JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 51 
that sang to mankind such rhymes of the universe that all stood 
enthralled by their melody. 
When Milton met Galileo Copernicus had been dead nearly a 
hundred years, and yet the Ptolemaic theory, by which it was 
believed that the earth was the immovable centre of the universe, 
and round it all the heavenly bodies circled in a daily revolution, 
still retained its ascendency over the minds of men of learning and 
science. The Copernican theory, by which the sun is assigned the 
central position in our system, with the earth and planets revolving 
in orbits round him, obtained the support of a few persons of 
advanced views and high scientific attainments. 
Milton had read science at Cambridge and afterwards, along 
the lines of current belief, so far as a true soul could assimilate 
error. His studies in Dante, which he absorbed, had also fastened 
on him the Ptolemaic cosmology. According to the Ptolemaic 
system, the earth—the immovable centre of the universe—was sur- 
rounded by ten crystalline spheres or heavens, arranged in concen- 
tric circles, the larger enclosing the smaller ones, and within these 
was situated the cosmos or mundane universe, usually described as 
the heavens and the earth. To each of the first seven spheres there 
was attached a heavenly body, which was carried round the earth 
by the revolution of the crystalline. This was called the firmament, 
as it gave steadiness to the inner spheres. Ptolemy made this last 
his boundary. But after he of Alexandria had settled the cosmos 
and pronounced the plan of the great world builder unrolled, some 
discrepancies and difficulties arose. The precession of the equi- 
noxes, discovered by Hipparchus in the second century B. C., had to 
be dealt with, as this phenomenon very ungraciously disturbed the 
harmony, and insisted upon being explained, and so later astronom- 
ers put, so to speak, another story on the building. An extra 
sphere or two was always at hand, and so they added as an evidence 
of good faith, and to stop all awkward objections, a ninth sphere, 
which they called the “Chrystalline,” and thus accounted for the 
precession of the equinoxes. Thereafter, in order to demonstrate 
the inexhaustibility of their resources, a tenth sphere was added, 
which they called ‘‘ Primum Mobile,” or first moved, which brought 
about the alternation of day and night by carrying all the other 
spheres round the earth once in every twenty-four hours. 
