164 DISSERTATION SECOND. [parti. 



On the revival of letters in Europe, establishments of the 

 same kind were the first decisive indications of a taste for 

 science. We have seen the magnificent observatory on 

 which Tvcho expended his private fortune, and employed 

 the munificence of his patron, become a sad memorial (after 

 the signal services which it had rendered to astronomy) of 

 the instability of whatever depends on individual greatness. 

 The observatories at Paris and London were secured from 

 a similar fate, by being made national establishments, where 

 a succession of astronomers were to devote themselves to 

 the study of the heavens. The observatory at Paris was 

 begun in 1667, and that at Greenwich in 1675. In the first 

 of these, La Hire and Cassini, in the second, Flamstead 

 and Halley, are at the head of a series of successors, who 

 have done honour to their respective nations. If there be 

 in Britain any establishment, in the success and conduct of 

 which the nation has reason to boast, it is that of the Royal 

 Observatory, which, in spite of a climate which so continu- 

 ally tries the patience, and so often disappoints the hopes 

 of the astronomer, has furnished a greater number of obser- 

 vations to be completely relied on, than all the rest of Eu- 

 rope put together, and afforded the data for those tables, in 

 which the French mathematicians have expressed, with 

 such accuracy, the past, the present, and the future condi- 

 tion of the heavens. 



6. Figure and Magnitude of the Earth. 



The progress made during the seventeenth century, in 

 ascertaining the magnitude and figure of the earth, is par- 

 ticularly connected with the establishments which we have 

 just been considering. Concerning the figure of the earth, 

 no accurate information was derived from antiquity, if we 



