OF THE NEW PLANET,

398

And far from strands are /hells of fishes found ;

And rusty anchors fixed on mountain ground:

And what were fields before, now mark’d and wornBy falling floods, from hills to vallies turn :

And crumbling still descend to level lands;

And lakes, and trembling bogs, are barren sands:

And the parch’d desert floats in streams unknown,Wondering to drink of waters not her own.”

To these testimonies, which seem consonantboth with history and experience, may be addedanother still more singular; which is that of theancient Egyptians, who maintained that the sun,iA former ages, had risen in the west and set inthe east. It was, indeed, a tradition as obscureas their hieroglyphics; and Herodotus, Plato,Diogenes Laertius, and Plutarch, who all men-tion this revolution, must be considered as au-thors by far too modern to deserve much creditwith regard to such antiquities. They are,however, so many remaining witnesses that thisopinion once prevailed; and, from the disco-veries of the moderns, some have been inducedto believe, that the idea, extravagant as it mayseem, was not altogether without foundation.

The best modern astronomers are now gene-rally agreed, that the angle which the eclipticmakes with the equator is continually decreas-ing, at the rate of about one minute in a hun-dred years; and therefore, if this diminutionshould proceed, the two circles, in about 140,0005 years,