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born in the same minute, one became a king, the other nothing more than churchwarden of his parish;" for a defence would easily have been made, by showing that the peasant made his fortune in becoming churchwarden, just as much as the prince did in becoming king.

And if it were alleged that a bandit, hung up by order of Sixtus the Fifth, was born at the same time with Sixtus, who, from being a swineherd, became Pope; the astrologers would say that there was a mistake of a few seconds, and that, according to the rules, the same star could not bestow the tiara and the gallows. It was, then, only because long-accumulated experience gave the lie to the predictions, that men at length perceived that the art was illusory; but their credulity was of very long duration.

One of the most famous mathematicians of Europe, named Stofler, who flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, foretold a universal deluge for the year 1524. This deluge was to happen in the month of February; and nothing can be more plausible; for Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, were then in conjunction in the sign of the Fishes. Every people in Europe, Asia, and Africa, that heard of the prediction, were in consternation. The whole world expected the deluge, in spite of the rainbow. Several cotemporary authors relate, that the inhabitants of the maritime provinces of Germany hastened to sell their lands, at any price, to such as had more money and less credulity than themselves. Each one provided himself with a boat, to serve as an ark. A doctor of Toulouse, in particu lar, named Auriol, had an ark built for himself, his family, and friends; and the same precautions were taken in a great part of Italy. At last, the month of February arrived, and not a drop of rain fell: never was a month more dry; never were the astrologers more embarrassed. However, we neither discouraged nor neglected them; almost all our princes continued to consult them.

I have not the honour to be a prince; nevertheless,

the celebrated Count de Boulainvilliers, and an Italian named Colonna, who had great reputation at Paris, both foretold to me that I should infallibly die at the age of thirty-two. I have already been so malicious as to deceive them thirty years* in their calculation,— for which I most humbly ask their pardon.

ASTRONOMY,

WITH A FEW MORE REFLECTIONS ON ASTROLOGY. M. DUVAL, who, if I mistake not, was librarian to the Emperor Francis I. gives us an account of the manner in which, in his childhood, pure instinct gave him the first ideas of astronomy. He was contemplating the moon, which, as it declined towards the west, seemed to touch the trees of a wood. He doubted not that he should find it behind the trees; and, on running thither, was astonished to see it at the extremity of the horizon.

The following days his curiosity prompted him to watch the course of this luminary; and he was still more surprised to find that it rose and set at various hours.

The different forms which it took from week to week, and its total disappearance for some nights, also contributed to fix his attention. All that a child could do was, to observe and to admire: and this was doing. much; not one in ten thousand has this curiosity and perseverance.

He studied, as he could, for three years, with no other book than the heavens, no other master than his eyes. He observed that the stars did not change their relative position; but the brilliancy of the planet Venus having caught his attention, it seemed to him to have a particular course, like that of the moon. watched it every night; it disappeared for a long time; and at length he saw it become the morning instead of the evening star.

He

The course of the sun, which from month to month

* This article was printed, for the first time, in the edition of 1757.

rose and set in different parts of the heavens, did not escape him. He marked the solstices with two staves, without knowing what the solstices were.

*

It appears to me that some profit might be derived from this example, in teaching astronomy to a child of ten or twelve years old, and with much greater facility than this extraordinary child, of whom I have spoken, taught himself its first elements.

It is a very attractive spectacle for a mind disposed to the contemplation of nature, to see that the different phases of the moon are precisely the same as those of a globe round which a lighted candle is moved, showing here a quarter, here the half of its surface, and becoming invisible when an opaque body is interposed between it and the candle. In this manner it was that Galileo explained the true principles of astronomy before the Doge and Senators of Venice on St. Mark's tower; he demonstrated every thing to the eyes.

Indeed, not only a child, but even a man of mature age, who has seen the constellations only on maps or globes, finds it difficult to recognise them in the heavens. In a little time, the child will very well comprehend the causes of the sun's apparent course, and the daily revolutions of the fixed stars.

He will, in particular, discover the constellations, with the aid of these four Latin lines, made by an astronomer about fifty years ago, and which are not sufficiently known:

Delta Aries, Perseum Taurus, Geminique Capellam;

Nil Cancer, Plaustrum Leo, Virgo Comam atque Bootem, Libra Anguem, Anguiferum fert Scorpios: Antinoum Arcus; Delphinum Caper, Amphora Equos, Cepheïda Pisces.

Nothing should be said to him about the systems of Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe, because they are false; they can never be of any other service than to explain some passages in ancient authors, relating to the errors

It may perhaps be of service here to remark, that this child who became a man of letters, of great information, and acute and original intellect, never rose above mediocrity in astronomical science.

of antiquity. For instance, in the second book of Ovid's Metamorphoses, the Sun says to Phaeton,-.

Adde, quòd assiduâ rapitur vertigine cœlum;
Nitor in adversum: nec me, qui cætera, vincit
Impetus: et rapido contrarius evehor orbi.

A rapid motion carries round the heavens;
But I-and I alone-resist its force,

Marching secure in my opposing path.

This idea of a first mover turning the heavens round in twenty-four hours with an impossible motion, and of the sun, though acted upon by this first motion, yet imperceptibly advancing from west to east by a motion peculiar to itself, and without a cause, would but embarrass a young beginner.

It is sufficient for him to know that, whether the earth revolves on its own axis and round the sun, or the sun completes his revolution in a year, appearances are nearly the same; and that, in astronomy, we are obliged to judge of things by our eyes, before we examine them as natural philosophers.

He will soon know the cause of the eclipses of the sun and moon, and why they do not occur every night. It will at first appear to him that the moon, being every month in opposition to and in conjunction with the sun, we should have an eclipse of the sun and one of the moon every month. But when he finds that these two luminaries are not in the same plane, and are seldom in the same line with the earth, he will no longer be surprised.

He will easily be made to understand how it is that, eclipses have been foretold, by knowing the exact circle in which the apparent motion of the sun and the real motion of the moon are accomplished. He will be told that observers found by experience and calculation the number of times that these two bodies are precisely in the same line with the earth in the space of nineteen years and a few hours, after which they seem to recommence the same course; so that, making the necessary allowances for the little inequalities that occurred during those nineteen years, the exact day, hour, and minute, of an eclipse of the sun or moon

were foretold. These first elements are soon acquired by a child of clear conceptions.

Not even the precession of the equinoxes will terrify him. It will be enough to tell him, that the sun has constantly appeared to advance in his annual course, one degree in seventy-two years, towards the east; and this is what Ovid meant to express in the lines just now quoted—

Contrarius evehor orbi.

Marching secure in my opposing path.

Thus the Ram, which the sun formerly entered at the beginning of spring, is now in the place where the Bull was then. This change which has taken place in the heavens, and the entrance of the sun into other constellations than those which he formerly occupied, were the strongest arguments against the pretended rules of judicial astrology. It does not, however, appear, that this proof was employed before the present century to destroy this universal extravagance, which so long infected all mankind, and is still in great Vogue in Persia.

A man born, according to the almanack, when the sun was in the sign of the Lion, was necessarily to be courageous but, unfortunately, he was in reality born under the sign of the Virgin. So that Gauric and Michael Morin should have changed all the rules of their art.

It is very odd, that all the laws of astrology were contrary to those of astronomy. The wretched charlatans of antiquity and their stupid disciples, who have been so well received and so well payed by all the princes of Europe, talked of nothing but Mars and Venus, stationary and retrograde. Such as had Mars stationary, were always to conquer. Venus stationary, made all lovers happy. Nothing was worse than to be born under Venus retrograde. But the fact is, that these planets have never been either retrograde or stationary, which a very slight knowledge of optics would have sufficed to show.

How then can it have been, that in spite of physics and geometry, the ridiculous chimera of astrology is

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