OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 115 



and commenced, with one accord, the great work of 

 turning up her hitherto unbroken soil, and exposing 

 the treasures so long concealed. A general sense 

 now prevailed of the poverty and insufficiency of 

 existing knowledge in matters of fact; and, as inform- 

 ation flowed fast in, an era of excitement and won- 

 der commenced, to which the annals of mankind 

 had furnished nothing similar. It seemed, too, as 

 if Nature herself seconded the impulse ; and, while 

 she supplied new and extraordinary aids to those 

 senses which were henceforth to be exercised in 

 her investigation, while the telescope and the mi- 

 croscope laid open the infinite in both directions, 

 as if to call attention to her wonders, and signalize 

 the epoch, she displayed the rarest, the most splendid 

 and mysterious, of all astronomical phenomena, the 

 appearance and subsequent total extinction of a 

 new and brilliant fixed star twice within the life- 

 time of Galileo himself. * 



(107.) The immediate followers of Bacon and 

 Galileo ransacked all nature for new and surprising 

 facts, with something of that craving for the mar- 

 vellous, which might be regarded as a remnant of 

 the age of alchemy and natural magic, but which, 

 under proper regulation, is a most powerful and 

 useful stimulus to experimental enquiry. Boyle, in 

 particular, seemed animated by an enthusiasm of 

 ardour, which hurried him from subject to subject, 



* The temporary star in Cassiopeia observed by Cornelius 

 Gemma, in 1572, was so bright as to be seen at noon-day. That 

 in Serpentarius, first seen by Kepler in 1604, exceeded in 

 brilliancy all the other stars and planets. 



