Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Quacks and quack-medicines. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![[^J UNI The king has snatched the goblet, and has dashed it in the sea,— “ Fetch me that bowl once more,” he cried, “ and thou shalt be to me The first among my belted knights—ay, more ! as wedded wife. This very night, shalt her embrace, who pleads to save thy life! ” It kindles in his inmost soul, it lightens from his eye j He sees her blush, that lovely one ; he hears her wistful sigh ; He marks her cheek fade deadly pale ; she sinks ! The youth is gone ! In death or life, that costly prize must soon be lost or won. But we could not get over the offer of the worthy gentleman ( prove that the earth is at rest. It disturbed our faith. V looked up, and the heavens seemed the same as when David sat of the sun going forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber, an rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. England is still where it was when Julius Caesar' landed on her shores the Tham stiU runs, “ Though deep, yet clear ; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong, without rage; without o’erflowing, full. They hear the thund’riug ocean-surge, they note its backward sweep; And fair young eyes, bedimmed with tears, look out o’er that lorn deep : They come, they come, the lone sea-waves, they swell and they subside. But no sea-wave brings back the youth, to claim his ling’ring bride ! FAITH IN ASTRONOMY. We believe everything that the astronomers agree to tell us. We could not run a mile in a minute, to win a wager of a thou- sand guineas ; but we believe that this huge globe on which we dwell is trundling along at the rate of nineteen miles in a second. Forty miles an hour is to us a startling velocity ; but we believe that light travels at the rate of 192,000 miles in the time occuined by a single snap of our fingers. We have a natural propensity to think that, when a boy throws a ball, it falls again of its own accord ; but we believe that, but for the mysterious power of gravi- tation, it would travel on through space to all eternity. We can, at times, distinguish with difficulty the person of a friend, sepa- rated from us by the narrow interval of a street; but w-e believe that astronomers can sweep at pleasure over our “ Milky Way,” resolve it into combinations of million suns, with ten thousand times ten thousand worlds, and we furthermore believe that, on the very e.xtremity of penetrable space, they can discern a double of our “ Milky Way,” an infinite duplicate of the infinite—space that is to us eternal, met, on its confines, by eternal space. We love repose, and hate to be disturbed ; but we believe that not only the earth, and moon, and planets trundle, but that the solar system is trundling—yea, that the stars which we call fi.\ed are not fixed at all, but that the whole host of heaven is on the move, and that a star which is distant from us four hundred and twelve thousand times the distance of the sun, that is, 412,000 times 95,000,000 of miles, has been ascertained to be flying through illimitable space at the annual rate of ninety.five millions of millions of miles. We have always thought ourselves something more than nobody, and not mueh below the average height of the human race, but we believe—and this is the hardest belief of all —that our size, in proportion to the comparative speck of a globe on which we live, is as if we were an animalcule so small, that between three and four millions might be drawn up, rank and file, in the space of an inch. Therefore, believing as we do, it was with some spurning feeling of contempt that we read the other day an intimation from a gentleman, informing the public that he was prepared to lecture on astronomy, on the principle of the earth being at rest; and offering his-services to mechanics’ institutions and scientific asso- ciations. What! said we, does this feeble body think that he can pull an “ enlightened ” public back two centuries and a half? —a dwarf holding up his finger to wrestle with the giants who have scaled the heavens ! So we set him down as an English edition of a droll Irish fisherman, commemorated by Mr. Lover, in one of his humorous stories. This honest man was some- what bemazed by the information that the world was round, yet were not his reasoning faculties overwhelmed. “ Round, is it ? ” said he ; “ it is hard enough to go down hill by land, but it must be the ‘ dickens ’ to go down hill by water ! ” He came to the conclusion that any man who attempted it must “ go sliddherin away entirely.” Wlien we were an urchin, the Great Bear and the polar st shone brightly over our head, and we have watched with kee interest the apparent motion of the constellation ;—now that v have reached the age of manhood, and at a distance of son hundred miles from the scenes of childhood, there they are stil sparkling brightly over head, though we have already lost tl enthusiasm of youth, and have become cold, dull, sluggish, selfis and stupid, even in middle age. As we mused, scepticism becan stronger; we felt inclined to deny that the earth moved at al and shouted aloud, “ Since the fathers fell asleep, all things coi tinue as they were from the beginning of the creation ! ” Now came there a deep-thinking and honest-minded man st more to stagger our faith. William Godwin, the author “ Caleb Williams,” “ Political Justice,” &c., thus writes, in work called “ Thoughts on Man,” published in 1831 :—“ It ci scarcely be imputed to me as profane, if I venture to put down few sceptical doubts on the science of astronomy. All oranch of knowledge are to be considered as fair subjects of inquiry ; ar he that has never doubted may be said, in the highest and stricte sense of the word, never to have believed It gives us mighty and sublime idea of the nature of man, to think with wh composure and confidence a succession of persons of the greate genius have launched themselves in illimitable space; with wh invincible industry they have proceeded, wasting the midnight oi racking their faculties, and almost wearing their organs to dus in measuring the distance of Sirius and other fixed stars, tl velocity of light, and ‘ the myriads of intelligent beings, form( for endless progression in perfection and felicity,’ that people tl numberless worlds of which they discourse. The illustrioi names of Copernicus, Galileo, Gassendi, Kepler, Halley, ai Newton, impress us with awe ; and if the astronomy they hai opened before us is a romance, it is at least a romance moi seriously and perseveringly handled than any other in the anna of literature. A vulgar and a plain man would unavoidably as the astronomers, ‘ How came you so familiarly acquainted wit the magnitude and qualities of the heavenly bodies, a grea portion of which, by your own account, are millions of millions ( miles removed from us ? ’ But, I believe, it is not the fashio of the present day to start so rude a question. I have just turne over an article on astronomy, consisting of one hundred and thirty three very closely printed quarto pages, and in no corner of th article is any evidence so much as hinted at. Is it not enough Newton and his compeers have said it ! ” Is it simply because “ Newton and his compeers have said it,’ that we believe in the wonders of astronomy? Surely we hav something more to rest upon than that! A voice said, Ste] down stairs—examine your foundations.” We believe—where fore do we believe ? Sneer not at a man who questions esta Wished truths. He may question, because of incapacity to com prehend. He may cavil, because conceit urges him to cavil. II( may doubt, and, in doubting, be driven beyond his depth in th waters of doubt. But wherefore do you believe ? Great is tht truth, and it will prevail, now or hereafter—it can aflTord to smile but not to sneer—wherefore do you believe ? To us a point is ^ point, if it be a point. A straight line is a straight line, if it hi a straight line. A triangle or a circle is a triangle or a circle, i it be a triangle or a circle. We know nothing of mathematics; for, though we crossed the pons asinorum, the asses’ bridge, w( stuck fast on the other side. Wherefore do you believe ? W< believe—but hold, let us call a lawyer to our assistance, one ol](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22474407_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
