AIDS OF THE NEWTONIAN PERIOD. 479 



in the publications, of the above-mentioned eminent Societies. As 

 the progress of physical science, and principally of astronomy, attract 

 ed more and more admiration, Academies were created in other coun 

 tries. That of Berlin was founded by Leibnitz in 1710 ; that of St. 

 Petersburg was established by Peter the Great in 1725; and both 

 these have produced highly valuable Memoirs. In more modern 

 times these associations have multiplied almost beyond the power of 

 estimation. They have been formed according to divisions, both ot 

 locality and of subject, conformable to the present extent of science, 

 and the vast population of its cultivators. It would be useless to at- 

 tempt to give a view either of their number or of the enormous mass 

 of scientific literature which their Transactions present. But we may 

 notice, as especially connected with our present subject, the Astronom 

 ical Society of London, founded in 1820, which gave a strong impulse 

 to the pursuit of the science in England. 



Sect. 4. Patrons of Astronomy. 



THE advantages which letters and philosophy derive from the pat- 

 ronage of the great have sometimes been questioned ; that love of 

 knowledge, it has been thought, cannot be genuine which requires 

 such stimulation, nor those speculations free and true which are. thus 

 forced into being. In the sciences of observation and calculation, 

 however, in which disputed questions can be experimentally decided, 

 and in which opinions are not disturbed by men's practical principles 

 and interests, there is nothing necessarily operating to poison or neu- 

 tralize the resources which wealth and power supply to the investiga- 

 tion of truth. 



Astronomy has, in all ages, flourished under the favor of the rich 

 and powerful ; in the period of which we speak, this was eminently 

 the case. Louis the Fourteenth gave to the astronomy of France a 

 distinction which, without him, it could not have attained. No step 

 perhaps tended more to this than his bringing the celebrated Dominic 

 Cassini to Paris. This Italian astronomer (for he was born at Per- 

 maldo, in the county of Nice, and was professor at Bologna), was 

 already in possession of a brilliant reputation, when the French am- 

 bassador, in the name of his sovereign, applied to Pope Clement the 

 Ninth, and to the senate of Bologna, that he should be allowed to re- 

 move to Paris. The request was granted only so far as an absence of 

 six years ; but at the end of that time, the benefits and honors which 



