THE UNIVERSE. DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 



paths of comets, he first demonstrated the impossibility of 

 solid spheres, and thus shattered the whole artificial fabric. 

 He filled the free celestial spaces with air, and even believed 

 that the " resisting medium," made to vibrate by the revolv- 

 ing heavenly bodies, might produce sounds. The unpoetic 

 Eothmann thought it incumbent upon him to refute this re- 

 newal of the Pythagorean myth of the music of the spheres. 

 The great discovery of Kepler, that all the planets move 

 round the s tin in ellipses, and that the sun is placed in one of 

 the foci of these ellipses, finally freed the original Copernican 

 system from the excentric circles, and from all epicycles. ( 479 ) 

 The planetary fabric of the universe now appeared objectively, 

 and as it were architecturally, in its simple grandeur; but the 

 play and connection of indwelling, impelling,and maintaining 

 forces, were first unveiled by Isaac Newton. In the history of 

 the gradual development of human knowledge, we have already 

 often remarked the appearance, within short intervals of time, 

 of important though seemingly accidental discoveries, and 

 of great minds clustered as it were together; and we see 

 this phenomenon repeated in the most striking manner in 

 the first ten years of the 17th century. Tycho Brahe the 

 founder of modern practical astronomy, Kepler, Galileo, 

 and Francis Bacon, were coteinporaries. All, except Tycho, 

 were cotemporaneous in their maturer years with the labours 

 of Descartes and Permat. The fundamental traits of Bacon's 

 Instauratio Magna appeared in the English language as 

 early as 1605, fifteen years before the Novum Organon. 

 The invention of the telescope, and the greatest discoveries 

 in physical astronomy, (Jupiter's satellites, the solar spots, 

 the phases of Yenus, and the wonderful form of Saturn), 

 fall between the years 1609 and 1612. Kepler's specula- 



