lence, his system and his name would soon have sunk together, leaving no trace behind them, save the ridicule and disgust which should ever continue to hang round their memory. His system of moral philosophy was alone calculated to raise him to the loftiest position in the estimation of the people of his day, and to hand down his name to the admiration of future ages; but, independently of his merit in this respect, his knowledge as an astronomer and a mathematician has secured his reputation thoughout all succeeding ages of the world. He, as the learned know, was the first promulgator of the system of the universe as it is now established and received. When he first published his theory of the heavenly system, making the sun the centre of motion, and placing the planets in their elliptical orbits revolving around him, he was denounced as an egregious visionary, and his whole plan was treated as a ridiculous chimera. It was not until some two thousand years afterwards (A. D. 1543) that Copernicus, a native of Poland, attempted its revival; and from him it was called the Copernican system. For Sir Isaac Newton, however, it remained to procure its universal reception. In the year 1686 he made his calculations, and proved to the satisfaction of the learned that the system which, as we have seen, had been first publicly promulgated by Pythagoras, and afterwards revived by Copernicus, was based upon right reason, and was the only one that was reconcilable to the different phenomena of ethereal nature, and the changing appearances of the celestial bodies. But, although Pythagoras was the first who in Europe taught the doctrine of the solar system, it is not to be thence inferred that he was the origin-
