Nicholas Copernic (usually latinized, by adding the terminating syllable, us,) that celebrated astronomer, “whose vast genius, assisted by such lights as the remains of antiquity afforded him, explained the true system of the universe, as at present understood,”[19a] was born at Thorn in Royal Prussia, the 19th of January, 1442. He was alike distinguished for his piety and innocence, as for his extraordinary genius and discoveries. He died in the seventy-seventh year of his age. Footnote 19a: _Ritt. Orat._ Footnote 20: This great man was a native of Knudsturp, a province of Scania in Denmark, and born the 18th of December, 1546, of an illustrious family. He was the first, who, by the accuracy and number of his observations, made the way for the revival of astronomy among the moderns; although, “in theory,” as Rittenhouse has expressed it, “he mangled the beautiful system of Copernicus.”[20a]—Brahé (for this is the family-name) died at the age of fifty-five years. Footnote 20a: Ibid. Footnote 21: John Kepler, a native of Wiel in the duchy of Wirtemberg, in Germany, became as celebrated for the consequences he drew from the observations of Tycho, as the latter was for the vast mass of astronomical materials he had prepared. This eminent, though somewhat “whimsical”[21a] astronomer, was born the 27th of December, 1571, and died at the age of fifty-nine years. Footnote 21a: _Ritt. Orat._ Footnote 22: “Before his (Bacon’s) time, philosophy was fettered by forms and syllogisms. The logics of Aristotle held the human mind in bondage for nearly two thousand years; a miserable jugglery, which was fitted to render all truth problematical, and which disseminated a thousand errors, but never brought to light one useful piece of knowledge.”—Ld. Woolhousie’s _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Ld. Kames_. -----