152 DISSERTATION SECOND. [part i. 



less, an enemy to the Copernican system, and has the dis- 

 credit of having measured the evidence for and against that 

 system, no( by the weight, but by the number of the argu- 

 ments. The pains which he took to prop the falling edi- 

 fice of deferents and epicycles, added to his misapprehend- 

 ing and depreciating the discoveries of Kepler, subject him 

 to Ihe reproach of having neither the genius to discover 

 truth, nor the good sense to distinguish it when discovered. 

 He was, however, a priest and a Jesuit ; he had seen the 

 fate of Galileo ; and his errours may have arisen from want of 

 courage, more than from want of discernment. 



Of the phenomena which the telescope in the hands of 

 Galileo had made known, the most paradoxical were those 

 exhibited by Saturn ; sometimes attended by two globes, 

 one on each side, without any relative motion, but which 

 would, at stated times, disappear for a while, and leave the 

 planet single, like the other heavenly bodies. Nearly forty 

 years had elapsed, without any further insight into these 

 mysterious appearances, when Huygens began to examine 

 the heavens with telescopes of his own construction, better 

 and more powerful than any which had yet been employed. 

 The two globes that had appeared insulated, were now seen 

 connected by a circular and luminous belt, going quite 

 round the planet. At last, it was found that all these ap- 

 pearances resulted from a broad ring surrounding Saturn, 

 and seen obliquely from the earth. The gradual ;nanner in 

 which this truth unfolded itself is very interesting, and has 

 been given with the detail that it deserves by Huygens in 

 his System a SaturniUm. 



The attention which Huygens had paid to the ring of 

 Saturn, led him to the discovery of a safellit^ of the same 

 planet. His telescopes were not powerful enough to dis- 

 cover more of them than one ; he believed, indeed, that 

 there were no more, and that the number of the planets now 



