After three months of delay, the trial was at last fixed upon for the coming assizes. The case was one involving an amount of interest seldom felt in an individual prosecution, and many of the highest officers of church and state were present. Among these was Brougham, then in the zenith of his power and fame.

As the array of legal talent on the part of the crown was observed, all seemed strangely surprised to see only one individual, and he scarcely past the morning of life, stand forth to plead against men whose heads had grown silvery in their profession. As the trial proceeded, the interest became more and more intense, till popular feeling seemed ready to take the cause into its own hands, and condemn and execute the prisoner unheard. Such is the influence of sophistry upon weak minds. Vinton was held up before them as one who had sought to bring upon them all the disgrace and all the evil that had fallen upon his own head, and in their blind credulity they were ready to cast him out as evil.

When the evidence on the part of the prosecution rested, Hamilton was called to the stand. His testimony was full and fearless; and the standing of Sir Arthur, now a leading member of the cabinet, was too highly appreciated, not to have its due weight with the bench, and to influence materially the charge to the jury.

The pleadings on the part of the prosecution, though evidently highly labored, were delivered in a style less confident than the opening of the cause indicated; they felt themselves defeated. But when Tremain arose, and with his clear, ringing strokes attacked the flimsy fabric they had attempted to rear, even they listened to him as though bound by a spell of enchantment, and more than one murmur of applause was checked by the stern authority of the judge. When he concluded, he claimed for the prisoner the right of being heard in his own defense; and Vinton, pale from long confinement, but majestic as some old statue, stood forth to defend himself from all treasonable designs. He recounted the causes that had led to his public denunciation of flagrant abuses, and discriminated between assumed positions, and those stated as founded in the constitution and laws of England. He concluded by avowing that he had before said, and now boldly repeated, "If oppression and outrage are any part of our

legal institutions, let us, in the strength of a great and magnanimous nation, cast down those laws, and rear a structure upon the foundation of equal justice. And would the decision of this bench, and this jury go to inform the world, that England was too full of rottenness to admit such a presumption for the sake of argument? No, there was not one who would admit that any outrage against humanity had ever been committed without first violating the principles upon which the government was based."

The charge to the jury was brief but clear; and in ten minutes after the jury had retired, they brought in a verdict of acquittal.

The excitement of the throng had now changed its direction; and those who an hour before were ready to take vengeance upon a supposed culprit, were now scarcely restrained from bearing him away in triumph.

The friends of Vinton were not loud in their congratulations, but many a tearful eye looked up and thanked God for his deliverance from the hands of his enemies. That night the "eloquent reformer" was discussed in a circle of which he little dreamed.

"There is plenty of work to be done, my lord," said a high church dignitary to Brougham. "How are these young madcaps to be kept from turning church and state upside down?"

"I see no way but to buy them up," returned his lordship abruptly. "Buy them up!" returned the other in evident incredulity. "Why yes, it is the easiest thing imaginable. Do not think we make any such proposals to them. But this is the way we manage, to silence those that are likely to tell the people too many unwelcome truths about things at home. Thank fortune we have means to interest them in things that will not disturb the home government. What a blessing that we have foreign possessions, upon whose wretched aboriginals we can expend all surplus sympathies! When I meet such a talented madcap as that Vinton, I try to get him off on a mission to Canada to civilize the Indians, or else to India, to enlighten the Hindoos in their worship of Burmah. This has worked admirably so far, but I have found of late that we need another safety valve. The mass of the people demand some great agitation. Their sympathies must be strongly roused, their energies all set to work for others,

or, do ye see, they will be down upon us for their own rights. Do you comprehend me? Such men as Clarkson will do far less mischief agitating West India emancipation, than they would meddling with the corn laws of England," added Brougham, as he twisted his long bony fingers into his snuff-box.

"I comprehend nothing wiser, nothing more consistent."

A few days after, Henry Vinton was surprised to receive from Lord Brougham a letter, complimenting his extraordinary talents, and strongly urging him to espouse the scheme of West India emancipation, and devote to so noble a cause talents that would yet claim for him the homage of every great heart in the nation.

Vinton knew nothing of all these secret schemes, and gratefully accepted the appointment. Here he labored with a zeal that only a sincere heart could know, while, at the same time, he never for a moment lost sight of the wrongs that were still unrebuked at home.

Tremain had been promoted to stations of trust, and thus, for a time, a few bold lips were closed upon topics that the ministry chose not to have discussed before the people.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

Our achievements and our productions, are our intellectual progeny, and he who is engaged in providing that those immortal children of his mind shall inherit fame, is far more nobly occupied than he who is industrious in order that the perishable children of his body should inherit wealth. This reflection will help us to a solution of that question which has been so often and so triumphantly proposed: "What has posterity ever done for us?" This sophism may be replied to thus: Who is it that proposes the question? one of the present generation of that particular moment when it is proposed; but to such it is evident that posterity can exist only in idea. And if it be asked, what the idea of posterity has done for us? we may safely reply, that it has done, and is doing two most important things: it increases the energy of virtue, and diminishes the excesses of vice; it makes the best of us more good, and the worst of us less bad.

GLANCES AT DIFFICULTIES,

OVERCOME IN THE PROGRESS OF ASTRONOMY.

Original.

BY J. A. R. ROGERS.

As clear and as susceptible of proof as the science of Astronomy now is, it has had its earlier days - days of arduous conflict against apparent absurdities, seeming anomalies, and the self-sufficient learning of arrogant sophists. All her discoveries have been victories won by struggle. By no faint effort, has she succeeded in raising her throne above those of her sister sciences, as represented upon the exquisite paintings in the Vatican.

In the earliest periods of history, we find the nocturnal heavens, "that ocean hung on high bespangled with isles of light," a subject of careful study, and that the most vigorous efforts were made to solve the problem pertaining to the phenomena of the heavenly bodies. For centuries, during the primeval ages, did tireless observers in the true spirit of the Baconian philosophy, (though doubtless without a hint from the "Novum Organum ")-patiently toil to mark and record the various positions of the celestial orbs, as they appeared mapped out on the blue vault, in order that they might thereby attain sufficient data, to determine the system of the universe. But after all the vast expenditure of labor in making observations, by no means had the greatest difficulty been removed from the path of the early astronomer,- for, as Humboldt remarks, "the most ancient forms of Physical Astronomy were derived more from the depths of mental contemplation, than from the sensuous consideration of phenomena." The observations made, must be generalized, and from them deduced a system that should account for all the irregularities of the cosmical bodies. Various as were the theories framed at this early age, they all exhibited an amount of thought, and a spirit of philosophical inquiry truly astonishing; and forming a striking contrast to that superstitious imbecility, which, at a much

later period, considered the stars to be the torches of angels coursing their way through ether. Pre-eminent among all these theories was that of Pythagoras, which taught the progressive movement of the non-rotating earth around the "luminous focus of the world." Interwoven with the system of Pythagoras was his mathematical symbolocism, and his philosophy of measure and harmony, and as a result, we have "the music of the spheres," in which may be seen the poetical representation of an important truth. Some conception may be had of the amount of thought expended upon this theory, from the fact that it was the product of the life-long study of one of the ablest minds of antiquity, and one enriched by the acquisition of the treasures of Oriental wisdom, and those mysteries of science locked up within the schools of the Persian magi. But although this theory taught that the "Kosmos," was comparatively of limited extent, and bounded on all sides by the Empyrean, yet it was too grand a conception to receive credence, and was rejected by ancient philosophers. Even Plato and the sagacious Stagyrite looked upon it as a wild

vagary.

The frequently-returning oscillations, between truth and error, manifested in the astronomical theories that arose during two or three centuries that succeeded Pythagoras, serve but to show the struggles of great minds after the true light, and the obstacles to be

overcome.

The theories of Anaxagoras and Democritus, which afterward prevailed, exhibiting no little show of profundity of wisdom, with their paraphernalia of agents and fluids, and endless machinery of cause and effect, seemed but to pave the way for the great system of Ptolemy. This bold hypothesis, which is said to contain the most wonderful mixture of sagacity and error ever conceived by the human mind, was supported by so many and various arguments, that it was almost universally received as the true theory, until the time of Copernicus.

To fully comprehend the extent and nature of the difficulties by which the founder of the present system was encumbered when he commenced his investigations, it must be considered that the Ptolemaic system, which at that time held undisputed sway, accounted for