thousands of ages, as the very means by which the whole is preserved and renewed. These clusters may be the laboratories of the universe, wherein the most salutary remedies for the decays of the whole are prepared. The stars forming these extraordinary nebulæ, by some decay or waste of nature,t being no longer fit for their former purposes, and having their projectile forces, if any such they had, retarded in each other's atmosphere, may rush at last together; and either in succession, or by one general tremendous shock, unite into a new body." Here is a new sun, a mighty sun, supposed to be formed from a number of decayed ones: we may add, alas! what would become of all the worlds, with all their inhabitants, which we are told revolve about and are enlightened by these suns? They must of course rush along with the old suns, (their centres,) and serve as fuel to light up the new one! But here another curious. question very naturally occurs: by what mechanical or chemical process, in these wonderful laboratories, are new worlds, and new people on them, formed to revolve about this new sun? Is it, as Newton believed, by sediments of light forming themselves? It is a question sufficiently important to engage and exercise the profound sagacity of philosophers; and the complete solution of it would, I think, give full employment to all the POWERS and SUBTILE SPIRITS of Newton. Another philosopher has possitively assured us, that these tremendous operations have absolutely commenced in the stupendous laboratories of the universe.

*Decay or waste of nature," might with some propriety be applied to animated bodies; but as we perceive nothing of the kind, in sun, moon, or earth, which come more immediately under our examination, we may of course estimate this notable supposition in proportion to its value; which according to Mr. Burchell's emphatic term, amounts to-fudge!

Mr. Good, in a note, page 362, of the first volume of his translation of De Rerum Natura, (where he is commenting on a passage from Origen, who imagined that all things in nature were in a state of decay; becoming more and more scarce, and getting worse and worse;) asserts, that "Suns and whole planetary systems, have already disappeared from their stations in the horizon, dissolved, perhaps, to primitive non-entity; or resorbed in the material and central mass of universal nature, from which they were first projected, and new creations have been discovered in their stead. What is there then in the system of the earth itself, to enable it to resist the common fate? upon every analogy of reasoning, it also must eventually yield, and it is probably decaying at the present moment." To attempt to reason upon this wonderful passage, or to ask for information concerning these stupendous events, would be time lost: as Mr. Good appears from his writings to be a worthy, diligent and accomplished man, I am sorry to find such sentiments in the same note, along with his judicious comments on the wild theories of Mr. Godwin and M. Condorcet.

With regard to these perturbations, irregularities, derangements and destructions, which, as we have been taught, are the inevitable effects of the mutual and universal attractions of the celestial bodies; it is consoling to observe, that a few writers who have recently treated upon the subject, begin to perceive the absurd conclusions which necessarily flow from the doctrine; a philosopher, whom I have already quoted, asserts, that "Mr. De la Grange has demonstrated that no such disorder will ever happen. That the greatest deviation from the most regular motions will be almost insensible, and that they are all periodical; waxing to nothing, and again rising to their small maximums. He shews also

that the greatest perturbations are so moderate, that none but an astronomer," (Oh no, none but an astronomer!) "will observe any difference between this perturbed state and the mean state of the system. The mean distances and the mean periods remain for ever the

same."*

Assuredly, O wise philosophers, you must all be brought to acknowledge that, however opposite to the profound results of your master's sagacious and elaborate investigations of the perturbations of gravity! "In short," says the same writer, "the whole assemblage (of worlds,)" will continue almost to eternity in a state fit for its present purposes, and not distinguishable from its present state, except by the prying eyes of an astronomer." If the world continue fit for its present purposes almost to eternity, its inhabitants will care very little about the curious perturbations which their prying eyes have discovered. They, with astonishing gravity, lately told us, that they had discovered that the moon's acceleration is about eleven seconds in a century;† that is to say, gentle reader, at the rate of about one degree in 20,000 years! No great danger of detection upon that point.

* Notwithstanding this opinion, they, a few years ago, revived the subject in France, and even proposed a prize of the value of £250 for a theory of perturbations. The money would be well laid out; it is an alarming subject, and the publick ought to be informed of the fate that awaits them.

+"Consequently other planets, and among them the earth, must have a similar acceleration. If the motion of the earth be accelerated, it must be owing to its approaching the centre of motion; and, if it do, will it not ultimately fall into the sun? The danger of this, indeed, must be infinitely remote, for the acceleration is extremely slow." (Why not infinitely slow?)-French Institute, 1809.

CHAPTER V.

ON COMETS;-NEWTONIAN DOCTRINES CONCERNING THEIR INCONCEIVABLE VELOCITIES, HEAT, PERIODICAL APPEARANCES AND HORRIBLE CONSEQUENCES;ONE OF THEM SO DERANGED BY GRAVITY THAT EVEN ASTRONOMERS DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS BECOME OF IT;-ALARMING AND CONTRADICTORY OPINIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS;-THE VULGAR OPINION UNIFORM AND

RATIONAL.

ANOTHER Confirmation of the fallacy of the theory of gravitation, is to be found in the result of its application to account for the cometary motions. In the early part of the last century, when the system became pretty generally received, several of those mathematicians who had adopted it, examined such accounts of the appearances of comets as history had recorded; and in a catalogue of several hundreds a few seemed to have appeared at nearly equal periods one from the other, under somewhat similar circumstances. This pretended coincidence was with avidity laid hold of by Halley, and considered as a confirmation of certain ancient opinions, (particularly that of Pythagoras the Greek, and Seneca the Roman philosopher,) that comets were lasting bodies, as the planets, having regular uniform periods: and, from their apparently near approach to the sun, Sir Isaac Newton, very consistently, incorporated them with his own system, and asserted that they performed their revolutions about the sun by centrifugal and cen

tripetal forces. He accommodated them with elliptic, parabolic, or hyperbolic orbits, according to the length of time they were visible, and the apparent angular velocity of their motions. It being received as an undoubted mathematical truth, that the distance of the sun from the earth is 95,000,000 of miles, the supporters of this system are obliged to measure the magnitudes, distances, and velocities of the other bodies belonging to it, by that enormous scale. Newton accordingly ascribed to the comet of 1680, a velocity of 880,000 miles an hour! Extravagant however as that is, it comes far short of the account given by Mr. Brydone of a comet seen by him, when at Palermo, in the year 1770; according to his computation that comet moved at the rate of 2,500,000 miles an hour, or 700 miles in a second of time; which is 5,200 times quicker than a cannon-ball;-the motion of lightning is nothing to be compared to it! Since the generality of Europeans believe these wonders issuing from Newton and his followers, as confidently as the people in the East believe the communications promulgated by the Grand Lama of Thibet and his priests, it is by no means surprising that the former, while exulting over the revelations of Newton, look down with contempt upon the simple philosophy and limited mathematics of the ancients, while they exclaim with equal falsehood and presumption,

"On facts not fiction rests his fame

Who spann'd the arch of heaven's eternal frame." The forms assigned by Newton to the cometary orbits, are quite incompatible with any known laws of motion and attraction on the earth. He says the sun's action upon bodies diminishes, and that consequently their gravities are less, in proportion as they recede from