274- DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



it was necessary to strip them of every vestige of 

 that antique dress in which he had delighted to 

 clothe them. This, however, the countrymen of 

 Newton were very unwilling to do ; and they paid 

 the penalty in finding themselves condemned to 

 the situation of lookers on, while their continental 

 neighbours both in Germany and France were push- 

 ing forward in the career of mathematico-physical 

 discovery with emulous rapidity. 



(304<.) The legacy of research which Newton may 

 be said to have left to his successors was truly im- 

 mense. To pursue, through all its intricacies, the 

 consequences of the law of gravitation ; to account 

 for all the inequalities of the planetary movements, 

 and the infinitely more complicated, and to us more 

 important ones, of the moon ; and to give, what 

 Newton himself certainly never entertained a con- 

 ception of, a demonstration of the stability and 

 permanence of the system, under all the accumu- 

 lating influence of its internal perturbations ; this 

 labour, and this triumph, were reserved for the suc- 

 ceeding age, and have been shared in succession by 

 Clairaut, D'Alembert, Euler, Lagrange and Laplace. 

 Yet so extensive is the subject, and so difficult and 

 intricate the purely mathematical enquiries to which 

 it leads, that another century may yet be required 

 to go through with the task. The recent discoveries 

 of astronomers have supplied matter for investiga- 

 tion, to the geometers of this and the next genera- 

 tion, of a difficulty far surpassing any thing that had 

 before occurred. Five primary planets have been 

 added to our system ; four of them since the com- 

 mencement of the present century, and these, sin- 



