PARADOXES AND PARADOXISTS. 



It very harsh ; but if it be a railway-whistle stop, I 

 think it very sweet ! " So as to this book : if it be 

 childish, it is clever ; if it be mannish, it is unusually 

 foolish. The flat earth floating tremulously on the sea, 

 the sun moving always over the flat, giving day when 

 near enough, and night when too far off; the self- 

 luminous moon with a semi-transparent invisible moon, 

 created to give her an eclipse now and then ; the new 

 law of perspective by which the vanishing of the hull 

 before the masts, usually thought to prove the earth 

 globular, really proves it flat; all these and other 

 things are well fitted to form exercises for a person who 

 is learning the elements of astronomy. The manner 

 in which the sun dips into the sea, especially in 

 tropical climates, upsets the whole. Mungo Park, I 

 think, gives an African hypothesis, which explains 

 phenomena better than this. The sun dips into the 

 western ocean, and the people there cut him in pieces, 

 fry him in a pan, and then join him together again, 

 take him round the underway and set him up in the 

 east. I hope this book will be read, and that many 

 will be puzzled by it ; for there are many whose notions 

 of astronomy deserve no better fate. There is no sub- 

 ject on which there is so little accurate conception as 

 that of the motions of the heavenly bodies. The 

 author, though confident in the extreme, neither 

 impeaches the honesty of those whose opinions he 

 assails, nor allots them any future inconvenience ; in 

 these points he is worthy to live on a globe, and to 

 revolve in twenty-four hours ' 



