THE UNIVERSE. DISCOVERIES IN THE CELESTIAL SPACES. 351 



denied even by Picard, was now generally admitted. Newton 

 recognised the compression of the earth at the poles as a 

 result of its rotation : he even ventured, upon the assump- 

 tion of homogeneity of mass, to assign the amount of the 

 compression. It remained for the comparison of degrees 

 measured in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries under 

 the equator, near the North Pole, and in the temperate zones 

 of both hemispheres, to furnish a more correct deduction of 

 the mean compression, or the true figure of the earth. As 

 has already been remarked in the Picture of Nature in the 

 first volume of the present work, ( 542 ) the existence of the 

 compression announces of itself what may be termed the 

 most ancient geognostical event, viz. the state of general 

 fluidity of the planet, and its progressive solidification. 



We commenced the description of the great epoch of 

 Galileo and Kepler, Newton and Leibnitz, with the dis- 

 coveries made in the celestial spaces by the aid of the newly 

 invented telescope ; we terminate it with the figure of the 

 earth as then recognised from theoretical considerations. 

 " Newton attained to the explanation of the system of the 

 Universe, because he succeeded in discovering the force ( 543 ) 

 of whose operation the Keplerian laws are the necessary 

 consequences, and which could not but correspond to the 

 phenomena, since those laws corresponded to and foretold 

 them/' The discovery of such a force, the existence of 

 which Newton has developed in his immortal work, the 

 Principia, (which may be regarded as a general theory of 

 Nature), was almost simultaneous with that of the In- 

 finitesimal Calculus, which opened the way to new mathe- 

 matical discoveries. The work of the intellect shews itself 

 in its most exalted grandeur, where, instead of requiring 



