200 HISTORY OF PHYSICAL ASTRONOMY. 



them, as to be incapable of seeing, or interpreting, 

 in any other way, any facts respecting Oxford and 

 Cambridge. Yet, notwithstanding these opinions, 

 it will be found that, in the English universities, 

 new views, whether in science or in other subjects, 

 have been introduced as soon as they were clearly 

 established; that they have been diffused from 

 the few to the many more rapidly there than else- 

 where occurs; and that from these points, the 

 lights of newly-discovered truths have most usually 

 spread over the land. In most instances undoubt- 

 edly there has been something of a struggle on such 

 occasions, between the old and the new opinions. 

 Few men's minds can at once shake off a familiar 

 and consistent system of doctrines, and adopt a novel 

 and strange set of principles as soon as presented : 

 but all can see that one change produces many, 

 and that change, in itself, is a source of incon- 

 venience and danger. In the case of the admission 

 of the Newtonian opinions into Cambridge and 

 Oxford, however, there are no traces even of a 

 struggle. Cartesianism had never struck its roots 

 deep in this country; that is, the peculiar hypo- 

 theses of Descartes. The Cartesian books, such, 

 for instance, as that of Rohault, were indeed in 

 use; and with good reason; for they contained 

 by far the best treatises on most of the physical 

 sciences, such as Mechanics, Hydrostatics, Optics, 

 and Formal Astronomy, which could then be found, 

 But I do not conceive that the Vortices were ever 



