64 OF THE SYSTEMS OF PtOLEMY,

Arts and sciences, like kingdoms and state?,have their various changes and revolutions ; atsome periods shining with uncommon lustre, andat others involved in ignorance and barbarity.Astronomy, after having flouriflied for a consi-derable time under the auspices of Pythagorasand his followers, was again neglected and ob-scured for many ages, so that the true system ofthe world seems to have been entirely forgotten.Instead of consulting the heavens, and collect-ing the history of nature, succeeding philoso-phers were ambitious of gratifying their ownvanity, by inventing whimsical hypotheses,which had no conformity to fact and experi-ment. Solid orbs and epicycles were multipliedto answer every appearance, till the universe hadlost all its native beauty in their descriptions,and seemed again reduced to a chaos by theirunhappy labours.

It was about the middle of this centurythat Copernicus, a bold and original genius,adopted the Pythagorean, or true system of theuniverse, and published it to the world in thepuj.sig. 3-year 1530, with new and demonstrative argu-ments in its savour. Seized with a daring en-thusiasm, he laid his hands on the circles and cry-stal orbs of Ptolemy, and dashed them to pieces.And, with the same noble phrenzy, took the un-wieldy earth, and sent her far from the centerof the system, to move round the sun with the5 rest