It will be evident to such as duly reflect on this subject, that those expectations which occupied the mind of Mr. Rittenhouse, so long since as the year 1775—concerning the “amazing discoveries” which should, at some future period, be made among the fixed stars, were not mere conjectures or vague hypotheses; but, that they were rational anticipations of realities, founded on the most acute observation and laborious research, as well as the profoundest philosophical judgment. As Newton is said to have revealed those truths in physics, which his predecessor, Bacon, had preconceived; so, that great practical astronomer, Herschel, and some other eminent observers of our day,[230] have been enabled, by means of the very important improvements recently made in astronomical instruments,[231] to verify a grand hypothesis in his favourite science, which had long before been conceived by the towering genius of Rittenhouse. ----- Footnote 230: Among those who have observed, since Dr. Herschel’s discovery of the Georgium Sidus, new phænomena in the heavens, may be ranked the following: M. Piazzi, a Sicilian astronomer, who, on the 1st of January, 1801, discovered a small planet revolving round the sun, between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, named Ceres: Dr. Olbers, of Bremen, who, on the 28th of March in the following year, discovered another small planet, to which he gave the name of Pallas, which revolves round the sun nearly at the same distance, and in the same time, as Ceres; and afterwards, viz. on the 29th of March, another planet, which he called Vesta; similar to the others, both in its position and magnitude: and Mr. Harding, of Lilienthal, who, between these two last mentioned periods, viz. on the 1st of September, 1804, discovered a fourth planet (but the third in the order of time,) also small, to which he gave the name of Juno; resembling Pallas in a great excentricity of its orbit, and the inclination of this to the ecliptic, and placed at nearly the same distance from the sun. The Georgium Sidus was not discovered until about fifteen years before Dr. Rittenhouse’s death; and the first discovered of the four last mentioned planets was not known in America, for almost five years after that event. Footnote 231: