XXVi Mr. Pickering’s Eulogy on 
to be addressed to an association exclusively devoted to physical 
and mathematical science, I should neither think it proper, nor 
should I be presumptuous enough, to enter upon a lengthened ex- 
amination of works, with which persons devoted to those pursuits 
are already more familiar than I can myself pretend to be. 
But addressing myself, as I do, to a society composed of indi- 
viduals, the greater part of whom have given more of their leisure 
to researches in literature and general science, than to physical 
astronomy or other branches of mathematical investigation, I shall 
be pardoned for some details which might otherwise have been 
spared, but which, unless I greatly deceive myself, will not be 
destitute of interest to all who hear me. 
Now, at the very commencement, and as an introduction to those 
details, in order that we may justly estimate the high importance of 
the original work of La Place, (independently of the Translation and 
Commentary of Dr. Bowditch,) it is necessary to go back, in the 
history of physical astronomy, beyond the age of the illustrious 
author, and for a moment direct our attention to that glorious epoch, 
when a flood of intellectual light burst forth from the mighty mind of 
Newton, and, with the splendor of the sun in the firmament, re- 
vealed to his wondering fellow-mortals the master principle of the 
structure and laws of the visible universe. 
“ Astronomy,” says La Place, “is a science which above all others 
presents us with the longest connected series of discoveries. The 
distance is immense between the first transient glance of the heavens, 
and that extended and general view by which, at this day, we are 
able to embrace the past and future condition of the system of the 
world. In order to arrive at the latter, it was necessary to observe 
the heavenly bodies for many centuries ; to recognise in their ap- 
parent courses the real motion of the earth; to ascend to the laws 
of the planetary movements, and from those laws to the principle 
