[The system laid down by Mr. Frost, though intended to be substantially that of Lodowick Muggleton, is not so vagarious. It is worthy of note how very different have been the fates of two contemporary paradoxers, Muggleton and George Fox.[813] They were friends and associates,[814] and commenced their careers about the same time, 1647-1650. The followers of Fox have made their sect an institution, and deserve to be called the pioneers of philanthropy. But though there must still be Muggletonians, since expensive books are published by men who take the name, no sect of that name is known to the world. Nevertheless, Fox and Muggleton are men of one type, developed by the same circumstances: it is for those who investigate such men to point out why their teachings have had fates so different. Macaulay says it was because Fox found followers of more sense than himself. True enough: but why did Fox find such followers and not Muggleton? The two were equally crazy, to all appearance: and the difference required must be sought in the doctrines themselves. Fox was not a _rational_ man: but the success of his sect and doctrines entitles him to a letter of alteration of the phrase which I am surprised has not become current. When Conduitt,[815] the husband of Newton's half-niece, wrote a circular to Newton's friends, just after his death, inviting them to bear their parts in a proper biography, he said, "As Sir I. Newton was a _national_ man, I think every one ought to contribute to a work intended to do him justice." Here is the very phrase which is often wanted to signify that {398} celebrity which puts its mark, good or bad, on the national history, in a manner which cannot be asserted of many notorious or famous historical characters. Thus George Fox and Newton are both _national_ men. Dr. Roget's[816] _Thesaurus_ gives more than fifty synonyms--_colleagues_ would be the better word--of "_celebrated_," any one of which might be applied, either in prose or poetry, to Newton or to his works, no one of which comes near to the meaning which Conduitt's adjective immediately suggests. The truth is, that we are too _monarchical_ to be _national_. We have the Queen's army, the Queen's navy, the Queen's highway, the Queen's English, etc.; nothing is national except the _debt_. That this remark is not new is an addition to its force; it has hardly been repeated since it was first made. It is some excuse that _nation_ is not vernacular English: the _country_ is our word, and _country man_ is appropriated.] Astronomical Aphorisms, or Theory of Nature; founded on the immutable basis of Meteoric Action. By P. Murphy,[817] Esq. London, 1847, 12mo. This is by the framer of the Weather Almanac, who appeals to that work as corroborative of his theory of planetary temperature, years after all the world knew by experience that this meteorological theory was just as good as the others. {399}