reparation from the direct intervention of its Creator. But Euler, Clairaut, Dâ€™Alembert, Lagrange, and Laplace, have demonstrated the problem that the perturbations of the planets are periodic in their nature, that accurate compensation for them is laid up in store, so that the system is not arranged upon a principle of self-destruction. The elements of disorder and decay are removed from it. The very conditions of its existence guarantee its stability till the will of the great Ruler shall be expressed to the contrary. When an end shall come to its present constitution, that will not be the effect of its own faulty architecture, but of the fiat ofOmnipotence.

Room in which Newton was born.

The house of Newton at Woolsthorpe, now the homestead of a farmer, has been in the ownership of persons anxious to protect it, and preserve every relic of its former occupant. Stukeley thus described it in 1727: â€œâ€™Tis built of stone, as is the way of the country hereabouts, and a reasonable good one. They led me upstairs, and showed me Sir Isaacâ€™s study, where I suppose he studied when in the country in his younger days, or perhaps when he visited his mother from the university. I observed the shelves were of his own making, being pieces of deal boxes which probably he sent his books and clothes down in on those occasions.â€ Two sun-dials remain which he made when a boy; but the styles of both are wanting, and one has been recently taken from the wall to be presented to the Royal Society. The room in which he was born has the following inscription upon a tablet of white marble: â€œSir Isaac Newton, son of John Newton, Lord of the Manor of Woolsthorpe, was born in this room on the 25th of December, 1642.â€ The apple-tree, the fall of one of the apples of which, according to tradition, drew his attention to the subject of gravity, was blown down by a gale some years ago, and a chair was constructed out of its timber. The Royal Society of London possesses his telescope; the Royal Society of Edinburgh the door of his book-case; and Trinity College, Cambridge, has a lock of his silver white hair.

While the foundations of physical astronomy were laid by Newton, his confidant and friend, the brilliant and active Halley, pursued a remarkably successful career in the practical departments of the science. Born in mercantile life, yet independent of it through the wealth amassed by his father, he early embarked his means and energies in the advancement of observation. Leaving Hevelius and Flamstead to keep guard over the northern hemisphere, he sailed to St. Helena to inspect the southern; and in honor of the reigning monarch who patronized the expedition, the oak which had screened him from his pursuers after the battle of Worcester, was raised to a place in the skies, forming the constellation Robur Carolinum. The object of the voyage was to determine the absolute and relative positions of the stars invisible to the European eye; but owing to the unpropitious climate of the island, only a catalogue of 360 was made after more than a yearâ€™s residence. Upon this voyage the oscillations of the pendulum were observed to decrease in number as the instrument approached the equator; a fact noticed a few years previous by Richer, and explained by Newton to result from the greater intensity of centrifugal force there, proportionably diminishing the force of gravity. The life of Halley was remarkable for locomotion, devoted to various scientific objects. He was twice at St. Helena, twice in the Adriatic, once in the West Indies, now with Newton in his studyat Cambridge, anon with Hevelius in his observatory at Dantzic, and then with Cassini watching a comet at Paris. Upon the death of Flamstead, he succeeded to the office of astronomer royal, and though then in the sixty-fourth year of his age, he commenced the observation of the moon through a complete revolution of her nodes, involving a period of nineteen years, and lived to finish it, registering upward of two thousand observed lunar places. It was while journeying in France toward the close of 1680, that he observed the great comet of that year, on its return from proximity to the sun: and being aware of the conclusion of Newton, that such bodies describe very eccentric ellipses, his active mind began to study intently their phenomena, which resulted in a prophecy that has immortalized his name. After cataloguing and comparing a considerable number of comets, that of 1682 fortunately appeared. This he was led to regard as identical with those of 1456, 1531, and 1607, between which there is nearly the same interval. Hence he anticipated its return after the lapse of a similar period. â€œI dare venture,â€ said he, â€œto foretell that it will return again in 1758;â€ and, sanguine as to the result, he called upon posterity to notice that it was an Englishman who had hazarded the statement. This was a prediction announced in 1705, the accomplishment of which ranks with the greatest achievements of modern astronomy, and will perpetuate the fame of Halley to the remotest generations. He had been gathered to his grave in Lee church-yard seventeen years, when the celestial traveler re-appeared, at the time announced, to verify his words, illustrate his sagacity, and invest him with undying honor.

Halleyâ€™s Tomb.

Bradley, the English Hipparchus, the model of observers, as he is styled by Laplace, became the third astronomer royal upon the death of Halley. He had previously effected one of his two great discoveries, the aberration of the stars, an optical illusion, arising from the combined movement of the earth in space, and the progressive transmission of light; a discovery of the highest importance, requiring the greatest precision of observation to detect. Ever since the doctrine of the earthâ€™s translation in space had been received, astronomers had been anxious to find some parallax of the fixed stars, as a sensible confirmation of the fact. Although the whole diameter of the earthâ€™s orbit is relatively insignificant, it is yet absolutely vast. Hence it was deemed no unreasonable expectation that some small apparent change of place in the heavens would be discerned in the case of the fixed stars, when viewed from the two extremities of the earthâ€™s annual orbitâ€”separated from each other by the mighty chasm of a hundred and ninety millions of miles.

Aberration, or wandering, is the name given to this phenomenon. The term is not strictly accurate, as the apparent movements thus denominated are not irregular, but uniform. To discover the physical cause became an object of intense interest to Bradley, but it long baffled his researches and reasonings, and was at length developed by an accidental circumstance. He was accompanying a pleasure-party in a sail on the river Thames. The boat in which they were was provided with a mast which had a vane on the top of it; it blew a moderate wind, and the party sailed up and down the river for a considerable time. Bradley remarked, that every time the boat put about, the vane at the top of the mast shifted a little, as if there had been a slight change in the direction of the wind. He observed this three or four times without speaking; at last he mentioned it to the sailors, and expressed his surprise that the wind should shift so regularly every time they put about. The sailors told him that the wind had not shifted, but that the apparent change was owing to the change in the direction of the boat, and assured him that the same thing invariably happened in all cases. From that moment he conjectured that all the phenomena of aberration he had observed, arose from the progressive motion of light combined with the earthâ€™s motion in its orbit. This sagacious conjecture satisfactorily explains the apparent movement of the stars. Suppose a body to pass from A toBin the same time that a ray of light passes fromCtoB. Owing to the two motions, the impression of the rayof light meeting the eye of a spectator atBwill be exactly similar to what it would have been if the

eye had been at rest atB, and the molecule of light had come to it in the directionD, B. The star, therefore, whose real place is atC, will appear atDto the spectator atB. This effect is precisely analogous to what takes place when a person moves or travels rapidly through a shower of rain or snow in a perfectly calm state of the atmosphere. Without locomotion the rain-drops or snow-flakes will fall upon his hat, or upon the head of the carriage that conveys him, and not beat in his face, or against the front windows of the carriage. But if he is passing along swiftly, in any direction, east, west, north or south, the rain or snow will come in contact with his face, or enter the front windows of the carriage if they are open, as though the drops or flakes fell obliquely, and not from the zenith. Now as an object appears to us in the direction in which the rays of light strike the eye, it is easy to understand that a star in the zenith will appear at a little distance from it, to a spectator carried along with the earth in its orbit. This discovery established the fame of Bradley, who was exonerated from all future payments to the Royal Society on account of it; and it is of great importance, as the only sensible evidence we have of the earthâ€™s annual motion. Soon after his appointment to the Greenwich observatory, he effected his second great discovery, that of the nutation of the earthâ€™s axis, a slight oscillation of the pole of the equator about its mean place, describing an ellipse in the period of eighteen years. He determined likewise its cause, which theory had previously inferred to be the action of the moon upon the equatorial regions of the earth. Some idea of his industry may be formed from the fact, that in conjunction with his nephew, he made no less than eighteen thousand observations in a single year while astronomer royal; and the number from the year 1750 to 1762 amounted to upward of sixty thousand. The death of Bradley was interpreted as a Divine judgment by the populace. He had taken an active part with the Earl of Macclesfield and others, in urging on and assimilating the British calendar to that of other nations. This rendered it necessary to throw eleven days out of the current year in the month of September 1752â€”a measure which the ignorance of great numbers of the people led them to regard as an impious intermeddling with the Divine prerogative. Lord Macclesfieldâ€™s eldest son, at a contested election for Oxfordshire, was greeted with the cry from the mob, â€œGive us back the eleven days we have been robbed of!â€ and Bradleyâ€™s mortal sickness, some years later, was viewed as a punitive dispensation for having participated in the sacrilegious theft.

The latter half of the eighteenth century furnishes a large catalogue of distinguished names, men of high scientific ability, and, for the most part, of the finest mathematical minds, by whose labors practical astronomy made vast advances, and the physical theory of the universe, as previously developed, was amply illustrated and confirmed. During this era lunar tables were constructed of sufficient accuracy to be employed to solve the great problem of the longitude at sea. This was the work of Mayer, for which his widow received the sum of Â£3000 from government; and since that period, the publication of such tables, showing the places of the sun and moon, with the distance of the later from certain fixed stars, for every three hours, three years in advance, has been a national object, contributing to the safety of navigators upon the trackless deep. The same period is also celebrated for the determination of the figure and magnitude of the earth, and for the great improvements made in instruments of observation. If the century opened with lustre derived from the physical demonstrations of Newton, it closed magnificently with the telescopic discoveries of Herschel, the wonderful resident by the stately battlements of Windsor, by whose mechanical skill and matchless industry new regions were added to our solar system, and views unfolded of the infinity of the firmament, and the character of its architecture, which eye had not seen or the mind conceived.

A work specially devoted to the life and labors of Herschel is a desideratum. It is not to the credit of the country, that the men who have headed its physical force upon the field of battle have enjoyed a larger measure of public admiration and gratitude, and found a more speedy chronicle, than those who have enlarged the field of thought, ministered to the intellectual gratification, and elevated the mental character of the community. Bradley had lain in his grave 70 years, Newton 104, and Flamstead 116, before their memory received its meed of justice from the hands of Rigaud, Brewster, and Baily; a slackness to be attributed to the want of a due national estimate of the value of science, rather than to the reluctance of those who were competent to do ample honor to their merits. Herschel still remains without a record of this kind, though the materials for it are abundant, and his claims undoubted. Born at Hanover, the son of a musician in comparatively humble life, but early a resident in England, he appeared first as a professor and teacher of music, but rapidly rose by his own unaided efforts to eminence as an optician and astronomer. Anxious to inspect for himself the sublime revelations of the heavens, but destitute of means to purchase a telescope of sufficient power for his purpose, he resolved to employ some previous knowledge of optics and mechanics in the construction of an instrument. The earliest, a five-foot reflector, was completed in 1774: but altogether he accomplished the construction of upward of five hundred specula of various sizes, selecting the best of them for his telescopes. After having established his fame by the discovery of a new planet, and fixed his residence at Slough, under the munificent patronage of George the Third, he completed the giant instrument that attracted travelers from allparts to the spot, and rendered it one of the most remarkable sites of the civilized world. The tube was forty feet long, the speculum four feet in diameter, three inches and a half thick in every part, and weighing nearly two tons. Its space-penetrating power was estimated at 192, that is, it could search into the depths of the firmament 192 times farther than the naked eye. We can form no adequate conception of this extent, but only feebly approximate to it. Sirius, a star of the first magnitude, is separated by an immeasurable distance from us. But stars of a far inferior order of magnitude are visible to the naked eye. These we may conclude to be bodies far more remote, and reasonably suppose the star which presents the faintest pencil of light to the eye to be at least twice or thrice the distance of Sirius. Yet onward, 192 times farther, the space-penetrating power of the telescope at Slough swept the heavens. It was completed in the year 1789, but the frame of the instrument becoming decayed, through exposure to the weather, it was taken down by Sir John Herschel in 1823.

It will be convenient here to notice a reflecting telescope of far greater magnitude and power, recently constructed by the Earl of Rosse, and now in use at the seat of that nobleman, Birr Castle, in Ireland. The mechanical difficulties involved in this work, the patience, perseverance, and talent required to overcome themâ€”and the great expenditure necessarily incurredâ€”render the successful completion of this instrument one of the most extraordinary accomplishments of modern times; and entitle its owner and projector, from first to last, to the admiration of his countrymen. When the mechanical skill and profound mathematical knowledge essential to produce such a work are duly considered, together with the years devoted to previous experimenting, and an outlay of upward of twelve thousand pounds, this telescope must be regarded as one of the most remarkable and splendid offerings ever laid upon the altar of science. The speculum has a diameter of six feet, and therefore an area of reflecting surface nearly four times greater than that of the Herschelian, and its weight approaches to four tons. The castingâ€”a work of no ordinary interest and difficultyâ€”took place on the 13th of April, 1842, at nine in the evening; and as the crucibles poured forth their glowing contentsâ€”a burning mass of fluid matter, hissing, heaving and pitchingâ€”for the moment almost every one was anxious and fearful of accident or failure but Lord Rosse, who was observed directing his men as collectedly as on one of the ordinary occurrences of life. The speculum has been formed into a telescope of fifty feet local length, and is established between two walls of castellated architecture, against one of which the tube bears when in the meridian. It is no slight triumph of ingenuity, that this enormous instrument may be moved about and regulated by one manâ€™s arm with perfect ease and certainty.

To return to Herschel. No addition had been made of any new body to the universe since Cassini discovered a fifth satellite in the train of Saturn. Nearly a century had elapsed without any further progress of that kind. The solar system, including the planets, satellites, and Halleyâ€™s comet, consisted of eighteen bodies when Herschel turned his attention to astronomy; but, before his career of observation terminated, he increased the number to twenty-seven, thus making the system half as large again as he found it, as to the number of its constituentsâ€”a brilliant recompense, but not an over-payment, considering the immense expenditure of time, and toil, and care. A primary planet with six moons, and two more satellites about Saturn, composed the reward. It was on the 13th of March, 1781, that, turning a telescope of high magnifying powerâ€”though not his gigantic instrumentâ€”to the constellation Gemini, he perceived a cluster of stars at the foot of Castor, and one in particular, which sensibly increased in diameter, while the rest of the stars remained unaltered. Two nights afterward, its place was changed, which originated the idea of its being a cometary body; an opinion embraced upon the continent when attention was called to it, but soon dispelled by clear evidence of its planetary nature. The new planet was named after the reigning monarch by the discoverer, but received his own name from astronomers, which was finally exchanged for the Uranus of heathen mythology, the oldest of the gods, the fabled father of Saturn and the grandsire of Jupiterâ€”referring to the position of the planet beyond the orbits of the bodies named after the latter. By this discovery, the extent of the system was at once doubled; for the path of the stranger lies as far beyond what had been deemed its extreme confine, as that limit is removed from the sun. The first moment of his â€œattackâ€ upon Saturn, upon completing the forty-feet reflector, he saw a sixth satellite, and aseventh moon later. But Herschel realized his most surprising results, and derives his greatest glory, from the observation of the sidereal heavens. The resolution of nebulÃ¦ and the Milky Way into an infinite number of starsâ€”the discovery of new nebulÃ¦ of various forms, from the light luminous cloud to the nebulous starâ€”of double and multiple starsâ€”of the smaller revolving round the greater in the binary systems: these were some of his revelations to the world, as night after night, from dewy eve till break of dawn, he gauged the firmament. Caroline Herschel was the constant partner of her brother in his laborious undertakingsâ€”submitting to the fatigues of night attendanceâ€”braving with him the inclemency of the weatherâ€”noting down his observations as they issued from his lipsâ€”and taking, as the best of all authorities reports, the rough manuscript to the cottage at the dawn of day, and producing a fair copy of the nightâ€™s work on the ensuing morning. He died in 1822; but she has survived to see the heir of his name recognized by the world as the heir also of his talents and fame. It was one of the conceptions of this remarkable manâ€”as bold an idea as ever entered the human mindâ€”that the whole solar system has a motion in space, and is advancing toward a point in the heavens near the star Î» Herculis. The idea remains to be verified; but it is not altogetherunsupported by evidence, and quite consistent with the analogies of the universe.

The nineteenth century commenced with a fresh ingathering of members into the planetary family. It had been deemed a matter of surprise that the immense interval of about 350 millions of miles between Mars and Jupiter should be void, when only spaces varying from 25 to 50 millions divide Mars, the Earth, and the inferior planets. Keppler had therefore started the conjecture that a planet would be discovered in the vast region between the two former bodies; and thus bring it into something like proportion with the spaces between the latter. This idea was confirmed by a curious relation discovered by Professor Bode, of Berlin, that the intervals between the orbits of any two planets is about twice as great as the inferior interval, and only half the superior one. Thus, the distance between Venus and the Earth is double that between Mercury and Venus, and the half of that between the Earth and Mars. Uranus had not been discovered when Bode arrived at this remarkable analogy, but the distance of that planet being found to correspond with the law, furnished a striking confirmation of its truth. The respective distances of the planets may be expressed by the following series of numbers, whose law of progression is evident.

The void in the series between Mars and Jupiter, so convinced the German astronomers of the existence of a planet to occupy itâ€”which had hitherto escaped observationâ€”that a systematic search for the concealed body was commenced. At Lilienthal, the residence of Schroeter, an association of twenty-four observers was formed in the year 1800, for the purpose of examining all the telescopic stars of the zodiac. The opening years of the century witnessed the anticipation substantially realized by the discovery of four planetsâ€”Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and Vesta, revolving round the sun, at a mean distance of one hundred millions of miles from Mars, so small as only to be telescopic objects. This discovery we owe to Piazzi, Olbers, and Harding. Some singular featuresâ€”without parallel in the planetary systemâ€”such as their close contiguity, the intersection of their orbits, with their diminutive sizeâ€”Vesta not being much larger than the Spanish peninsulaâ€”led to the surmise that these bodies are fragments of a planet, which once revolved in their mean path with a magnitude proportionate to that of its neighbors. The possibility of such a disruption cannot be deniedâ€”the revolution of the fragments round the sun would follow in obedience to the mechanical laws by which the system is governed: but the point is obviously one of those questions which must remain entirely hypothetical. Next to this addition to the system, the most remarkable astronomical occurrences of the present age are the November meteors, the renewed return of Halleyâ€™s comet, and the determination of the annual parallax of the star 61 Cygni by Bessel. These will come under consideration in future pages, with the important contributions made to science by the great names of the day, Sir John Herschel, Sir James South, Struve, Airy, Arago, and others.

The progress of Astronomical discovery which has now been hastily traced, reminds us of the obligations we owe to those who have gone before us. While supplied with views respecting the constitution of the solar universeâ€”the number, forms, magnitudes, distances, and movements of its membersâ€”upon the general accuracy of which the mind may repose with full satisfaction, the mode of its formation has been grappled with, and a theory presented, derived from the study of the sidereal heavens, whichâ€”though not demonstrableâ€”is invested with a high degree of probability. The firmament exhibits dimly luminous appearances, like patches of white cloud, displaying various forms and peculiarities of structure, which are not resolvable into closely packed clusters of stars by any telescopic power, and whose phases are at variance with the idea that they are stellar groups, indistinct and blended from their remoteness. The nebulous substance, in one of its states, is evenly diffused, resembling a sheet of fog. Under another aspect, it is seen winding, and we detect a tendency toward structure, in the material congregating in different places, as if under the influence of a law of attraction. Definite structure appears in other cases, generally the spherical form, with great condensation at the centre, like regular stars in the midst of a thick haze. The question has hence naturally arisen, and it is one of profound interestâ€”What do such appearances indicate? What do the differences in their character portend? Are they void and unmeaning substances in a universe of organization and order; or, are they advancing by a principle of progressive formation to share themselves in that order and organization? The idea has been started that, in these phenomena, we have an exhibition of the first state of the now organized bodies of our system, and of their progress to the ultimate conditions of their being, passing from one stage of construction to another, under control of the law of gravitation. This is substantially the nebular hypothesis of Laplace and Herschel: it supposes a diffused nebulosity, rotating with the solar nucleus, and extending beyond the bounds of the farthest planet, to have gradually condensed at the surface of the nucleus, accelerating thereby the solar rotation, and increasing the centrifugal force, by the action of which successive zones were detached, assuming spheroidal masses by the mutual attraction of their particles. This theory enlists a variety of evidence in its behalf. The fact of the projectile motions of all the planets and satellites taking place from west to east, in nearly the same planeâ€”of their axical rotation likewise being all in the same direction,and corresponding with that of the solar bodyâ€”is an instance of coincidence so extraordinary as strongly to support the theory of their common origin in obedience to a common law. It is no unimportant consideration that, in the physical and mental constitution of our own natureâ€”with reference also to the inferior animals, both the feeble and the powerful, the tractable and the untamedâ€”in relation too to the vegetable productions of the earth, whether flourishing in green savannas, or rooted in the clefts of the rockâ€”we have a law of gradual formation now operating, which vindicates the idea from the charge of vain conceit, that an analogical law has operated with reference to the earth itself, and the various worlds that compose our system, supportedâ€”as the hypothesis isâ€”by such significant evidences as the nebulous appearances in the heavens.

From the view which has now been taken, it is evidently no doubtful point to usâ€”

â€œWhether the sun, predominant in heaven,Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun;He from the east his flaming rond begin,Or she from the west her silent course advance,With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleepsOn her soft axle.â€ .Â .Â .Â .

â€œWhether the sun, predominant in heaven,

Rise on the earth, or earth rise on the sun;

He from the east his flaming rond begin,

Or she from the west her silent course advance,

With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps

On her soft axle.â€ .Â .Â .Â .

How incumbent the duty upon us, then, as we have largely benefited by our predecessors, thatâ€”as faithful stewards of their giftsâ€”we should hand them down to posterity with an increase of value! How grand, and yet how simple, those views of the universe, upon the evidence of which we are now invited to gaze! The Sun, a central orb, attended by a stately cortÃ¨ge of planets, forming a system under the empire of lawâ€”a system not unique, but a general type of others as countless as the members of the stellar host, whose front ranks alone come within the range of telescopic vision: systems, probably, not physically insulated, but bound together by fine relationships, the nature of whichâ€”judging from the progress of the past, it is not arrogant to presumeâ€”will yet be revealed to the understanding of man. These are not ingenious theoriesâ€”splendid conjectures; but established facts, and sober anticipations based upon them. To live and learn is the high vocation of humanity; one of the appointed ends which the great Artificer of existence contemplates in its continued series: the generations that are to come improving upon the acquirements of that which now is. Nor can we fix any limit to the growth of knowledge in relation to the physical universe, clear and insurmountable in the present state as are its bounds with respect to the spiritual world. Who can descry a resting point in the wilderness of space?â€”discern a barrier to the range of the creation? Vast as are the regions that have been entered, there are vaster amplitudes unapproached beyond them, toward which the mind may advance in endless progression; often indeed faltering in the pilgrimage beneath the burden of those conceptions of space and magnitude which immensity suggests, but still going onward.

FROM THE GREEK OF DIONYSIUS.

â€”â€”â€”

BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, TRANSLATOR

OF THE PROMETHEUS AND AGAMEMNON

OF Ã†SCHYLUS, ETC. ETC.

â€”â€”â€”

Mute be the skies and still,Silent each haunted hillAnd valley deep!Let earth, and oceanâ€™s breast,And all the breezes restâ€”Let every echo sleep!Unshorn his ringlets bright,He comesâ€”the lord of lightâ€”Lord of the lyre.Morn lifts her lids of snow,Tinged with a rosy glow,To greet thee, glorious sire.Climbing, with winged feetOf fiery coursers fleet,Heavenâ€™s arch profound,Far through the realms of air,From out thy sunny hair,Thou flingest radiance round.Thine are the living streamsOf bright immortal beamsâ€”The founts of day!Before thy path careersThe chorus of the spheresWith wild rejoicing lay.The sad and silver moonBefore thy gorgeous noonSlow gliding by,Joys in her placid soulTo see around her rollThose armies of the sky.

Mute be the skies and still,

Silent each haunted hill

And valley deep!

Let earth, and oceanâ€™s breast,

And all the breezes restâ€”

Let every echo sleep!

Unshorn his ringlets bright,

He comesâ€”the lord of lightâ€”

Lord of the lyre.

Morn lifts her lids of snow,

Tinged with a rosy glow,

To greet thee, glorious sire.

Climbing, with winged feet

Of fiery coursers fleet,

Heavenâ€™s arch profound,

Far through the realms of air,

From out thy sunny hair,

Thou flingest radiance round.

Thine are the living streams

Of bright immortal beamsâ€”

The founts of day!

Before thy path careers

The chorus of the spheres

With wild rejoicing lay.

The sad and silver moon

Before thy gorgeous noon

Slow gliding by,

Joys in her placid soul

To see around her roll

Those armies of the sky.

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