It may be doubted whether many of the patrons of Mudie's are acquainted with the works of a philosopher, who, in his day, enjoyed no little fame--I mean, Robert Boyle (1627-1691),--and yet there are passages in them well worth attentive perusal, from the lucidity of their style and the soundness of their reflections. He has, for instance, some observations in his "Considerations on the Usefulness of Experimental Philosophy," which are germane to the general purport and tone of our little book. He remarks, that the contemplation of the vastness, beauty, and regular motions of the heavenly bodies, the excellent structure of animals and plants, besides a multitude of other phenomena of nature, and the subserviency of most of these to man, ought, certainly, to induce him, as a rational creature, to conclude that this vast, beautiful, orderly, and, in a word, many ways admirable, system of things, that we call the world, was framed by an Author supremely powerful, wise, and good. The works of God, he adds, are so worthy of their Author, that, besides the impresses of His wisdom and goodness that are left, as it were, upon their surfaces, there are a great many more curious and excellent tokens and effects of Divine artifice in the hidden and innermost recesses of them; and these are not to be discovered by the perfunctory looks of oscitant and unskilful beholders; but require, as well as deserve, the most attentive and prying inspection of inquisitive and well-instructed considerers. It is not by a slight survey, but by a diligent and skilful scrutiny of the works of God, that a man must be, by a rational and affective conviction, engaged to acknowledge, with the prophet, that the Author of nature is "wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working." That He is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working must be the conclusion of every devout student of the celestial phenomena; and to those we shall, therefore, devote the first portion of our Spring meditations. * * * * * What reception would formerly have been given to any poet who had dared to exclaim-- "The bright face of the heavens contemplate, And then, as in a mirror, you shall see, Outlined, the figure of the rounded earth"? Would he not have been met with the reproach which Horace, in his _Ars Poetica_, so epigrammatically formulates?-- "Pictoribus atque poetis Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas." An equal licence ever was accorded To poet as to painter, that he might The boldest sweeps of fancy still essay! As for men of science, they would not have condescended to honour even with a smile such strange and fantastic words. Let us suppose, now, that our poetical astronomer, thus contemned, had addressed his scientific censors in some such language as the following:--