From Phœnicia and Egypt the celestial science of astronomy was brought into Greece, with which people the Phœnicians were intimate; for they, by trade, having occasion to converse with the Greeks, and also from uniting in one national resemblance, the three opposite characteristics of soldiers, sailors, and men of science, the communications between the two people were very frequent. At every period, from the first establishment of the Grecian states, that highly eminent and intellectual people collected from all others every particular they could obtain in all matters having relation to sciences and arts; those they cultivated with a success worthy of the motive which first induced them to make these collections.--Loving Knowledge for herself, they succeeded beyond all others in obtaining her favours. The first Greek who appears on record to have cultivated the celestial science with success, was Thales, born at Miletus, in Asia Minor, six hundred and forty one years before Christ; he explained the causes of eclipses, and predicted one. He also taught that the earth was round, and divided into five zones; he discovered the solstices and equinoxes, and likewise divided the year into three hundred and sixty-five days. He had travelled into Egypt in search of knowledge, where he ascertained the height of one of the pyramids, from its shade. He looked upon water as the principle of all things. From him the sect called the Ionic had their origin. Anaximander, his pupil, followed him, and supported the opinions of his great master; he was born before Christ six hundred and ten years; he invented maps and dials, and is said to have constructed a sphere. His ideas of the planets were, however, erroneous. Anaximenes was a scholar of Anaximander, and born five hundred and fifty-four years before Christ. He taught that air was the origin of all things, and many erroneous notions; among others, that the earth was a plane, and the heavens a solid concave sphere, with the stars affixed to it like nails. Anaxagoras of Clazomene, the pupil of, and successor to, Anaximenes, born before Christ five hundred and sixty years. The doctrines he supported are a strange association of important truths, mixed with the most gross absurdities. He taught that the world was made by a being of infinite power; that mind was the origin of motion; that the upper regions, which he called ether, were filled with fire, that the rapid revolution of this ether had raised large masses of stone from the earth, which, being inflamed, formed the stars, which were kept in their places, and prevented from falling by the velocity of their motion.