﻿" the central portion of the moon's disc, it would rush down towards us 



I a short distance, and then turn backward and fall up to the moon again." 

 We don't know half the wonders of " gravitation " yet ftow, although 

 "corrections" are sometines necessary in this amazing Science, the 

 astronomers give them to us good-humouredly, and expect us to receive them 

 in the same spirit (with a dash of humility in it), assuring us that they 

 are fractional and unimportant. Even our Astronomer Royal himself says, 

 with regard to the movement of the whole Solar System in space, " The 



II matter is left in a most delightful state of uncertainty, and I shall be 

 < very glad if any one can help us out of it." Astronomers know that 



Ptolemy of old — when everyone believed the Earth was flat and motionless, 

 and not hanging or twisting in space, or flying in any conceivable or in- 

 conceivable manner whatever— predicted eclipses, with the utmost accuracy, 

 for 600 years ! But the great fact remains, that the Copernican System 

 happens to be the one in vogue now ; for Sir John Herschel says, in the 

 fourth page of his celebrated work, " We shall take it for geanted, from 

 the outset, the Copernican "system of the world." It IS taken for 

 geanted ) and all that is required is an extended acquaintance wrth the 

 speculations, the suppositions, the calculations, the arguments, the pre- 

 tended proofs, the wonders, and the stupendous magnitudes of all the 

 humanly devised arrangements in this modern system of Astronomy— in 

 the exact words of its professors, exposed, examined, and exhibited in the 

 calm light of " Common Sense,"— in order that this Theoretical and ever- 

 varying system of explaining Facts which for ever occur and recur with 

 marvellous exactitude, may be saluted, by the people at large, as the 

 most— stupendous absurdity that ever entered the mind of man. 



NOTE BY THE EDITOR 



Apart from the actual merits of the Work to which these few leaves are 

 intended as an introduction, it has one peculiarity which may interest the 

 mere mechanical reader who has no intention of being swayed by its 

 arguments. And, perhaps, there is no other volume in the whole range 

 of literature, that can pretend to vie with it in this single fact. The author 

 of it was no University Professor, no member even of any of the so-called 

 " Learned Societies." He was, at the time he published this book, a 

 working-man— a journeyman Printer. Not one single line out of the 128 

 pages which compose the body of the work has ever existed in manuscript. 

 It was composed "at case," in the Printing Office, and committed then 

 and there to type ! After his own long day's work was done, in an office 

 which has had the benefit of his faithful services for twenty-one years, 

 did this prodigy of zeal and of indomitable industry go home and, 

 depriving himself of the enjoyment of the society of his unselfish wife and 

 children, spend night after night in the composition of a work that will 

 endure as long as ink and type shall last. All the Scientific Societies of 

 London combined to crush it. They abused his publishers ; they threatened 

 to ruin their trade if they dared to sell such a stinging exposure of what 

 had received the approval of the whole scientific world ; and so effectually 

 did they bully and bribe the bookselling trade, that for nearly five years 

 this extraordinary Work was left on the author's hands, and would probably 

 have remained so, had it not been providentially (we use this word in 

 its true meaning) introduced to our notice. We instantly made arrange- 

 ments for the possession of the copyright, and if we were to lose 95 per 



