ASTRONOMY. 89 



bodies. It is the boldest and most comprehensive of all our 

 speculations. It is the science of the material universe con- 

 sidered as a whole. The wide-spreading firmament, while 

 it lifts itself above all mortal things, exhibits to us that lu- 

 minary, which is the light, and life, and glory of our world, 

 and when this retires from our view, is lighted up with a 

 thousand lesser fires, that never cease to burn, that never 

 fail to take their accustomed places, and never rest from 

 their slow, solemn, and noiseless march. Among the objects 

 more immediately about us, all is vicissitude and change. 

 Plants arise out of the earth, flourish awhile and decay, and 

 their place is filled by others. Animals also have their pe- 

 riods of growth and decline. Even man is not exempt from 

 the general law. Nations are like individuals, privileged 

 only with a more protracted existence. The firm earth itself, 

 the theatre of all this change, partakes in a degree of the 

 common lot of its inhabitants, and the sea once heaved its 

 waves where now rolls a tide of wealth and population. Situ- 

 ated as we are, in this fleeting, fluctuating state, it is consol- 

 ing to be able to dwell upon an enduring scene, to contem- 

 plate laws that are immutable, an order that has never been, 

 interrupted, to fix, not the thoughts only, but the eye, upon 

 ol>jects that after the lapse of so many ages, and the fall of 

 so many states, cities, human institutions, and monuments of 

 art, continue to occupy the same places, to move with the 

 same regularity, and to shine with the same pure, fresh, un- 

 diminished lustre. 



Astronomy is the most improved of all the branches of 

 knowledge, and that which does the greatest credit to the 

 human understanding. We have in this obtained the object 

 of our researches. We have solved the great problem pro- 

 posed to us in the celestial motions ; and our solution is as 

 simple and as grand as the spectacle itself, and is in every 

 respect worthy of so exalted a subject. It is not the as- 

 tronomer only, who is thus satisfied, but the proof is of a 

 nature to carry conviction to the most illiterate and skep- 

 tical. Our knowledge, extending to the principles and laws 

 which the author of nature has chosen to impress upon his 

 works, comprehends the future ; it resembles that which has 

 been regarded as the exclusive attribute of supreme intelli- 

 gence. We are thus enabled, not only to explain those unu- 

 sual appeafances in the heavens, which were formerly the 

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