mined to give religious equality a fair trial; or, in short, to initiate it upon a new field, where alone its success in those days could be possible. He might have excluded dissenters with the full approbation of the king who gave the charter; and as to members of the Church of England, if he could not have passed acts against them, he could have kept them (as urged in a letter published on this subject, by Mr. W. M. Addison, of Baltimore,) out of his colony, by refusing to sell them land, every inch of which was vested in the proprietary.' The unquestionable facts of history show that he cordially invited all Christians oppressed for conscience' sake, to come to Maryland as a home, where they should enjoy all the rights and privileges, civil and religious, that his charter and laws enabled him to offer to those of his own faith, and his immediate friends and followers. He invited these strangers into his political household, and never, in any instance, did he violate his pledges or promises. Neither party spirit, nor odium theologicum, can change established facts. A writer who is enlisted in the ranks of Lord Baltimore's detractors, says in a late number of the London Athenæum, with the most empty self-complacency, that 'the good people of Baltimore pique themselves on being planted by a lord, while the neighboring States were planted by commoners like Walter Raleigh or William Penn.' To take down the inflation of the Baltimoreans, this writer informs them that Baltimore's title was derived from a mere honorary Irish barony, which gave him no place in the British House of Lords. Upon this an eminent jurist 22 of this city justly observes: We presume that no man or woman in Maryland ever thought for an instant of any dif ference between Lord Baltimore and plain George Calvert. . . . Whether Calvert was lord or commoner, or commoner made lord, is to us a matter of profound indifference. We are proud of his name, and of him, only because we are proud of the immortal principles on which his colony was founded, and which place the landing of the pilgrims from the Dove and the Ark, among the grandest incidents of human history. We are proud of his great charter, as one of the noblest of the works that 22 S. T. Wallis. human hands have ever reared,—the most glorious proclamation ever made of the liberty of thought and worship. Had he been an Irish peasant instead of an Irish baron, we should reverence him perhaps the more, and certainly feel none the less honor of descending from the good, brave men, who made the precepts he bequeathed them a practical and living truth.' In the last decade of years, Maryland has had, as in the beginning, a peculiar history, which has not yet, however, been subjected to the methodical treatment of the historian. As it is equally curious and interesting, we hope to see it fairly and fully presented, at an early day, by some one competent, both by sentiment and ability, to do justice to the subject. ART. VII.-1. History of the Inductive Sciences, from the Earliest to the Present Time. By William Whewell, D. D., Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In three volumes, octavo. London: J. W. Parker. 1847. 2. Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne. By Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre. In two volumes, quarto. Paris. 1817. 3. Histoire de l'Astronomie au Moyen Age. By J. B. J. Delambre. In one volume, quarto. Paris. 1819. 4. Histoire de l'Astronomie Moderne. By J. B. J. Delambre. In two volumes, quarto. Paris. 1821. 5. Histoire de l'Astronomie au dix-huitième Siecle. By J. B. J. Delambre. In one volume, quarto. Paris. 1827. 6. Histoire de l'Astronomie Ancienne, depuis son origin jusqu'à l'estaballissment de l'ecole d'Alexandrie. By Jean Sylv. Bailly. In one volume, quarto. Paris. 1781. 7. Histoire de l'Astronomie Moderne, depuis l'ecole d'Alexandrie jusqu'a l'epoque 1782. Bailly. In three volumes, quarto. Paris. la foundation de By Jean-Sylv. 1785. 8. An Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. By Sir George Cornwall Lewis. London. 1862. 9. The Recent Progress of Astronomy; especially in the United States. By Elias Loomis, LL. D. New York. 1856. We have read, with an absorbing interest, the fascinating little work of Professor Loomis, on The Recent Progress of Astronomy. We shall not, however, in the present article at least, reach the period to which it relates. The volume of Sir G. C. Lewis is remarkable, first, as the work of her Majesty's late Secretary of War, and, secondly, as displaying the diligent research and care observable in all the productions of his pen. It adds nothing new, however, to the great histories of Bailly and Delambre. Indeed, in the History of the Inductive Sciences by the erudite Dr. Whewell, there is little, if anything, pertaining to the rise and progress of Astronomy, which may not be found in the great works just mentioned. We owe him, nevertheless, a debt of gratitude for the delightful manner in which he has served up the History of Astronomy for the general reader. If any one would, however, master the history of Astronomy in its details, as well as in its magnificent results, he must give his nights and days to the quartos of Bailly and Delambre. It is no part of our design, however, to make the above works, or any of them, the subject of the present article. In placing their titles at the head of this paper, we merely wish to notify our readers of the sources from which we have, for the most part, derived our information respecting the Progress of Astronomy, and from which a vast deal more of information may be easily gathered. It is our purpose, at present, merely to glance at a few of the great epochs, or eras of light, in the History of Astronomy. Nothing would seem, at first view, more remote from human apprehension than Astronomy, or the science of the stars. One would suppose that if the great Geometer of the universe had arranged the stars, they would have been disposed in hexagons, or octagons, or in some other regular and beautiful figures. But instead of this, they lie scattered over the heavens as if, by chance, they had been shaken from the fingers of the Almighty.' Hence it was, perhaps, that Socrates concluded that the gods had purposely concealed from human view, the wonderful art wherewith they had constructed the heavens, and would, therefore, be displeased should mortals presume to pry into the mystery of the material universe. But notwithstanding the apparent impossibility of such knowledge, and the pious admonition of Socrates, it is precisely the mechanism of the heavens into which the mind of man has presumed to pry with the most inextinguishable curiosity; and it is precisely in this magnificent field of investigation, that its most splendid triumphs have been achieved. Nor should we so much wonder at this, when we consider the visible glory of the heavens. There is, indeed, a mysterious charm in this majestic fabric of the world around us and above us, which, in all ages and in all climes, has attracted the gaze, and fired the imagination, of every devout admirer of nature's glorious forms. Even those who, like Lucretius, believed that sun, moon, and stars, are no larger than they seem to be, were still smitten with the indescribable magnificence and beauty of the scene which the nocturnal heavens present. Regarded merely as appendages and ornaments of the earth, there is still a fascination in the shining orbs above us, which enchains the reason, and exalts the fancy, wherever these are found alive to the beautiful and the sublime. The ancient poet might well have exclaimed with the modern : Beautiful! How beautiful is all this visible world! High though his feelings may have risen, the ancient poet could have contemplated only the outside or surface glory of the world. His views with respect to the appalling magnitude, and the deep internal beauty, of the material universe, were necessarily low and defective. One of the Roman poets, for example, represents their army, while in Portugal, as having heard the sun hiss as he went down in the bosom of the ocean. 'Audiit hurculeo tridentem gurgite solem.' There were travellers, too, in those ancient times, who talked of a vast cavity in the East, whence the sun is heard to issue every morning with an insufferable noise. Puerile as such notions now seem to us, they were naturally entertained before the human mind had been enlightened by the science of astronomy, or its conceptions enlarged by even one glimpse of the inconceivable grandeur of the creation. If, in the time of Lucan, the Roman poet just referred to, the science of astronomy existed in the germ merely, it now appears in the expanded blossom. Or if it was then the smallest of all seeds, it has now become the greatest of all trees, which has struck its roots to the centre of the earth, and spread its branches abroad in the heavens. Or again, if we may change the figure, the science of astronomy, having become the most perfect of all the systems of physical truth, now forms, by far, the proudest monument of human genius the world has ever seen, or is ever likely to see. By the concurrent labors of a long succession of illustrious men, extending through different ages and nations, this sublime monument has gradually risen from its broad basis, until its lofty pinnacle is now seen glittering among the stars. A brief sketch an exceedingly brief sketch of the principal stages in the progress of this stupendous work, and of the gigantic intellects by which it has been reared, is all that can be anticipated in the course of the ensuing reflections. Not to fatigue the reader's attention with the comparatively dry details of the Chaldean, the Egyptian, the Chinese, and the Indian astronomies, we shall proceed at once to that of the ancient Greeks, from whom the science has descended to modern times. The astronomy of Greece begins with Thales, and the philosophers of the Ionian school, which was founded by him six hundred years before the Christian era. Thales is the first who is known to have propagated a scientific knowledge of astronomy among the Greeks. He taught them the movements of the sun and moon; he explained the inequality of the days and nights; and he showed the Greek sailor, who had only observed the great bear, that the pole-star is a far surer guide over the wide waste of waters. But that which rendered him more celebrated than any thing else, was the prediction of a solar eclipse. For easy as it is to calculate an eclipse at the present |