exactly balance or neutralize the argument. Had he stated this fact, it would have spoiled his fine theory, and therefore he did not think proper to introduce it into the discussion. It must be admitted, that the Newtonian theory of the atmosphere, is far more plausible than Galileo's.

CHAPTER IX.

SCIENCE OF OPTICS KNOWN MANY HUNDRED YEARS ANTERIOR TO THE TIME OF GALILEO, THOUGH NOT EMPLOYED TO DISCOVER EARTHS IN HEAVEN;-NEWTONIAN MAXIMS OVERTURNED BY THE OBSERVATIONS OF MR. BALDWIN IN HIS AERIAL VOYAGE FROM CHESTER, BY THE DARK NATURE OF EARTHLY BODIES, AND BY THE EVIDENCE EXHIBITED IN THE STARS.

It is the boast of those philosophers who proclaim the glory of the Solar System, that its millions of worlds have been revealed to them principally through the telescope, and that the want of such an instrument kept the ancients in almost total ignorance of the true system of the world. The moderns as if forgetful, that the elements of all useful knowledge, of every good and perfect gift, were primarily derived from the Creator himself, seem constantly anxious to depreciate the knowledge and the skill of the ancients, as if to make room for their own exaltation and praise.

The mathematical sceptics, and some of the sceptical poets who imbibed their doctrines, seem to have formed an impious league, for the purpose of alienating the minds of men from the GREAT FIRST CAUSE. Some of them have manifested their views in tolerably plain terms; others more obscurely; and they have, at last, succeeded in raising doubts, in the minds of many, as to whether we ought any longer to consider HIM as the Creator of the Universe; the Mover of it; the Moral Governor of the nations; or, the Divine Instructor of

man. The world, which He has abundantly proved, by His revelations, and by His providence, to be under His own peculiar care, is now represented as being a mere insignificant point in the universe; and it is intimated, that mankind have, by some means, been placed upon it, and left to labour and grope their way in the dark as well as they can. In the scale of animal existence, they even place man below the brutes and the reptiles. That elegant, but most insidious, piece of sophistry, the Essay on Man, has, amongst other things equally remarkable, the following passage.

"See him from nature rising slow to art;

To copy instinct then was reason's part:
Thus then to man the voice of nature spake,
Go, from the creatures thy instruction take;
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave;
Learn of the little nautilus to sail;"&c.

GREAT NATURE spake; observant man obey'd, Cities were built; societies were made.-&c." To comment at large upon this farrago of falsehood, would be time lost. He ought, however, to have sent man to the hog for knowledge in ploughing, and to the mole for knowledge in mining; to the spider for information in weaving, and to the worm for instruction how to spin. This revelation of Pope is in direct contradiction to the revelations of God. For, according to the former, man, in his primitive state, was sent to school to the beasts, fowls, vermin, insects, and fishes, for the purpose of learning the arts of civilization; that man was the only creature placed upon the earth in a destitute and forlorn condition; even him, concerning whom it

it was said, "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.” The philosophers would draw him entirely away from a knowledge of his high origin, and of his glorious.destination; and, like the syrens of Homer, they incessantly labour to allure him from a state of safety on the ocean of truth,and to draw him to certain destruction on the rocks and the shoals of their own delusive sophistry. Let him once lose the knowledge of his high estate: let him believe in the oracles of Pope; go for knowledge to his university of brutes; look to his Moloch, who, he assures us, in direct contradiction to the gospel,

sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;

and he will then become ready food for the devouring sword, or a fit instrument for the most flagitious crimes. He will be estimated according to his physical powers and his capabilities for destruction. Their false philosophy, in process of time, if not checked in its progress, will actually reduce him to a state even below the condition of the untutored savage in the wilderness; for he, under all the disadvantages of his state, continues to retain some knowledge of the existence and providence of his Creator: The true philosopher knows, and will always bear in mind, that God was not only the author of his being, but likewise the source from which he derived the rudiments of all those arts which are necessary for the comfort, preservation, and even for the embellishments of society. The very nature, and actual condition of human society at the present time, evidently prove it; and this most important truth is completely confirmed by divine history from the beginning to the

conclusion. I now proceed from this short digression, to the subject with which I commenced this chapter.

Mr. Waller, the publisher of Dr. Hook's works, which he dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton in a particular essay, expressed his opinion, that "the ancients were wholly ignorant of refracting burning-glasses, except spheres, and therefore that it was no strange thing that they had neither telescopes nor microscopes, both which noble inventions have discovered * new worlds to the last and present age." Another writer, alluding to Archimedes's burning glasses, goes so far as to assert, that "it must be absurd to pretend, that the ancients had the knowledge of compound burning-glasses, such as consist of pieces of plain looking-glass put together in the manner of the one invented by Mr. Buffon; for this supposes, that they had not only the art of making large concave speculums; but also, that they understood the art of making and foliating looking-glasses, nothing of which appears from history, or is worthy the belief of any judicious person."

That the ancients never carried the art of making optical glasses, or telescopes, to a pitch of improvement equal to that of the moderns, is, I believe, perfectly true; but it does not thence follow, that they were entirely ignorant of the nature and use of such instruments. A greater demand, and of course more extensive practice, have rendered the moderns more perfect in this line than the ancients were. The ancients, for example, excelled in sculpture, because, as they worshipped the works of their own hands, the craft was esteemed honorable, and excited great emulation, under the idea, that the names of the artists would, with the images and temples which contained them, continue to be the admiration and praise of

* The merit of this discovery certainly belonged to the Greeks: Diogenes Laertius states that Anaxagoras held, that the moon was covered with hills, vales, and water, and was inhabited.