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ASTRONOMY.

year of his age. He wrote an account of his observations,which were published after his death, under the title of“ Venus in Sole visa," by Hevelius ; and his other writingsby Flams lead and Wallis, in the Philosophical Transactions ,1675.

The Copernican system was first publicly defended inEngland, bv Dr. Wilkins, 1660; in France, by Gassen-di, the sou of a peasant in Provence , who published manyvaluable works on philosophy. He was born 1592, and diedin 1655. He was violently opposed by Morin, a famousastrologer.

Descartes , descended from a noble family, the son ofa counsellor of Brittany, in France , born at Haye, inTourraine, 31st March, 1596, early distinguished himselfby his knowledge in algebra and geometry. He attacked andoverturned the philosophy of Aristotle , in his own country.He attempted to establish certain principles, which, thoughfounded in theory, he took for granted, by which he ac-counted for all appearances. Like Mocbus and Democri-tus , 1 he imagined all space to be filled with corpuscules oratoms, in continual agitation, and denied the possibility ofa vacuum. He explained every thing by supposing vortices,or motions round a centre, according to the opinion of De-mocritus , Dioy. Laert. ix. 31 and 44, and thus discoveredthe centrifugal force, in the circular motion of the planets.But the system of Descartes , not being founded on factsor experiments, did not subsist long ; although at first ithad many followers. His astronomical opinions were muchthe same with those of Copernicus .

Although the lively notions of Descartes led him intoerror, yet his exalted views greatly contributed to the im-provement of science. Men were led to observation andexperiments, in order to overturn his system, and astro-nomy was cultivated by persons of ability, i.e. Bouillard,at Paris; Ward, at Oxford, 1653; and by Hevelius , atDantzic, from 1643, who constructed a fine observatory,and collected a great many facts by his long assiduous ob-servation, for fifty years, during which he made manydiscoveries concerning the planets, fixed stars, and par-ticularly comets. Colbert, in the name of Louis XIV .sent him a sum of money, and a pension. Hevelius pub-lished a catalogue of fixed stars, intituled Firmamentum

Piog. Laert. ix. 44.