The inequalities of the moon's motions are divided into periodical and secular. _Periodical_ inequalities are those which are completed in comparatively short periods. _Secular_ inequalities are those which are completed only in very long periods, such as centuries or ages. Hence the corresponding terms _periodical equations_ and _secular equations_. As an example of a secular inequality, we may mention the acceleration of the _moon's mean motion_. It is discovered that the moon actually revolves around the earth in a less period now than she did in ancient times. The difference, however, is exceedingly small, being only about ten seconds in a century. In a lunar eclipse, the moon's longitude differs from that of the sun, at the middle of the eclipse, by exactly one hundred and eighty degrees; and since the sun's longitude at any given time of the year is known, if we can learn the day and hour when an eclipse occurred at any period of the world, we of course know the longitude of the sun and moon at that period. Now, in the year 721, before the Christian era, Ptolemy records a lunar eclipse to have happened, and to have been observed by the Chaldeans. The moon's longitude, therefore, for that time, is known; and as we know the mean motions of the moon, at present, starting from that epoch, and computing, as may easily be done, the place which the moon ought to occupy at present, at any given time, she is found to be actually nearly a degree and a half in advance of that place. Moreover, the same conclusion is derived from a comparison of the Chaldean observations with those made by an Arabian astronomer of the tenth century. This phenomenon at first led astronomers to apprehend that the moon encountered a resisting medium, which, by destroying at every revolution a small portion of her projectile force, would have the effect to bring her nearer and nearer to the earth, and thus to augment her velocity. But, in 1786, La Place demonstrated that this acceleration is one of the legitimate effects of the sun's disturbing force, and is so connected with changes in the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, that the moon will continue to be accelerated while that eccentricity diminishes; but when the eccentricity has reached its minimum, or lowest point, (as it will do, after many ages,) and begins to increase, then the moon's motions will begin to be retarded, and thus her mean motions will oscillate for ever about a mean value. LETTER XVIII. ECLIPSES. ----"As when the sun, new risen, Looks through the horizontal misty air, Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs: darkened so, yet shone, Above them all, the Archangel."--_Milton._