The Massachusetts spy, and Worcester County advertiser. [volume] ([Worcester, Mass.]) 1825-1831, 1828-12-10
From, the Boston Courier.
ASTRONOMY.

1.-THE last number of the London Quarterly
Review opens WITH a most eloquent and splen-
did survey of the origin and progress of the
science of Astronomy. A considerable portion
of the article is an investigation of the labors
of J. w. Herschel and James South, both fell
lows of the Royal Society, as developed in recent
publications, on the apparent distances and
position of double and triple stars, in the Philo-
sophical Transactions. The review of the OBJ
servations ofthese scientific men is preceded by
History of Astronomy as divided into three
periods-the first including the history of the
science till the time of Copernicus-the second
period embracing the labors of Kepler and
Newton--the third comprehending the labors
of Clairaut, Euler, Lagrange, and Laplace. We
insert the Introductory observations:l
Among those natural sciences which
have called forth the highest powers of the
mind, astronomy claims for herself the most
exalted place. The bodies of which it treats
are of themselves calculated to progresses
us in it's favor. Their vast and inconceiva-
BILE gnitude,-their distance almost inf
nite,-their unaccountable number, and the
rapidity and regularity of their movements,
excite, even in ordinary men, the most in
tense curiosity, and to minds Of higher birth
| hold out the noblest exercise for their pow
ers. But while our judgment thus antici-
pates its pleasures and triumphs, the mag
ination discovers among the starry spheres
a boundless field for its creative energies.
| Drawing its materials from our own globe,
from its variety of life and beauty, and
from the condition and destiny of its spe-
cies,-it perceiyes in every planetary body
a world like our own, teeming with new
forms of life, and new orders of intelligence,
and regards it as the theatre of events
whose origin, whose duration, and final
cause, must for ever be involved in impene-
trable darkness. Advancing beyond our
own system, it recognises in every twink
ling star the central flame of new groups Of
planets, and pursuing its track only in one
out of an infinite number of directions, il
describes system beyond system, flowing
each other in endless succession, sill it re-
turns exhausted in its strength, and bewild-
cred amid the number, the extent, and the
magnifcence of its creations.
But while astronomy thus affords to oul
intellectual nature field commensurate
with its highest efforts, it is fraught with
no less advantage to our moral being. The
other sciences may, indeed, lay claim to q
similar influence, for nowhere is the hand
of skill unseen, or the arrangements OF be-
nevolence unfelt; but the objects which
they present to us are still those of our own
sublunary world. They are often too famil.
lar to excite admiration,- much under
our power to command respect,-too deep.
ly impressed with our own mortality to en-
force the lesson which they are so we'll fitted
to suggest. The plains which we desolate
the institutions which we overturn, and the
living beings which we trample on or des.
troy, arc not likely to be instruments of oul
moral regeneration. Among scenes, indeed
where man is the tyrant, who can expect
him to be the moralst or the philosopher?
How different is it with the bodies which
the astronomer contemplates! For mar
they were not made, and to them his utmost
power cannot reach. The world which he
inhabits forms but the fraction of an unit IN
the vast scale upon which they are mould
ed. 1t disappears even in the range of dis