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OF THE SYSTEMS OF PTOLEMV,

must be corrected, and vulgar prepossessions era-dicated from the mind, before we can be broughtto reckon the earth as a planet, and to considerthis prodigious globe, which, of all things innature, appears to be the most fixed and stable,to be carried round the heavens with the rapidityof 58,000 miles an hour.

To humour these prejudices, by keeping theearth still fixed in the centre, but at the fametime to remove some of the most palpable absur-dities attending that doctrine, was the design ofTycho Brahe, who attempted to establish a new• s- system, and to account for the celestial motionsby a more plausible hypothesis. This nobleDane, who flourished in the latter end of thesixteenth century, had furnished himself with anexcellent collection of mathematical instruments,and, by that means, had made himself too wellacquainted with the motions of the heavenlybodies, to imagine their center to be any whereelse than in the fun. He was struck with thebeauty, simplicity and harmony of the Pytha-gorean system, which Copernicus had lately re-vived ; but out of respect for some passages ofscripture, which seemed to contradict this doc-trine, he set himself about to reconcile his learn-ing with his faith ; and, in order that the earthmight remain quiescent,he supposed the sun, withall the planets, to be carried about it in the spaceof a year; whilst these, by their proper motions,revolved round the fun in their several periods.

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