OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 27 



home .to every mind from their notoriety and une- 

 quivocal character. The prediction of eclipses has 

 accordingly from the earliest ages excited the admir- 

 ation of mankind, and been one grand instrument 

 by which their allegiance (so to speak) to natural 

 science, and their respect for its professors, has been 

 maintained; and though strangely abused in unen- 

 lightened ages by the supernatural pretensions of 

 astrologers, the credence given even to their absurd- 

 ities shows the force of this kind of evidence on 

 men's minds. The predictions of astronomers are, 

 however, now far too familiar to endanger the just 

 equipoise of our judgment, since even the return of 

 comets, true to their paths and exact to the hour 

 of their appointment, has ceased to amaze, though 

 it must ever delight all who have souls capable of 

 being penetrated by such beautiful instances of ac- 

 cordanqe between theory and facts. But the age of 

 mere wonder in such things is past, and men prefer 

 being guided and enlightened, to being astonished 

 and dazzled. Eclipses, comets, and the like, afford 

 but rare and transient displays of the powers of cal- 

 culation, and of the certainty of the principles on 

 which it is grounded. A page of "lunar distances" 

 from the Nautical Almanack is worth all the eclipses 

 that have ever happened for inspiring this necessary 

 confidence in the conclusions of science. That a 

 man, by merely measuring the moon's apparent dis- 

 tance from a star with a little portable instrument 

 held in his hand, and applied to his eye, even with 

 so unstable a footing as the deck of a ship, shall say 

 positively, within five miles, where he is, on a bound- 

 less ocean, cannot but appear to persons ignorant of 



