“With thee, serene Philosophy! with thee, And thy bright garland, let me crown my song! Effusive source of evidence, and truth! A lustre shedding o’er th’ ennobled mind, Stronger than summer-noon; and pure as that, Whose mild vibrations soothe the parted soul, New to the dawning of celestial day. Hence through her nourish’d pow’rs, enlarged by thee, She springs aloft, with elevated pride, Above the tangling mass of low desires, That bind the fluttering crowd; and angel-wing’d, The heights of science and of virtue gains, Where all is calm and clear; with nature round, Or in the starry regions, or th’ abyss, To reason’s or to fancy’s eye display’d: The _First_ up-tracing, from the dreary void, The chain of causes and effects to Him, The world producing essence, who alone Possesses being; while the _Last_ receives The whole magnificence of heaven and earth, And every beauty, delicate or bold, Obvious or more remote, with livelier sense, Diffusive painted on the rapid mind.” _Summer_, l. 1729 and seq. ----- Besides the various and important uses of astronomy, here pointed out, it is connected, by means of numerous ramifications, with other departments of science, directed to some of the most useful pursuits of human life. Lalande has even shewn us, in the preface to his _Astronomie_, in what manner this science has a relation to the administration of civil and ecclesiastical affairs, to medicine, and to agriculture. A knowledge of astronomy is obviously connected, by means of chronology, with history. It is even a necessary study, in order to become acquainted with the heathen mythology; and many beautiful passages in the works of the ancient poets can neither be distinctly understood nor properly relished, without a knowledge of the stars: nay, that finely poetical one, in the book of Job, in which the Deity is represented as manifesting to that patient man of affliction and sorrow the extreme imbecility of his nature, is unintelligible without some knowledge of astronomy:— “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?— Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season; or canst thou guide Arcturus, with his sons?” Some of the greatest poets of antiquity were in a manner fascinated, by the grandeur of that science, (though they accompanied it with mystical notions,) which furnishes the sublimest objects in nature to the contemplation of the astronomer. Ovid tells us, he wished to take his flight among the stars: —-—-—“Juvat ire per alta Astra; juvat, terris et inerti sede relictis, Nube vehi, validique humeris insistere Atlantis.”[37] _Metamorph._ lib. xv. -----