ON ASTRONOMY, ADDRESSED TO A LADY: IN WHICH THE ELEMENTS OF THE SCIENCE ARE FAMILIARLY EXPLAINED IN CONNECTION WITH ITS LITERARY HISTORY. WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS. BY DENISON OLMSTED, LL.D., NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET. 49 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1840, by MARSH, CAPEN, LYON, AND WEBB, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. PREFA CE. Ir has appeared to the author of this work that the form of "Letters" has peculiar advantages in a popular work on Astronomy, designed, like the present, both as a reading-book for the library, and as a class-book for advanced students in High-schools and Academies. The epistolary style affords ample scope for that familiar illustration so especially needful in teaching this science, and permits the introduction of interesting historical and bioI graphical sketches, which serve to enliven the subject, and to enrich the mind of the learner with a variety of pleasing and valuable information. Several editions of this work have already appeared, and various readers, both learned and unlearned, have signified their approbation of it as a reading-book in astronomy. Clergymen, and other educated readers, have commended it as a work containing such a view of the results of modern astronomy, as served well their purpose of reviewing doctrines once scientifically learned, but now somewhat faded from their memories, and of acquiring a knowledge of those great and interesting astronomical discoveries which have recently been unfolded by the profound astronomers of our age. Several eminent instructors of high-schools and academies have also borne gratifying testimony to the value of this work as a class-book, finding it well adapted to interest their pupils, and to inspire a taste for the study of the heavenly bodies. Teachers of female seminaries, especially, have strongly commended it, as awakening a high degree of interest in the science in their more advanced pupils, and as supplying, 8407 687 in a good degree, the place of a course of public lectures on astronomy. Although to discover the great truths of astronomy has required the highest efforts of the human mind, continued for many ages, yet the truths themselves, when once discovered, are easy to be understood, being, in general, characterized by a high degree of simplicity; and the present work, it is hoped, will evince that it is possible to present the most profound truths of astronomy in such a form, that they may be fully comprehended by every intelligent reader of either sex. The leading truths of our science seem to the author to resemble those of Divine Revelation—so simple as to be intelligible to the ordinary capacity, but so comprehensive as to fill the largest intellect. The importance of divesting, as far as possible, this and every other physical science, of all that is technical, and of bringing its most useful results within the reach of all classes of society, is well expressed in the following extract from the Edinburgh Review for April, 1835: "If the present age is distinguished by more clear and just views of social and political science, it is not less marked by the disposition, so unequivocally and universally manifested, to reject the inordinate estimate heretofore set upon merely ornamental literature; and while it does not refuse their just rank and influence to such studies, it admits to that high consideration to which they are entitled, the sciences which explain the beautiful phenomena of the physical world. "The public now demand of those professionally devoted to the sciences, that they shall not confine the knowledge they have such favored opportunities of acquiring, to the lecture-room, but shall render it, as far as practicable, available to the well-informed of all professions, and to the more intelligent, at least, of the other sex." Yale College, September, 1846. |