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PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 

 PROCEEDINGS IN THE ATHEN.EUM. 



July 10th. — Mr. Lancaster's Lecture on Astronomy. 



On this evening Mr. Lancaster delivered a lecture on Astro- 

 nomy, in which he entered into a careful detail of the magnitudes, 

 motions, &c. kQ. of the Heavenly bodies comprised in the Solar 

 System, which was prefaced by some remarks on the sublimity and 

 importance of the Science of Astronomy; our limits will only ad- 

 mit of the following extract from that very interesting part of his 

 paper. 



It is recorded of Anaxagoras, that on being asked, for what end 

 he was born ? he replied " to* contemplate the stars. '^ Such an 

 answer from the lips of a heathen cannot be viewed without re- 

 spect; being, as it is, a marked evidence of sublimity of feeling 

 in an elevated mind : but if the science of Astronomy at that 

 period could call forth such an acknowledgment of its superior 

 demands on the contemplative faculties of the mind of Genius, 

 we cannot feel surprise at the high eulogy passed by the cele- 

 brated La Place, in closing his Astronomical view of the system 

 of the Universe ; when he designates the science, viewed as one 

 grand whole, as " the most beautiful monument of the human 

 mind ; the noblest record of its intelligence. " If it be necessary 

 to adduce evidence to establish such high claims to superiority, 

 the greatest difficulty arises in the necessity of selection from the 

 vast variety of important features it assumes. To estimate such 

 a monument of human reason we must contrast the apparent 

 limited powers of man, with the unbounded field presented for his 

 contemplation, or attempt to compute the value of that speck in 

 creation to which he is confined, when compared with the immen- 

 sity of space whereby he is surrounded, and the vast masses with 

 which he finds himself associated by the bands of science : — allow- 

 ing these points of comparison, and viewing their relative dispari- 

 ties, the apparent inadequacy of the means to the end stands 

 eminently confessed, and when we reflect on the positive acquire- 

 ments of the human mind in this science, when notwithstanding 

 the bounded capacity of human intellect, and the confined locality 

 of the place of observation, we find the motions, magnitudes, and 

 distances of other worlds ascertained with a degree of certainty 

 and accuracy, scarcely to be exceeded in the determination of 

 geographical points on our own residence ; we may indeed ac- 

 voL. IV. — 1834. R 



