ity of
lightning and electricity, deprived Jupiter of his thunder-bolt. The
marvels of superstition were displaced by the wonders of truth. The two
telescopes, the reflector and the achromatic, inventions of the last
century, permitted man to penetrate into the infinite grandeurs of
the universe, to recognize, as far as such a thing is possible, its
illimitable spaces, its measureless times; and a little later the
achromatic microscope placed before his eyes the world of the infinitely
small. The air-balloon carried him above the clouds, the diving-bell
to the bottom of the sea. The thermometer gave him true measures of
the variations of heat; the barometer, of the pressure of the air. The
introduction of the balance imparted exactness to chemistry, it proved
the indestructibility of matter. The discovery of oxygen, hydrogen, and
many other gases, the isolation of aluminum, calcium, and other metals,
showed that earth and air and water are not elements. With an enterprise
that can never be too much commended, advantage was taken of the
transits of Venus, and, by sending expeditions to different regions,
the distance of the earth from the sun was determined. The step that
European intellect had made between 1456 and 1759 was illustrated by
Halley's comet. When it appeared in the former year, it was considered
as the harbinger of the vengeance of God, the dispenser of the most
dreadful of his retributions, war, pestilence, famine. By order of the
pope, all the church-bells in Europe were rung to scare it away, the
faithful were commanded to add each day another prayer; and, as their
prayers had often in so marked a manner been answered in eclipses and
droughts and rains, so on this occasion it was declared that a victory
over the comet had been vouchsafed to the pope. But, in the mean time,
Halley, guided by the revelations of Kepler and Newton, had discovered
that its motions, so far from being controlled by the supplications of
Christendom, were guided in an elliptic orbit by destiny. Knowing that
Nature bad denied to him an opportunity of witnessing the fulfillment
of his daring prophecy, he besought the astronomers of the succeeding
generation to watch for its return in 1759, and in that year it came.

INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES. Whoever will in a spirit of impartiality
examine what had been done by Catholicism for the intellectual and
material advancement of Europe, during her long reign, and what has been
done by sc