PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES. 69
fnture day, and the diligence of a distant age, shallbring to light those things which now lie hid: oneage will not suffice for such great discoveries. Thetime will come when our posterity will wonder that weshould have been ignorant of things so obvious.)
And Cicero , as if in anticipation of the triumph of theinductive philosophy, emphatically exclaims,—“ Opini -onum commenta delet dies : nature judicia confirmat.”(The lapse of time obliterates the glosses of humanopinion, but establishes what is conformable to thetestimony of nature.)
The Second School of Alexandria.
After Egypt had become a province of the Romanempire, the city of Alexandria still continued to he afavourite abode of the sciences. Though, for a longperiod, the high fame of its school had declined, yetthere were not wanting those who continued to culti-vate various branches of literature there. And at alater age, under the dominion of the Antonines, com-mencing A. D. 140, and especially under the sway ofthe philosophical Marcus Aurelius Antoninus , a con-siderable revival of science took place in the scene ofits former triumphs; a new constellation of geniusbegan to arise ; and though, neither in numbers norin eminence to be put in comparison with their prede-cessors in a former age, yet the Second School ofAlexandria produced several philosophers of consider-able merit, and some works which ably sustain theirreputation.
Claudius Ptolemseus, a native of Ptolemais in Egypt ,commonly known by the name of Ptolemy , flourishedat Alexandria about a. d. 140. He revived, in thatschool, the cultivation of astronomy, which had beenalmost entirely dormant during the three centuries sinceHipparchus . Animated with the ambition of restoringf 3