The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-28 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Popular Astronomy. By Francois Arago. Trans-
lated from the Original and Edited by Admiral
W. H. Smyth, and Robert Grant, Esq. Vol. I.
Longman and Company.
During eighteen years, consecutively, Francois
Arago, one of the most illustrious of modern astro-
nomers, and eminently distinguished in almost
every department of natural philosophy, annually
delivered a course of Lectures on Astronomy in
the hall of the Paris Observatory. Those celebrated
Lectures are at length happily passing through the
ordeal of collective republication. The introductory
volume of the English version, translated, edited,
and revised by Admiral Smyth, assisted by Mr.
Grant, his gifted collaborateur, has very recently
been issued from the press by the Messrs. Long-
mans, in pursuance of their project of publishing
one by one the various scientific works of Arago,
in a series of authentic and authoritative transla-
tions- Already there has been given to the world,
as a foretaste of the cumulative excellence of this
brilliant literary enterprise, the initial volume—.
(complete in itself)—a volume comprising the whole
of the Meteorological Essays, translated under the
personal superintendence of Lieut.-Col. Sabine,
and preceded by a noble dissertation upon
the life and writings of the author, an
eloquent, and masterly, and affectionate memorial
from the hand of Arago's devoted friend, the
venerable and illustrious Alexander Von Hum-
boldt. We are promised, moreover, the satisfac-
tion of reviewing, later on, companion-versions of
the Lives of Distinguished Scientific Men, biogra-
phies now announced as in preparation. At present
the English admirers of the genius of Arago are
afforde4he privilege of possessing accurate copies is
the vernacular, of the two noble octavo volumes in
which the Popular Astronomy is to be comprised.
Perhaps, of all Arago's works, this is the one upon
which his fame as a philosopher may the most se-
curely repose as upon its most ample and indestruc-
tible foundation. It is to Arago what the Novunt‘
Organum was to Bacon, or the Principia to New-
ton—his undoubted mast3rpiece. As such it
is acceptable gratefully, we had almost added.
reverently. In it the great French astro-
nomer may be said to stand forth as the
appointed exponent of the starry universe
to those among the vast mass of his fellow-crea-
tures who may listen to the echoes of his voice in
the dim hereafter, as well as to those who hearkened
to his actual utterance as among the privileged
number of his immediate contemporaries. The
origin of these famous Lectures is very easily re-
lated. They arose out of a law of the 7th Messidor
in the year 111, 25th June, 1795, a law formally
constituting the " Bureau des Longitudes." In
obedience to the sixth Article of which enactment
one of the fifteen members or associates of which
the Bureau is composed, is annually obliged to
deliver a course of Lectures on Astronomy. For
eighteen years consecutively Arago was the chosen
associate, the member invariably selected by his
colleagues for thus delivering the astronomical
prelections so appointed to be delivered. And so
from the acorn, as it were, of the first sentence of
the first lecture in the first course of these lectures
numbering at last as we have said no lees than
eighteen altogether—there gradually grew up this
grand umbrageous " giant of the woods," ramifying
into a thousand branches, striking its roots abroad
far and wide, and flourishing, so to speak, in leaves
innumerable. Its flowers, the flowers of rhetoric.
Its fruit, the stars—fruit glittering under its shade
in clusters, in nebulm., in constel:ations. How ex-
quisitely the whole glorious theme discoursed of,
rises in symmetrical order before us under the
author's wise and vigilant supervision 1 Everything
prepared by the lucid definition of certain essential
fundamental ideas upon Geometry :—ideas in re-
gard to the use of a circle, in regard to the propor-
tion of the circumference to the diameter, in regard
to the theorem relative to the angles formed about
a point, in regard to the sum of the angles of a
triangle, in regard to the proposition of the square
of the hypothenuse 1 Wonderful indeed, in the
abstract, is the manifold beauty opened up to the
student's contemplation by the rudiments of astro-
nomical inquiry—associating the most celestial of
the sciences as those rudiments do so very intimately
and even inextricably with the root-laws of geome-
try and mathematics ! And doubly marvellous
the beauty thus revealed appears to be when un-
folded to view by the magical touch of the wand of
a genius like that of Arago. How the mind pauses
with a sense of indescribable enjoyment over such
a bewitching revelation, for example, as that dis-
closed to the intellect of Newton, when he dis-
covered the answer to the problem of the planetary
orbits in that mystical algebraic expression, em-
bracing the whole of the exquisite curves called the
Conic sections, curves known of old to the ancient
Greek mathematicians I Copernicus having sur-
mised these planetary orbits to be circular—Kepler
having suggested afterwards that each formed, on
the contrary, not a circle, but an ellipsis—Newton
resolved the inquiry into a problem thus pro-
pounded : To determine the motion of the curve
which a body would describe in its revolution about
a fixed centre to which it was attached by a force
proportionate to the mass of the attracting
body, and decreasing with the distance accord-
ing to the law of gravitation. That the pro-
blem : and this (as we have remarked) the
answer the algebraic expression, embracing
all the conic sections collectively! Every
planet revolving in an ellipsis—every satellite in a
circle—every comet either in a parabola or a hyper-
bola. The " circle " being produced from the
section of the cone (as every tyro knows familiarly)
by the cut horizontal : the "ellipsis" by the cut
oblique : the " parabola" by the cut parallel-to-
the-slope : and the " hyperbola" by the cut
parallel-to-the-axis. The equilateral triangle
formed by the division of a sufficiently trun-
cated cone vertically down the centre—remain-
ing, after all is said, the loveliest symbol of the crea-
tive GOD ever presented to the imagination of
man! The loveliest type of the adorable Trinity, at
least excepting one—that afforded by the equal
blending together of the three primitive colours of
the Prism—Blue, Red, Yellow—for the formation
of Pure White Light ! Fancies such as these are net
of course the fancies put forth by Francois Arago:
but they are fancies which naturally grow out of
the study of a work such as this matchless treatise
of Arago's upon the glory, and the mystery, and
the grandeur, and the loveliness of the divine and
ineffable science of Astronomy. Lingering over
these pages of heavenly lore as penned by the
hand of the great French astronomer, the reader
finds his imagination sensibly expanding and be-
coming more and more fructuous under the in-
fluence of the stores of elevated and elevating
knowledge poured into his intellect from
the cornucopeian genius of the author—
dreams of wonder and majesty rising succes-
sively from the examination of the selected facts
herein recorded so bewitchingly, in reference to
Mechanics, to Horology, to Optics, as affecting the
awful mechanism of the Heavens 1 And so, from
step to step, in most alluring gradation, the student
advances to the consideration in due sequence, of
the isolated stars, and the multiple stars, and the
nebulae, and the constellations, and the milky
way, and the zodiacal light, until he sets
foot with Arago, in imagination, at the
centre of the solar system, upon the gigantic
orb of the sun, and thence, orbit by orbit, proceeds
to each of the wonderful planets in succession.
Planets so various in size that (if we may here so
speak familiarly in explanation) two of them
" Mars" and "Mercury," might be symbolised as
currants, while " Venus" and the "Earth" are
typified as cherries, and " Uranus" as a plum,
and " Neptune" as an orange, and " Saturn" as a
melon, and "Jupiter" as a pumpkin ! Viewing
their dimensions, that is, comparatively. Dimen-
sions, nevertheless, so trivial, as contrasted with
that of the glorious star round which they are re-
volving, that all these planets massed together
would be to the sun but as a sphere might be
when dwarfed in aspect by the side of one
more than 500 times larger the diameter of
the solar orb being, in fact, upwards of 887,0G0
miles in the aggregate 1 Over themes such
as these, discoursed of as they are here discoursed
of by Francois Arago, we linger in awe, and
wonder, and admiration, and bewilderment —.
confronted as we close the work penned thus re-
verently by the hand of the meek-eyed philosopher,
confronted by an adoring sense of the unutterable
wisdom, from which all these miracles of the uni-
verse have emanated as an effluence, the glory of
the Godhead, " bright effluence of bright essence
increate," the visible attestation of the Omnipotent,
Omniscient, Omnipresent 1

TESTIMONIAL OF RESPECT.—The members of the War-
wick-lire Agricultural Society have determined to set
apart 100 guineas out of their funds for the purpose of
giving a testimonial to Mr. J. Moore, for his services to
the cause of agriculture in that county.
EXTENSIVE ROBBERY OF JEWELLERY, &0., BELONGING
TO LADY OLIVIA SPARROW.—Yesterday morning infor-
mation of an extensive robbery of jewellery, Jac., with a
description of the articles stolen, was forwarded to the
various city and metropolitan police-stations. The rob.
bery was effected at Claridge's Hotel, Brook-street, St.
Jamess, where Lady Olivia R. Sparrow had for some
time past been a visitor. She possessed a large quantity
of valuable property, and, amongst other articles a rose-
wood dressing-case, filled • with a choice collection of
costly jewellery, articles worked in hair, gold, and silver,
and an enamel portrait of a gentleman—the latter being
of considerable value, and greatly prized by her lady.
ship. The box was suddenly missed ; and a strict search
for it proving unsuccessful, the proprietors of the hotel
obtained the assistance of the police, who are at the pre-
sent time exerting themselves to trace the property and
discover the perpetrators of the robbery.